By the time the light outside started thinning into evening for real, the house had taken on that strange in-between feeling places got when nobody had decided what the night was yet.
Not dinner. Not settling down. Not anything structured enough to belong to. Just people drifting from one room to another with drinks in their hands, conversations starting and dropping off before they could become important, the whole house carrying the restless energy of a group trying to turn itself into comfort by sheer volume alone.
Madaline ended up on the arm of the couch in the living room, one leg tucked under her as she watched everyone spread out around her in loose, shifting shapes. Ymir had somehow claimed most of the floor space in front of the coffee table even though he wasn’t actually sitting on the floor so much as occupying it, one arm thrown over his bent knee as he argued with Noah about whether they should start a fire outside or stay in where they had better lighting and fewer chances of accidentally setting themselves on fire.
“You act like I’ve never done anything practical in my life,” Ymir said.
Noah looked at him over the rim of his drink. “Have you?”
“That’s rude.”
“It’s a question.”
“It was a rude question.”
“And yet an honest one.”
Ymir turned toward Madaline like she might rescue him. “Do you hear the way he talks to me?”
“Constantly,” she said. “I’m adjusted to it.”
“That’s not support.”
“No,” Noah said evenly, “that’s maturity.”
Ymir groaned like he’d been personally betrayed, which only made Madaline smile more. Across the room, one of Katarin’s guys laughed too hard at something that hadn’t really been funny, while the other had taken up half the recliner with the kind of casual entitlement that made him look like he’d decided, within an hour of arriving, that the house belonged to him too.
Katarin, meanwhile, had made herself the center of the space in the way she always did—without actually earning it. She sat cross-legged at the far end of the couch, drink balanced in one hand, dark hair tucked behind one ear as she talked to whoever would look at her long enough to count as listening. Every few seconds her attention jumped somewhere new, like she couldn’t stand the idea of a conversation continuing without her in it.
Mira had chosen the opposite strategy.
She sat closer to Madaline than anyone else, not pressed against her, not obviously attached, just near in that easy, unconscious way people got when closeness had stopped feeling like a decision. One of her legs was tucked beneath her, sweater sleeves still pulled down over her hands. Her hair had fallen messier around her face over the last hour, soft waves slipping forward every time she looked down at her drink. She kept brushing them back and failing to keep them there, and every time she did it Madaline found herself noticing.
Not just the motion.
The softness of it.
The room had become loud enough now that conversations existed in layers. Ymir and Noah up front. Katarin and the guys cutting through the middle of things whenever they felt like it. Something lower between Ethan and Mira whenever he leaned in enough to say something that didn’t need the rest of the room. The speaker someone had finally managed to connect sitting in the background with music low enough to be mostly texture.
It should have felt warm.
And for a while, it almost did.
Madaline lifted her drink and took a slow sip, her eyes moving over the room without any real purpose beyond taking stock. Ethan stood near the edge of the living room beside the bookshelf, one shoulder angled toward Mira even when he wasn’t directly speaking to her. He didn’t join the louder rhythm unless someone pulled him into it, but he wasn’t awkward in his quiet either. He just seemed built for a different kind of space than this one, like he was always more comfortable in conversations that stayed small and exact.
Kane was harder to pin down.
He wasn’t in the center of the room and he never tried to be, but somehow Madaline kept noticing him anyway. Sometimes near the doorway. Sometimes by the window. Once leaning briefly against the wall with his jacket still on, one hand disappearing into the pocket of it while he listened to the others without looking particularly interested. His blue eyes moved over the group in quiet passes, taking in more than he offered back, and the impression he left was strangely consistent—present, but never fully accessible.
“You’re doing it again,” Mira said softly.
Madaline turned. “Doing what?”
Mira smiled into her drink. “That thing where you look like you’re writing mental notes about everyone.”
“I am not.”
“You are a little.”
“Maybe I just like observing.”
“That sounds suspiciously close to what I said.”
Madaline laughed under her breath. “Maybe you’re projecting.”
“No,” Mira said, glancing toward Ymir as he started loudly defending his right to choose the music next, “I’m distracting you.”
“From what?”
Mira tipped her head, considering. “Honestly? Probably all of this.”
The honesty of it made Madaline’s smile soften.
“Fair.”
Ymir reached for the speaker at the exact same moment Noah said, “Don’t touch that,” and the timing was so perfect Madaline actually laughed, shoulders loosening a little deeper into the couch.
“See?” Mira said, quieter now. “Entertainment.”
“That is one word for it.”
“I’m choosing optimism.”
“Dangerous.”
“You’re rubbing off on me.”
Madaline looked at her then, really looked, and caught the flicker of amusement still sitting in her expression. It was easier, suddenly, to understand why the room felt less abrasive with her in it. Mira never pushed at anything directly if she could help it. She softened edges. Redirected. Filled awkward pauses before they could turn jagged. It was almost a kind of instinct.
Which was probably why Madaline noticed, a second later, when that softness thinned.
Not vanished.
Just… tightened.
One of Katarin’s guys had gotten up from the chair and wandered toward the drinks again, cutting past the couch a little too close. As he passed, his hand brushed the back of it near where Mira sat. Not enough to claim accident entirely. Not enough to call out cleanly either. Just one of those small, slippery things people did when they wanted to test whether anyone would make them answer for it.
Mira shifted instantly, subtle but unmistakable, moving her leg in closer and straightening slightly.
Madaline’s mouth flattened before she could stop it.
The guy either didn’t notice or didn’t care. He kept walking toward the kitchen with the same lazy arrogance he’d brought into every room so far.
“Do you want me to say something?” Madaline asked under her breath.
Mira looked at her, startled for a second, then softened. “No.”
“Mira—”
“Seriously.” She gave the smallest shake of her head. “I’m okay.”
It was said lightly enough for the room, but not for Madaline.
She let it go, though she hated that she had to.
On the other side of the room, Katarin suddenly leaned across the arm of the couch toward Noah. “Tell him I’m right,” she said, pointing at Ymir as if Noah had any reason to involve himself in whatever argument she’d arrived at.
Noah didn’t even blink. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Exactly,” Ymir said. “Because you interrupted halfway through.”
“Then explain it faster.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because now it’s about principle.”
“That means you forgot.”
“It means I have dignity.”
Noah took another sip of his drink. “You’ve never had that.”
Madaline smiled again, but only briefly this time. The mood of the room kept catching and resetting, catching and resetting, like nobody could agree what kind of night they were trying to have. Every time something almost settled, Katarin or one of the men or even the shape of the house itself seemed to pull it crooked again.
One of the lamps near the far wall flickered once.
Not enough to go dark.
Just enough to make the shift in brightness noticeable.
Ymir saw it first. “That’s not ominous.”
“It’s an old house,” Noah said.
“That’s exactly what people say before something terrible happens.”
Madaline let herself exhale.
For a minute, she stopped thinking about the house. About the strange sound upstairs. About the tension that had followed Mira through the afternoon and kept brushing against her since.
For a minute, they really did look like what they were supposed to be.
A group of people with too much shared history and too little time together lately, trying to force that history back into place for one weekend.
And then Katarin’s attention shifted.
It happened in that way some things did when they began before anyone noticed them beginning. She had been half-listening to Ymir, half-scrolling through something on her phone without signal, half-performing for the nearest pair of eyes. Then her gaze slid past the rest of them and caught on Kane where he stood near the back of the room.
Madaline saw the exact second Katarin decided something.
Her posture changed first.
Subtle. Just enough of a straightening, a smoothing hand over her shirt, a tilt of her chin that wasn’t for herself.
Then she got up.
Katarin crossed the room with that same bright, trying-too-hard ease she always wore when she wanted to be watched. She didn’t head back toward the kitchen. Didn’t move toward the speaker or the couch or either of the guys she’d brought.
She went straight toward Kane.
Madaline’s eyes followed her without thinking.
Across the room, Kane looked up just as Katarin stopped near him, smile already in place.
And whatever the night had been trying to turn into, Madaline felt it shift again.
Not because Katarin had crossed the room.
Because she had crossed it with purpose.
There was always something a little too deliberate about the way she moved when she wanted attention, like she thought confidence was just a matter of deciding everyone should be looking at her and then acting offended if they weren’t. Even now, with a drink in one hand and her smile already fixed into place, she looked less like someone drifting into conversation and more like someone stepping onto a stage she’d decided existed.
Kane, unfortunately for her, did not look like a very interested audience.
He had taken up a place near the back of the room where the light from the lamp didn’t reach him fully, one shoulder close to the doorway leading toward the kitchen. He had that same quiet stillness about him he always seemed to carry, jacket still on, hands mostly to himself, expression unreadable in a way that never looked uncertain—just withheld.
Katarin stopped in front of him anyway.
Madaline watched her tip her head slightly, dark hair shifting against her jaw, posture loosening into something she probably thought looked effortless.
It did not.
“You’ve been hiding back here all night,” Katarin said.
Her voice carried just enough to be overheard if someone happened to already be listening.
Madaline was.
Kane looked at Katarin.
Not down. Not up. Just directly at her, with that cool, level attention of his that made people either lean in or back off.
“Have I?” he said.
It was such a flat answer Madaline almost smiled.
Katarin either didn’t notice or decided not to. “Yeah,” she said, like she was letting him in on something. “You have. I feel like you’ve barely said three words.”
“Maybe I didn’t need to.”
That should have ended it.
For most people, it would have.
Katarin only smiled wider, leaning one shoulder lightly against the wall beside him as if they were already in the middle of some private conversation. “Or maybe you just think you’re too mysterious for everyone.”
From the corner of her eye, Madaline saw Noah glance up from his drink, gaze flicking between them once before returning to Ymir like he had no intention of getting involved in whatever that was. Ymir, meanwhile, had started saying something about the music again but was clearly only half in it now, attention splintering the way everyone’s did when a room picked up on the possibility of social disaster.
Kane’s expression didn’t change.
“Do I?”
The answer came so evenly it left no space for flirtation to survive in it. Madaline thought that might finally embarrass Katarin into backing off.
Instead, she laughed softly and reached out, fingers catching briefly at the sleeve of his jacket.
The movement was small.
But it made something in Madaline’s stomach turn over instantly.
Kane looked down at Katarin’s hand.
Then back up at her.
Whatever lived in his face normally—whatever cool distance let him stand at the edge of things without seeming disconnected—flattened into something colder.
He stepped back.
Not sharply. Not enough to make a scene.
But clearly.
Deliberately.
Katarin’s hand fell away into empty air.
For a split second, embarrassment flashed across her face before she covered it with another smile.
“Okay,” she said lightly, drawing the word out. “You’re one of those.”
“One of what?”
“The type that acts all detached because you know it makes people more interested.”
Madaline actually had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep her expression neutral at that.
Because Kane did not look more interested.
If anything, he looked vaguely disgusted.
Not in a dramatic way. He wasn’t scowling. Wasn’t glaring. But his mouth had gone still in a way that made the line of it feel sharper, and there was something so plainly put off in his gaze that Madaline suddenly felt embarrassed for Katarin on principle.
Katarin either felt it too or sensed she was losing ground, because she kept talking.
“I mean, you can relax,” she said, shifting closer again, lowering her voice a little like that would make the moment more intimate instead of more obvious. “I’m just trying to be nice.”
Kane looked at her for a long second.
Then he said, in the same calm tone he’d used for everything else, “Don’t do that.”
The room didn’t go silent.
But to Madaline, it felt like it did.
Katarin blinked.
Just once.
Her smile stayed on too long, long enough to show the exact second it stopped being real.
“Excuse me?”
Kane didn’t move. “You heard me.”
There was no heat in it.
No raised voice.
That was what made it land.
Madaline watched Katarin’s expression flicker between offense and calculation, like she was trying to decide which version of this made her look less rejected.
“Wow,” she said after a beat, and now the laugh in her voice sounded brittle. “You really do think a lot of yourself.”
“No,” Kane said. “I think enough of myself.”
Madaline very nearly choked on her drink.
Beside her, Mira made the tiniest sound—not quite a laugh, not quite surprise—before covering it by lifting her glass. When Madaline looked at her, she found Mira staring down into her drink with a careful stillness that absolutely did not fool her.
Noah had looked up again now. Even Ymir had gone quiet, his attention no longer pretending to be anywhere else.
Katarin straightened.
The flirtation dropped off her so abruptly it was like watching someone change costumes between scenes.
“God,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I was joking.”
“Then joke with someone else.”
That did it.
Her face hardened fully this time, enough that the hurt under it showed before she could smooth it away. Madaline almost felt bad for her.
Almost.
Then Katarin laughed again, too bright and too quick, turning away from him with a toss of her head that would have looked effortless if her shoulders hadn’t gone tight.
“You’re actually insane,” she announced to the room at large, as though she had not just walked herself directly into that conversation. “I cannot believe people like that still exist.”
“You walked over to him,” Noah said.
Katarin whipped toward him. “Whose side are you on?”
“There are sides?”
“Obviously.”
“Then probably not yours.”
That earned a short bark of laughter from Ymir, who immediately tried to hide it by lifting his drink and failing completely.
Katarin looked around the room as if waiting for someone to salvage her dignity for her. One of the guys snorted into his glass. The other seemed deeply invested in pretending none of this had happened. Noah had gone back to his usual flat expression. Ethan remained where he was near the shelves, unreadable except for the fact that his attention had sharpened, eyes moving once toward Mira before settling elsewhere again.
Madaline couldn’t help it.
Her gaze slipped back to Kane.
He had already withdrawn from the whole thing. Not physically, exactly—he was still standing there—but the moment itself seemed to have slid off him completely. No smugness. No lingering edge. No satisfaction in having embarrassed Katarin.
Just the same cool distance as before, as though her attention had never touched him enough to matter.
It was almost unnerving.
Katarin muttered something under her breath and swept back toward the couch, reclaiming her drink with more force than necessary. She sat down hard enough to rattle the cushion, crossing one leg over the other and immediately falling into a louder conversation with one of the men as if she’d been the one rejecting people all night.
Madaline watched the performance restart in real time.
It might have been almost impressive if it weren’t so transparent.
“Well,” Ymir said after a moment, in the careful tone of someone trying and failing to act like everyone hadn’t just seen that. “That was… something.”
“Don’t,” Noah said.
“I’m just saying—”
“Don’t.”
Ymir raised both hands in surrender. “Fine.”
Mira shifted beside Madaline, and this time when Madaline looked at her, Mira finally let the edge of her mouth twitch upward.
It was brief.
But very real.
Madaline leaned closer, lowering her voice. “You okay?”
Mira nodded once, eyes still angled toward her drink. “Yeah.”
Then, after the smallest pause, she added, “That was kind of awful.”
“For her.”
Mira’s mouth twitched again. “For everyone.”
Madaline smiled despite herself. “Mostly for her.”
That almost pulled a laugh out of Mira, but she smothered it into the rim of her glass instead.
Across the room, Kane’s eyes lifted.
Not to Katarin this time.
To Mira.
It was quick. Easy to miss if you weren’t already looking. But there was something checking in about it, something instinctive and quiet.
Mira didn’t look back.
She didn’t need to.
A second later, Kane looked away and headed for the kitchen without a word.
The room picked itself back up around the absence he left behind. Ymir resumed arguing about absolutely nothing. Noah corrected him for sport. Katarin talked louder than before, too fast now, as if she could rewrite what had just happened by overwhelming it with enough noise. One of the men hovered close to her, smiling when she looked his way and fading when she didn’t.
The normal rhythm tried to return.
It almost succeeded.
But something had changed anyway.
Madaline could feel it in the room the same way you could feel when laughter had been used to cover something raw instead of erase it. Katarin’s embarrassment still buzzed under everything she said. Ymir’s energy had gone a shade more forced. Even the house seemed to hold the moment strangely, letting all the voices continue while keeping some colder shape of it tucked into the corners.
Mira reached down absently and set her empty glass on the table.
“I need another drink,” she murmured.
“You want me to come with you?”
Mira turned her head and smiled, softer now. “No. Stay.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.” She glanced toward the kitchen, where Kane had disappeared a moment earlier, then back at Madaline. “I’ll be back.”
She got up and slipped from the couch, sweater falling softly around her as she crossed the room.
Madaline watched her go without meaning to.
Not because she was worried.
Not exactly.
Just because it suddenly felt easier to keep track of where certain people were.
Across from her, Katarin laughed too loudly again at something one of the men said.
And somewhere deeper in the house, beyond the living room and kitchen and all of them trying to force the night back into shape, something creaked.
The moment Mira slipped out of the living room, the noise behind her felt louder.
Not because anyone had raised their voice.
Because she wasn’t in it anymore.
The kitchen met her with a softer kind of quiet, the hum of the fridge and the faint clink of glass against the sink filling the space instead of conversation. The light overhead was warmer here, casting everything in a dull gold that made the counters look softer, less sharp.
Kane stood near the sink.
He hadn’t moved much since leaving the living room, one hand braced lightly against the counter, the other resting near the edge of it. He wasn’t drinking. Wasn’t doing anything, really.
Just standing there.
He looked up when she stepped in.
For a second, neither of them said anything.
Then Mira let out a small breath and crossed to the counter, reaching for a glass more out of habit than intention. “That was… something.”
Kane didn’t respond right away.
“She does that,” Mira added, quieter now, like she was filling the space before it could get too still. “I don’t think she even knows she’s doing it.”
“She knows,” Kane said.
His voice was calm, but there was no hesitation in it.
Mira glanced at him, then looked back down as she filled her glass. “Yeah,” she said after a second. “Probably.”
The water ran for a moment longer than it needed to before she shut it off. The sound faded quickly, leaving the quiet behind it more noticeable than before.
“You okay?” Kane asked.
Mira blinked, caught a little off guard by the question. “Yeah.”
He didn’t look convinced.
She sighed softly and leaned back against the counter, sweater bunching at her elbows. “I mean… yeah. I’m fine. It’s just annoying.”
“Then don’t let it be.”
Mira gave a small, crooked smile. “You make that sound really easy.”
“It is.”
“For you.”
Kane didn’t argue with that.
For a second, Mira just watched him, something softer settling into her expression. It always did, eventually, when it came to him. No matter how different they were, no matter how much he stood apart from everything else, there was still something steady about him that she didn’t have to question.
“Did you text Aunt Liora?” she asked.
The shift in topic was quick, but not random.
Kane’s gaze flicked toward the counter where his phone sat, screen dark. “No.”
“You should.”
“Why?”
Mira gave him a look. “Because she made us promise we would when we got here.”
“We got here.”
“And didn’t tell her.”
“She’ll live.”
“Kane.”
There was just enough insistence in her voice to pull a faint exhale from him. Not annoyed. Not quite.
Resigned.
He picked up his phone, glancing at it briefly before unlocking it. “We’re here,” he said as he typed. “Alive. Nothing’s on fire.”
Mira leaned over slightly, trying to see the screen. “You’re not actually writing that.”
“I am.”
“She’s going to call us immediately.”
“Then she knows we’re fine.”
Mira laughed softly, shaking her head. “You’re the worst.”
“You say that every time.”
“Because it’s true every time.”
He hit send and set the phone back down.
For a second, neither of them moved.
Then, without looking at her, Kane reached out and rested his hand briefly on the top of her head.
It wasn’t dramatic.
Just a light, familiar press. A small, absent-minded gesture that felt like something he’d done a hundred times before.
Mira scrunched her nose immediately. “Don’t.”
“You’re fine.”
“I am not fine. I’m being attacked.”
“You’ll survive.”
“Emotionally, I won’t.”
That earned the faintest hint of a smirk from him before he dropped his hand.
The moment settled between them, quiet and easy in a way the rest of the house hadn’t managed all night.
Until—
“I’m stepping out for a smoke,” one of the guys called from the living room.
The voice cut through the space just loud enough to carry.
Mira straightened slightly, her attention flicking toward the doorway. “Already?”
“It’s been like an hour,” the guy added, more to himself than anyone else.
Kane didn’t react.
Mira did.
Just a small shift. A glance toward the back door. A flicker of something unreadable that passed too quickly to hold onto.
Then it was gone.
“We should go back,” she said, softer now.
Kane nodded once.
They moved at the same time, falling into step without thinking about it. Mira took a quick sip of her drink before setting it down again, abandoning it halfway. Kane pushed off the counter, hands sliding briefly into his jacket pockets as they crossed the threshold back into the living room.
The noise met them again immediately.
Ymir was mid-sentence about something completely unrelated to anything that had happened in the last ten minutes. Noah sat angled slightly away from him, listening just enough to respond without encouraging him further. Katarin had recovered fully, or at least looked like she had, leaning into one of the guys as she laughed again, her voice just a little sharper than before.
The other guy—the one who had said he was going out—was already at the door.
He pulled it open with a quick motion, letting a rush of cooler air slip into the room before stepping outside.
The door shut behind him.
The sound echoed faintly.
For a second, Madaline looked up.
She hadn’t realized she’d been watching the door until it closed.
Mira moved back toward the couch, slipping into her spot beside Madaline like she’d never left. Their shoulders brushed lightly as she settled, and this time she didn’t shift away.
“Everything good?” Madaline asked quietly.
Mira nodded. “Yeah.”
There was something softer in her voice again.
Easier.
Madaline glanced past her toward the kitchen, catching Kane just as he leaned briefly against the doorway again, posture loose but eyes moving through the room the same way they always did.
Checking.
Then his gaze lifted.
For half a second, it met Mira’s.
She didn’t turn fully, but something in her expression shifted just enough to acknowledge it.
Then the moment passed.
Ymir said something ridiculous again, pulling a laugh out of Noah despite himself. Katarin talked over it. The music shifted slightly. Someone reached for another drink.
Everything continued.
Outside, the night had settled in fully.
And somewhere beyond the door that had just closed, the man who had stepped out for a smoke stood alone.