Rift Under the Stars

While no one was looking or asking for her assistance, Cecilia took the opportunity to explore the manor’s perfectly maintained lawn and gardens. The manor’s grounds unfurled in a dreamlike expanse, echoing the house’s elegance with a landscape both cultivated and wild. A grand, sweeping drive curved through tall, whispering trees, their canopies creating dappled shadows that dance across the gravel. The path opened onto manicured lawns that slope gently outward, their emerald expanse broken by statues of angels and saints, weathered to a soft patina of age.

It would have been a tempting route to wander down if Cecilia did not shudder at the trees’ imposing stature, stirring too many memories and feelings still left unsettled.

Instead, she explored the intricate gardens that bloomed in deliberate yet romantic disorder—rose bushes climbing over wrought-iron trellises, peonies and lilies nodding heavily in the breeze, and fragrant lavender threading the air with sweetness. Stone pathways wound through these gardens, each turn revealing a fountain, a marble bench, or a secret alcove overgrown with ivy where one might pause in solitude. The twilight gave it new life, with lanterns lining the walkways flicker to life, casting a golden glow over the stone, and the gardens seeming to exhale a perfume richer and more intoxicating as night settled. The manor and its grounds together became not a house alone, but a sanctuary of beauty, a place where romance lingers in the air, as if every flower, every shadow, every carved detail conspires to hold it in eternal suspension.

She would keep that in mind for later, perhaps for Coriander or Atison, maybe even Nero if it felt appropriate.

In too short a time, after leisurely circling around the grounds, she finally decided to return to the house itself. Thus, Cecilia trudged her way back up the tall steps that led back to the overseeing balcony above the lawn. Once she reached its apex, she peered over the stone railing, taking a moment more to admire the outside she hadn’t had the opportunity to before now.

But soon, a shiver ran down her spine as the smell of dewy roses and the warmth of a licking fire filled the air.

Oh no. The balcony had all the signs.

Moonlight dripping over stone balustrades? Check.
A breeze just strong enough to lift her hair? Check.
The lord arriving silently behind her like a wolf in a waistcoat? Check, check, check.

Honestly, if this were an unscripted reality and she had not known better, she might have actually swooned on cue.

“Wandering about by yourself, little dove?” he murmured, a velvet baritone. His breath was practically perfumed with ellipses.

“Yes, I was,” she answered, shooting a purposely strained smile, too wide and too thin and putting every tooth on display. “And it was real pleasant until just now.”

Olrin either did not understand the meaning of her words or ignored it entirely, because he just leaned lightly against the bannister, his body poised to keep his heavily lidded eyes on her, sultry and unblinking. “Well,” he purred, body slowly curving in comfort like a jungle cat, “Perhaps there is a way to improve upon it.”

Cecilia’s face contorted in blatant disgust. It was amazingly disappointing how flat seduction fell when you were aware of its script.

He raised an eyebrow as he looked her down. “Is something bothering you?”

Rather than jumping to the low-hanging fruit and answering with a succinct ‘you’, Cecilia leaned into her blatant discomfort by clutching her stomach and covering her mouth with her other fist. “Actually,” she said, straining her voice and making a small belch in the back of her throat, “My stomach has been killing me all evening. I came out here to try to pass some gas without interrupting the festivities.”

His lips parted and eyes finally left her, quickly flicking off to the side, as if questioning where this interaction was going.

Fingers clutching the layers of dress and apron over her stomach, she made an exaggerated show of pressing her stomach—Followed by a deliberately loud, resonant, unladylike burp and finished by a relieved groan.

The manor itself seemed to recoil and the romantic light of the moon dimmed, as if it was trying to slowly take its leave from the awkward scene.

“Stars above,” Olrin muttered, gloved fingers pinching his flushed temple, “This is not how you are meant to be acting, Cecilia.”

She released an audible retch again, making his glare deepen as she slurred, “What do you mean?”

He groaned, frustrated. “You are meant to sigh at the stars,” he tried again, voice strained, “to share your uncertainties of the present and future, about how small and fragile you feel beneath the endless heavens—”

“Wow, that’s a lot to pick up on. My bad. But, really—Small? Fragile?” Her hand rested flat on her chest as she emphasized, “Me?” She slapped the balustrade. “Look at these elbows, my lord.” She threw said elbows around, making Olrin lean back and out of her loose, hazardous radius. “These babies are pointy as daggers. And rest assured, I’ve got plenty more tricks up these sleeves if given the chance.”

She jabbed the air for emphasis. He instinctively leaned even further back.

It was the first satisfying reaction he’d offered since she met him.

With a sharp exhale through his nose, Olrin stood to his full height, abandoning his careless façade to set his cloak straight across his shoulders. “You are being impossible.”

“And you,” she said, giving him some raised brows of her own, “are trying far too hard.”

The silence dragged, each second building heavily between them. This was meant to be the moment, she figured, when he was meant to seize me, crush me to his chest, and declare this so-called “chance” encounter to be fated.

So, bringing the scene to an end, she yawned, loudly. “Well. This was a lovely chat, my lord, but I must be dashing. The chamber pots won’t empty themselves, and I’d rather not let those simmer until morning.”

And she curtsied—an absurd, sweeping thing that nearly knocked over one of the stone urns—before sweeping back through the glass doors, sending a careless wave over her shoulder.

The atmosphere itself, from the balcony to the stars, seemed to sulk in the wake of her exist.

Cecilia almost felt sorry for it. Almost.