The Sweetest Hunger

But Joan didn't see that.

"Look how it compliments my skin," she murmured, as if holding a luxury handbag.

Her joy was shallow. Her pride, misplaced.

Eva stepped back, her heart folding in on itself. But her eyes never left her brother.

Behind her, Desmond felt something shift.

The wind dropped. The air chilled. A presence filled the void where Eva had stood.

And then—she walked away.

Her steps were steady, but heavy. Her path straight, but painful. Every footfall felt like surrender.

Tears streamed freely now, streaking down her cheeks with quiet ferocity. This was not weeping.

This was fracture.

Each breath carried years of grief she had never given herself permission to release. The kind that burned clean through the soul.

Behind her, her boss remained still.

His silence was a sentence.

Joan, enraptured by the stone, didn't notice the shift in him.

Didn't feel the storm hardening inside the man beside her.

But he watched everything. Recorded everything.

As Eva passed through the crowd, they parted without realizing it. As if their bodies remembered something their minds denied.

Her boss finally turned. Not to escape.

But to remember.

He walked like judgment wrapped in flesh—silent, calculating, unforgiving. Every stare he met, every sneer, was catalogued. Every smirk, every doubt.

A ledger was being written behind his eyes.

And then came Desmond's voice—cutting clean across the air.

"Thank you… for bringing my sister here."

It was quiet.

But it rang like a curse.

The voice of a man caught between blood and betrayal.

Between truth… and the life he built to forget it.

It was Desmond.

Most of the crowd didn't react—perhaps they hadn't heard it. But Eva's boss did. He always did. His senses were never ordinary. He could isolate a whisper from across a battlefield, feel betrayal before it even reached the lips. He paused mid-step.

"Please… may I know your name?"

The question was simple. Direct. But it struck with the weight of something forbidden—like asking a ghost how it died. That name hadn't been spoken to him in years. Not even Eva had dared to ask. People called him Sir, Boss, That Man. Titles wrapped in distance. But his name? That had been buried with the others.

He didn't turn right away. A dry wind picked up, lifting dust from the gravel. The silence stretched thin as wire.

Then—slowly—he turned. His neck moved with the stiffness of someone forced to look at the past. Their eyes met.

The look he gave Desmond was not welcoming. It was surgical. His gaze cut clean through the man, peeling past his posture, his voice, his soul. It was the kind of stare that made liars confess and saints reconsider. Cold. Unforgiving. Quietly damning.

Desmond didn't flinch—but his throat shifted like he'd swallowed glass.

Then it came: a faint smile. It didn't reach his eyes. It never did. It was the same smile he wore when giving orders that led to silence. The kind that left people guessing whether it meant satisfaction, or quiet judgment. But it was still a shift.

He was answering.

Because he hadn't come here to start another storm.

Not yet.

He stepped forward, away from the uneven gravel and toward the carriage. His right foot hovered above the wooden threshold—one inch from escape—when a voice slid into the space beside him.

It didn't come from the crowd.

It was right beside his ear.

"It's not over yet."

It was breathless. Cold. Intimate.

And then—the cry.

A high, wailing infant's scream, thin and unnatural, like something torn from beneath the earth. It spiraled into the sky with no source, no shape, just dread. His spine locked. His face twisted. A crack bloomed in the wooden doorframe as his hand slammed into it—uncontrolled, unconscious. Splinters flew.

The crowd flinched as if the very sky had been struck.

Inside the nearby hut, Eva's uncle ducked behind the curtain and shut the door—too afraid to witness what might come next.

But before the fury could consume him, a hand gripped his arm.

Eva.

She didn't speak. Her eyes were swollen with unspilled tears, lips bloodless with restraint. She steadied him with both hands, guiding his trembling weight toward the horse-drawn carriage. He didn't resist.

He collapsed into the bed of soft, dew-dampened leaves, body slack. The crushed green released a scent—earthy, calming, familiar. His eyes fluttered. Closed. One breath. Then another.

The carriage groaned and lurched forward.

Wooden wheels shrieked against the pitted road. Hooves struck earth in a steady rhythm, but the cart rocked and bucked violently with every pothole. Eva clung to the rails, her eyes locked on him.

He wasn't waking.

She tried everything—gentle slaps, whispered pleas, desperate prayers spoken through clenched teeth. But his breathing turned jagged, erratic. He was slipping under. Not sleeping. Falling.

Drowning.

She leaned over him, pressing her arms and side to his body. Trying to warm him. Trying to anchor him. For a moment, the shivers stopped.

Then returned—worse than before.

And that's when she saw it.

Tucked deep in his cloak—a glass jar. Small. Clear. Capped with twisted copper. Inside: a bluish liquid, soft and glowing like moonlight soaked in herbs. She had seen him use it only once. In his worst hour. Not medicine. Not poison.

Something sacred.

Eva unscrewed the cap.

The scent hit instantly—mint, rainwater, something warm and ancient. Something that smelled like memory. Like home, if home had ever truly existed for him.

"Please," she whispered, "come back."

She held the jar near his face—close enough for breath to pass through it.

But then—

The carriage jolted violently. The bottle nearly slipped from her hand. She caught it—barely—and rewrapped her cloak with frantic urgency. The road beneath them had shifted. It wasn't just rough—it was wrong. Every bounce felt like the world was cracking.

She stood to check the reins.

The driver's seat was empty.

No shadow. No sound. No presence.

The reins swung wildly like torn puppet strings.

There was no driver.

No sign anyone had ever sat there.

Eva froze, breath caught in her throat. The sun blinked between leaves overhead, but her world turned cold. Wind tangled her hair. Sweat curled down her spine. Her gaze snapped to the path ahead—twisting, narrowing. The wheels creaked like they might split.

'Who was driving when we left? Did… anyone?'

The thought shattered whatever calm she had left.

The carriage was moving itself.

Behind her, he still lay pale and unresponsive. The sacred jar shimmered faintly beside him. The silence was no longer just stillness—it was presence. Watching. Waiting.

Something rode with them now.

She didn't know whether to wake him…

Or beg him not to.