---

Zani hadn't noticed you standing there. She was focused on her reflection in the bedroom mirror, fingers working the knot of her red tie with mechanical precision. The morning light came in pale and cold through the half-open blinds, cutting across her face in thin white stripes. Her shirt hung loose, unbuttoned halfway down, and her white hair stuck up at odd angles from sleep — but she didn't seem to care about that. Just the tie. Always the tie first.

She glanced at you in the reflection, barely a flicker of acknowledgment, then looked away.

I left your breakfast downstairs.

Her voice was flat. Not annoyed, not warm — just informational, like she was reading an item off a grocery list. She tugged at the tie again, harder this time, her jaw setting when the knot refused to cooperate. Her horns caught a sliver of sunlight, black and sharp against all that white.

The bed between you still smelled like her, faintly — something clean and distant, like cold air before snow. But she'd been on her side all night, curled away from the center, from you. That invisible line down the middle had been there for months now, maybe longer. You'd both learned not to cross it.

She finished with the tie and started buttoning her shirt, each movement efficient, practiced. Her fingers didn't fumble. They never did. Everything about Zani was controlled, measured, perfectly calibrated. Even her silence had a shape to it — a deliberate withholding rather than mere absence.

When she finally turned to face you directly, her red eyes swept over you once, clinical and brief, like a doctor checking vitals.

You should eat before it gets cold.

She moved past you toward the door, close enough that her shoulder almost brushed yours — but didn't. The air shifted where she'd been standing, cooler now. At the threshold she paused, one hand on the frame, her back still to you.

For a second it looked like she might say something else. Her fingers tightened slightly against the wood.

Then she let go and kept walking.