Time had started moving as it always did when Rafael didn't want it to, regardless of whether his mind kept up.
One week he was sitting in a sunlit room with ether-inked clauses spread across the table like open wounds, and Gregoris's arms around him like the only solid thing in a world that kept trying to rearrange itself. Next, the will was handled, sealed properly, and dead as it should have been. Layle took over the main estate without giving anyone the satisfaction of a public fight. No scandal. No moral story. No hungry cousin brave enough to attach his name to Delphine's ghost.
Rafael should have felt relief.
He did, some days.
Other days he felt the strange, hollow anger of realizing that Delphine could die and still have the audacity to require paperwork to truly leave.
