Chapter 3 - The Echo of a Lost Night
The first thing Ella found was his patched wool cap, lying abandoned beside a frozen marble fountain in the crowded royal square.
"Leo?" Her voice was swallowed by the roar of the festival crowd. "Leo!"
Panic, sharp and blinding, clawed at her throat. She shoved aggressively through a sea of masked merchants, lute players, and ambitious young women adjusting their silk gowns for the evening’s royal ball.
Then, cutting through the din, she heard a child’s bright, unfiltered laugh.
Across the square, near the grand basin, Leo stood completely engrossed with an elderly man dressed in an immaculate dark velvet coat. The boy was holding a delicate bird woven entirely out of fresh green rushes. The old man was chuckling so deeply that silver tears welled in the corners of his eyes.
Standing right beside them was another man.
Tall, statuesque, with broad shoulders encased in a fitted black coat that commanded absolute authority. He wore no mask. The citizens in the immediate vicinity unconsciously parted, leaving an aura of empty space around him as if reverence were a physical law.
Ella could not yet make out his face through the shifting crowd, but every nerve ending in her body ignited before her mind could process what she was seeing. Her heartbeat staggered, skipping violently.
The tall man knelt smoothly in the slush, bringing himself eye-level with Leo. His voice carried across the winter air—deep, resonant, and carrying a haunting, dreamlike familiarity that broke open years of locked memories.
"What is your name, little one?"
"Leo," the boy answered proudly, holding up his rush-woven bird.
"Leo what?" the man asked gently, a curious warmth softening his stern profile.
Before Leo could answer, Ella burst through the final layer of onlookers, her breath coming in ragged gasps as she swept her son behind her skirts. "Step away from him!" she cried out, her voice trembling with maternal ferocity.
The tall man slowly rose to his full height. As he turned his face toward the weak winter sun, the crowd seemed to hold its collective breath.
Half of his face was framed by strong, aristocratic lines, high cheekbones, and sharp, piercing amber eyes—eyes that mirrored the exact shade of the haunting stranger from the Moon Ball six years ago.
May you like
The man froze. The air between them thickened into a solid wall of shock.
"Ella?" his voice dropped to a stunned whisper.
