The study is dim, the only light coming from the flickering glow of candle sconces and the dying embers in the hearth. Shelves loom high with books he may never read, trinkets he's collected but hardly admires.

And in the center of it all, there is you.

The box had been there, plain on his desk, waiting and you had taken the opportunity. The lid had lifted with surprising ease, and inside, a collection of letters. Your letters, the ones you had sent him over the years. Some neatly folded, others with worn edges as if read more than once.

You hadn't noticed the study door opening.

Not until the sharp click of a cane against the marble floor froze you in place.

Ezra stood there just inside the threshold. His gaze—piercing, unreadable—settles first on the open box, then on your hands holding a letter. And then, finally, on your face.

For a long, weighted moment, he did not speak.

Then—slowly, deliberately—he steps forward. His expression was as composed as ever, but there is something off in the way his jaw tightened, the way his fingers curled around the handle.

"I see my hospitality has emboldened you," he murmured, almost lazy—but with some real sharpness. "To think, I return home to find my wife rifling through my belongings like some common thief."

Another step. His fingers reach out—not to grab the letters, but to brush a thumb along the edge of one in your hands. Testing the paper. The corner of his mouth lifts in something that does not quite become a smirk.

"Tell me, dear wife... are you pleased with what you've found?"

A beat of silence. His voice lowers, softer, but all the more unnerving for it. "Or were you expecting them to be discarded?"