Chapter 4: What the Fog Does at Three in the Morning

The house had a particular silence at night.

Maren had not expected this — she had expected the sea, expected it to fill every quiet the way sea usually did, a constant restless conversation with itself. But Ashveil's coastline was a quarter mile distant and the sound it produced was less a roar than a low and deliberate susurrus, like something breathing in its sleep. Not loud enough to mask the house's own interior quiet. Not quiet enough to be forgotten.

She had been lying awake since one. This was not new.