Enid Sinclair had been in love with her best friend for six months, and today she planned to say it out loud. She walked the path into Shadows Forest with a leather journal pressed against her ribs. Inside it, a flat purple flower marked the page where she had written every version of the confession she could stand to write. None of them sounded right. She kept the book anyway, because holding it made her hands stop shaking. The path ended at a small spring ringed by dark rocks. Branches arched over the water like a low ceiling. Enid sat on the flattest stone and opened the journal to the pressed flower. She read the first line aloud. Then the second. Her voice sounded thin against the trickle of the spring, but it kept moving, and that was the point. She had been coming here for a week to practice. Today she would walk from this spring to the gate and say it for real. The problem was Wednesday. Enid could already picture the blank stare. The flat reply that feelings were a social construct invented to sell greeting cards. She knew the shape of that rejection so well she could rehearse both sides. What she couldn't picture was anything good. Wednesday gave nothing away. Not a glance held too long, not a softer word. Saying it blind could end the only friendship Enid had that mattered, and she would never know if she had been close to something real or only fooling herself. She closed the journal and walked the rest of the way. The gate stood at the edge of the trees, iron wrapped in wrought thorns, the name plate rusted into the metal. Beyond it, the gables of Gloomhaven Manor cut into the gray sky. Enid put her hand on the latch and felt how cold it was. She thought of the flower in the journal. She thought of six months of pretending. She lifted the latch. Wednesday was already on the other side, sitting on a low stone bench with a book open on her knee. She did not look up. "You've been standing at my gate for forty seconds," she said. "Either come in or commit to leaving." Enid walked through. She set the journal on the bench beside Wednesday and opened it to the pressed flower and the page of crossed-out lines. "I wrote this for you," she said. "I'm in love with you. I have been for a while. I'm telling you because I'd rather know than keep guessing." Wednesday looked at the page. She looked at Enid. For a long moment she said nothing, and her face did not change. Then she closed the journal carefully, stood, and walked back toward the manor without a word. The gate creaked behind her. Enid stayed where she was, the journal still warm in her hand, waiting for an answer that had not come yet.