Victoria leaned wearily on the kitchen table. She pressed her face into her palm, her skin creasing slightly under the weight. With her other hand she fiddled on the glass top, her fingers leaving faint streaks across the surface. Dark circles sagged under her sleepless eyes.

“Who were you talking to for so long?”

The question slipped out of Noud’s mouth uncontrollably, surprising them both.

Instead of answering, Bernard just raised an eyebrow.

The dark glass dome surrounding Ted barely let in the sounds of the outside world. Only a few distant rumbles filtered through the thick wall. From time to time, a desire stirred in him to take a closer look at that strange, mystical world, yet he never did.

María José was far more disappointed than angry. Ludmilla had simply dumped the whole thing on her. She’d made her look like some pilfering old fool with a storeroom crammed full of stolen junk.

“We need to talk,” Ludmilla called out before she even reached María José, who was sipping coffee on her terrace.

She marched toward her neighbor with determined steps, her arms flailing in front of her chest as if she were running.

Rage shot through Ted’s body in an instant. Every muscle in him trembled. That miserable Adrian was clearly behind Viktoria’s message—he had no doubt about it!

The music stirred something in Ted—a feeling he hadn’t experienced in ages. His eyelids grew heavy, and his hips began to sway slowly, gently, followed—after a hesitant delay—by the rest of his upper body. Viktoria’s delicate, powdery scent drifted into his nose again.

As the sun dipped behind the neighboring island, the people sitting and standing along the shore slowly began to gather their things. They rose unhurriedly from the still-warm, coarse, black sand, brushing the crushed pebbles from their clothes before quietly heading home.

"Come on, let’s go down to the beach," Ludmilla said gently, placing a hand on María José’s shoulder. "The fresh, salty air and a bit of movement will do you good."

"I feel like I could sleep for days," the elderly pastry chef mumbled, visibly drained.

Carlos walked beside Esteban in a near-shocked state, silent, his head bowed. He didn’t care when the occasional passerby brushed against his elbow. He didn’t even register the row of tall, wide-canopied palm trees they were passing.