It's the only thing that helps when the world feels like it's crashing down and I'm standing in the wreckage trying to figure out which pieces are worth salvaging.
The vanilla smoke scent lingers on my skin.
I breathe it in—once, twice, three times—before catching myself and stopping at four.
Even numbers. Safe.
Who was he?
Where did he come from?
Why did his scent feel like something I'd been searching for my whole life without knowing it?
Questions I'll probably never get answers to.
Just another mystery in a place full of them.
My feet start moving on autopilot, carrying me down the steps, away from the post office, into the uncertain morning light. My brain is full of static—thoughts bouncing off each other like pinballs, refusing to coalesce into anything coherent.
Packless Omegas can't use postal services.
The art sector has new restrictions.
Pink hair and green eyes, and vanilla smoke.
Maybe he's dead…maybe he forgot…maybe I'm finally completely alone?—
I stumble.
Catch myself.
Keep walking.
The Ruthless Academy campus spreads out before me, all brutal architecture and hidden dangers and the constant, underlying promise of violence. Somewhere in the distance, I can hear screaming—someone's morning combat practice, probably, or maybe just someone dying. Hard to tell the difference here.
I have dance.
The thought surfaces like a lifeline in a storm.
I still have dance.
The one thing they haven't taken from me yet. The one outlet I have left for all the darkness that builds up inside me, all the rage and grief and guilt that would consume me entirely if I didn't have a way to purge it.
Ballet.
Performance.
The stage where I can bleed without actually bleeding, where I can scream without making a sound, where I can be someone other than the broken girl who watched her parents die and became a monster to survive.
But Maria's words echo in my memory:
"The art sector. Performance spaces. New requirements are being implemented."
My stomach drops.
No.
Please, no.
