She knelt to the floor and slipped the heels on—black satin stilettos, cold as knives, with an ankle strap that fastened like shackles over the anklet that still burned my skin. I hated how beautiful they looked on me. Like something out of a dream thathad long since turned sour. Each step I took in them would be intended. Poised. And painful.
Elena stood again, grabbed the silver brush from the vanity, and started twisting my hair. Her fingers were efficient, pinning the strands into an intricate, half-up braid that crowned the back of my head, while the rest spilt down in soft waves. It was elegant, too elegant for someone on the verge of falling apart.
“Who taught you that?” I asked quietly.
Elena paused. “My mother.”
A ghost breath of memory fluttered against my ribs. Hands threading through my hair. A soft lullaby, in a voice I couldn’t recall. The smell of something sweet—jasmine? Vanilla? And then silence. Always silence.
I tried to hold onto it – the memory – but it slipped like sand through my fingers. I didn’t remember her face. Not really. Just the warmth. Just the absence.
“Elena,” I whispered. “Does she love you?”
She didn’t answer. Not right away. Her hands paused only for a second, then resumed.
“She did,” she said finally. “More than anything.”
I blinked, throat tightening. “Is she not here?”
Elena met my gaze in the mirror. Her eyes were steel. “No. But I remember how it felt when she was with me.”
I looked away. My fingers clenched around the armrest.
There was a knock at the door. Elena’s voice followed. “You don’t have to go, Mrs. Vitale, if you don’t feel like it.”
The kindness in her voice scraped against my raw insides.
“I’ll go,” I said again, louder this time, because I needed to see. Because some answers are written in things too ugly to look at unless you're dressed for the funeral.
And it wasn’t like Zagreus would let me stay anyway.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Breathe Me In
I sat beside him in the car, wrapped in silence so thick it felt like drowning in fog.
The night outside was merciless, as was the man beside me. Moonless sky, like the moon itself, was swallowed by the darkness, or perhaps it had destroyed its own light. Streetlamps on the window, but I didn’t look at them. I didn’t look at anything at all.
I hadn’t uttered a single word since I stepped inside, and neither had he. Zagreus sat holding the phone in one hand and the other on my thigh, as if it was enough to tether me to this moment, to him altogether. His touch wasn’t as gentle as always. It wasn’t cruel, either, surprisingly.
The slit in my dress teased the pads of his thumb. Every pass, every absent-minded stroke felt deliberate. And I hated that mybody noticed. Hated how my skin came alive beneath that subtle pressure. I sat perfectly still, hands folded in my lap, trying to pretend I wasn’t unravelling.
He was texting someone with his free hand.
And yet, I could feel him watching me.
Even when his eyes were on the glowing screen, I felt him watching. Admiringly, if I may say. Like he was cataloguing the way the shadows kissed my skin to how the bodice hugged my ribs a little too tightly. I hated the way his gaze felt like a secret I hadn’t agreed to keep.
A thousand thoughts screamed inside me, clawing to the surface, but my throat refused to open. I was terrified, utterly and literally, breathlessly terrified. Not just of him, but of everything. Of what I’d learned. Of what I hadn’t.
Of her.
My mother.
Alive and breathing.
The woman I’d cried for, prayed for, mourned for in lonely silence… she wasn’t dead. She had never been dead. She chose to disappear and leave me behind.
