“Are we back at that?” His voice was frustrated to say the least, but his touch remained the gentlest. “I have never straight-up lied to you, Daphne.”
“Never tweak truth, then.”
There was a pause that made her smile, because she felt it through the bond how he was trying to spin that, but then he capitulated. “Yeah, okay. That’s accurate. And you can’t hide your feelings, your fears and fragility, anymore.”
“Only with you.”
“Only with me.”
“I’m okay with that.”
She let herself slip into slumber, Hunter’s scent and warmth wrapped around her like a lullaby made of skin and breath. The beat of his heart, strong and steady beneath her cheek, faded into the distance as sleep took her.
And then, she wasn’t in her house anymore.
She was nowhere. Everywhere. It was dark. Not the way night was. This darkness was obscene and alive and heavy. Fog slithered close to the black, bare ground.
Trees. It was full of trees. Tall and silvered, their bark so slick, shadows shifted behind the surface, like mirrors filled with smoke.
She moved closer to one, but her image was not what reflected back to her.
Or, not exactly.
No.
Her shallow breathing was the only sound; the pounding of her heart almost hurt. She stumbled to a different tree, then to another, then another.
No.
In every warped mirror of bark and smoke was a version of her she’d lived, a ghost she’d been to survive.
A little girl with scraped knees and tear-streaked cheeks, curled beneath a bed, ordering herselfdon’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cryinto her palms.
A child, gripping a doorknob to keep it closed.
A teenager, smiling too widely for someone who didn’t want to be seen.
A young woman in a party dress and hollow eyes, laughing on cue.
The one who saidI’m finelike a prayer, like a dare, like a lie that would become true if repeated enough.
They stood behind the glass. They watched her, eyes wide with pain she would never claim, could never accept.
She spun around, and around, until her head was light, powerless against all those accusing eyes.
“What the fuck is this?” she asked through clenched teeth.
No one answered, but the reflections moved. Twitched. Sneered, full of hate and judgment.
One figure stepped out from a mirror. Pale, thin, scared. She pointed a trembling finger at her. “You.”
Daphne tried to swallow, but her throat was too dry. “What? What about me?”
“I,” the younger her said, “am you. The one you buried but can’t kill.”
Daphne straightened her spine, shoved away the rising panic thundering through her pulse like drums in a war she had to win. “I’m not scared. I will never be scared again.”
The broken self laughed, an ugly and choked sound that crawled under her skin. “But you were. You are. You never got rid of us; you only keep us out of sight. Shadows behind your eyes. Always there, never acknowledged.”
