Nothing.
But it remained. The sound threaded through my ribs. Coiled in my blood.
Waiting.
My body couldn’t relax.
The bed was too soft. The silence, too clean.
4
Sunlight glowed behind my closed eyes. For a moment, I didn’t move. Not from fear. No, this was worse. My body was wrong.
The air filled my lungs too easily. My limbs had forgotten what it was to carry fear, as if they’d been rinsed clean of survival instinct.
I opened my eyes slowly. The muted light filtering through intricately patterned drapes looked too bright.
My fingers brushed against the dagger, right where I had left it. Varyth’s words lingered in my mind, unsettling my thoughts.
I traced my forearm and expected the raw scrape from the forest to throb, only to find smooth skin where the wound should have been. There was no trace of pain, no sign of the injury.
But it wasn’t just my body that was different. My senses seemed to have been reawakened. As I glanced out the window, the trees were green. The sky rich. Every colour sang, loud and unfamiliar. As if had been living behind fogged glass, and now—everything was clear.
The faint scent of the stone floor, the fabric, the warm air. Everything was saturated. Louder than it should be.
And there, that familiar, comforting fragrance—the scent of my children. That mix of damp earth and the sweet flowers they always carried, was bolder, more distinct than ever before.
I sat up slowly, the weight of the world rediscovering me as I looked down at them. Mireth, curled up, her hands tucked beneath her chin. Eryx was sprawled on his back, his chest rose and fell with the deep, untroubled peace of sleep.
Everything outside them was wrong. But here were two small, steady breaths. Two real, solid little bodies. Relief and longing filled me as I watched them, their faces soft and serene.
They had learned, just as I had, to sleep lightly. To startle at the whisper of danger.
But now they didn’t.
I hadn’t seen them sleep like this since… My thoughts drifted to a night that belonged to another life.
Navaire grinning, stacking pillows into towers, blankets draped between them, the children squealing with delight. The fire crackling. The scent of spiced cider in the air. I’d scolded them at first. But laughter filled the room, wafting in the firelight, warm and bright. And by nightfall, I found them there, a tangled heap of limbs, Eryx’s head on his sister’s chest. Navaire beside them all, snoring so loud it should’ve woken them. It never did.
A smile touched my lips, but the memory was cruel, bittersweet. Navaire’s face lingered in my mind—his rich and earthy skin, the colour of sun-warmed mahogany. His hair short, black, and tightly coiled. His face lit the room like he believed nothing bad would ever reach us. I could almost see his broad, infectious smile, the way it filled the room with light.
The ache of his absence twisted within me, almost too much to bear. I reached out a hand to touch the memory.
I tried to pull it back, to keep it.
But it slipped through my fingers like sand and sorrow.
I could reach for him a thousand times and he would still slip away.
I dragged my focus back to my children, my heart swelling at the sight of them nestled close. Mireth, with her father’s skin, his dark, coiled hair and amber eyes, was truly the spitting image of Navaire. Eryx, on the other hand, was a blend of us both; soft brown skin, Navaire’s curls, but his hair was a reddish brown, and he bore my deep green eyes, a little mirror of our union.
Lost in thought, I didn’t notice the figure slip into the room until a warm hand pressed gently on my shoulder.
A heartbeat. A twist of the wrist and the blade was already at their throat.
“Ow!” a familiar voice yelped. “It’s me!”
I released her wrist immediately. Lira straightened and rubbed her throat with a bemused smile. She glanced at the children, who remained blissfully undisturbed, Mireth shifting only slightly in her sleep.
