“Three days,” she says quietly. “You’ve been asleep the whole time.”
Three days.
The shock of it leaves me breathless. Time is a blur—something fluid and untethered, and I’ve been drifting through it with no anchor.
How much has happened while I was gone?
What else have I lost?
The scent of cedar clings to the air, mingled with dried herbs and something sharper—medicinal, like poultices and crushed roots.
Stone surrounds us, but it’s not cold. There’s a quiet hum to the space, a stillness that doesn’t feel empty. A window stands half-cracked, letting in the hush of morning. The breeze stirs the curtains. Light spills in, soft and golden.
But I can’t feel any of it.
None of it touches the hollow ache inside my chest.
Lyra’s grip tightens and I sink into it.
The sobs won’t stop. They tear through me, ragged and loud, filling the room with broken breaths and pain I can’t contain. She holds me through it all, her voice a whisper against my ear—soft, steady, the anchor in my storm.
“I’m here,” she murmurs, her chin resting lightly on my head. “You’re not alone.”
I press my face into her shoulder, tears soaking her tunic. She doesn’t flinch; just holds me closer. A lifeline in a world that’s crumbled.
My body trembles, scraped raw by the force of everything I’ve lost.
Time slips by unnoticed—minutes, maybe hours. I don’t know. I only know that at some point, the shaking slows and the sobs quiet. What’s left is exhaustion, heavy and full and inescapable.
Lyra shifts beside me, her hand reaching to tuck a strand of damp hair behind my ear. The gesture is gentle. Sacred.
“Sleep,” she whispers. Not an order. A promise.
I want to argue. To rise. To be stronger than this. But my body won’t obey. I’m emptied out, hollowed by grief.
And she’s here.
The way she holds me like I won’t break—not if she has anything to say about it.
My lashes lower and the world fades.
The first day passed in a haze of grief—unforgiving and suffocating, like trying to breathe through smoke. Lyra never left my side. She held me through the worst of it, and for that, I am grateful.
But when I wake the next morning, something inside me shifts.
It’s not clarity—not even strength.
Just a quiet, brittle need to move. To know.
If I stay here much longer, I might disappear into the hollow ache inside me. I push myself upright, limbs heavy, every muscleweighted by loss. My chest still feels splintered, like I’m made of broken glass and breath.
Lyra is nearby, perched on the edge of a low chair, a book on her lap. Her gaze is steady, the kind that doesn’t flinch at cracks.
“Where are we?” My voice comes out hoarse, scraped thin from sleep and crying.
Lyra hesitates. “I don’t know exactly,” she says slowly. “But . . . we’re safe. And we’re with good people. That much I do know.”
I arch a brow. Safe? We thought we were safe in our village, far away from the darkness and shadows. Nowhere is safe anymore.
