I lock the door behind me.
The air changes the second I step inside—thicker, charged, electric in a way that makes my pulse climb.
I move to the main wall—the one directly across from the doorway—the one with the biggest picture at the centre.
Scarlett, age nineteen.
Standing in the sunlight.
Innocent in a way she never really was.
Her eyes on camera.
On me.
Always on me.
I lift my hand and trace the glass.
“You should’ve heard yourself tonight,” I murmur, lips curling. “Screaming for me like you wanted a fucking war.”
The picture doesn’t answer.
It doesn’t need to.
“I knew you still had that fire in you,” I say, stepping closer, lowering my voice like I’m whispering against her neck instead of a photograph. “All that shaking, all that rage… you’ve got no idea what that does to me.”
Her eyes in the picture are soft, trusting.
Wrong.
“Not scared anymore, huh?” I laugh under my breath. “Good. I don’t want fear. I want you awake.”
I move to the small table beneath the shrine—a narrow wooden bench covered in objects she never knew I kept:
Her old hair tie.
A necklace she lost at the lake.
The letter she threw in the bin before I dug it out.
A button off her cardigan from the night of the trial.
A cracked phone case she left behind years ago.
I pick up the hair tie, rolling it between my fingers.
“Do you know how many nights I held this?” My voice dips, almost a growl. “You don’t. Because you weren’t there. You were busy pretending I didn’t exist.”
I lift it to my face and inhale—not because it still smells like her, but because I remember when it did.
Memory is a powerful fucking drug.
It hits me hard enough that I brace a hand on the table, head bowing for a second.
“Little sister,” I breathe, letting the heat coil low in my gut, “you’ve got no idea how close I came to stepping out tonight.”
I turn back to the shrine, eyes dragged to the newest image—the one I took just hours ago.
