Right. No comfort.
Eli's pause feels like a hand pressed to glass. It hurts worse than if he hadn't stopped at all.
Jasper doesn't make noise when he moves. If he stands outside my room, I won't hear him. He'll be a shadow filing paperwork in his head, polishing words until they're knives.
Drake's scent skims the edge of the door and I know it in my bones. He stops. I hold my breath until my chest aches.
He goes.
My body sags like something cut a string. The blanket shifts with me.
The house has felt like a cage before—after the kneeling, after the ban. Today it feels different. Not because the walls changed. Because the thing they were supposed to hold doesn't exist anymore.
Nesting is instinct. Everyone says it, like it's gravity. You can trust it. You can rely on it.
I stare at the empty space where my nest used to breathe.
I feel nothing move.
There's a part of me that still wants to bake, stupidly. I imagine going into the kitchen and making biscuits. I imagine flour dusting my hands. I imagine Ragon walking in and telling me I'm not allowed to comfort myself.
I pull the fleece higher under my chin.
Outside, a car goes by. The neighbor's dog barks twice and stops.
I close my eyes.
The chair creaks when I curl tighter.
I try to imagine getting up and building again. Laying out blankets and tucking edges and making corners and sayingmineout loud until the room believes me.
Nothing in me answers.
I am very small in a house I used to know by heart.
I am very quiet because someone told everyone not to touch me and they obeyed.
I tuck my toes under my thigh and make a little cave with my knees.
It will do.
It has to.
They can keep the bare bed. I don't want it anymore.
I keep this chair, this small square of green, this breath that goes in and out even when it's hard.
The rest of it is not home.
Not anymore.
Chapter 19
Two weeks.
Two weeks since they violated my nest. Two weeks since something inside me went quiet and never came back.
The house feels different now. Not because the walls changed. Because I did.
