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Too close.

The first collision throws me sideways, metal shrieking around us as Dad swears and Mom grabs my shoulder.

Another impact hits, followed by gunfire and exploding glass, the transport spinning so violently that the world becomes a blur of noise and flashing lights until I hear Dad shouting.

Smoke mixes with the rain. Blood drips into my eyes.

The transport door is open, and Dad is dragging me away from it, his hand locked around my arm while I struggle against him, kicking, twisting, trying to break free.

"Mom!" I scream. "Mom! Mom!" The word keeps tearing out of me as panic claws through my chest. I can’t breathe. My heart hurts. Everything hurts. "Dad, we can’t leave her. Mom!"

But he keeps pulling me forward.

"Ciaran."

His grip tightens hard enough to hurt, but I fight him anyway, twisting against his hold while my shoulder screams in protest.

"Mom!" My voice breaks. "Dad, stop! Mom’s still in there!"

Guards race through the rain around us, shouting over the storm while lights flash across the road and someone yells for a medic.

I barely hear any of it because Mom is still inside.

Then I hear a Noctis, its melody drifting through the rain and gunfire with impossible clarity, drowning out the shouting, the sirens, even my own heartbeat.

For one terrifying second, I stop fighting.

Then I hear a woman’s voice, cold and furious. "After everything, it always comes back to you."

I don’t understand what she’s talking about. Rain hammers against the wreckage while guards shout over one another, Dad barking orders louder than all of them as someone tries to pull me away from his side.

Mom says something I can’t hear, and the woman laughs, a sharp, bitter sound that somehow cuts through the storm.

"You got the family. You got the house. You got him," she says, another gunshot cracking somewhere in the distance. "But this was supposed to be mine."

Everything blurs after that, memories slipping over each other. Dad shoves me toward one of the guards, a gun appearing in his hand before he turns back toward the transport. The woman says something else, but the shouting and the rain swallow most of it, leaving only the final words echoing in my head.

"...taking it back."

And then I remember Mom reaching for me, and my hand stretching toward hers with the blind desperation only a child can feel.

I never reach her, because Dad drags me into the rain instead, my feet slipping across wet pavement while I scream and fight him with everything I have.

After that, everything blurs together. The faces disappear first, then the shouting, then the blood, the entire memory breaks apart around the edges until I can’t tell one moment from the next.

But the Noctis remains, lingering long after everything else disappears.

I can still hear it drifting through the storm, impossibly clear beneath the gunfire and the screaming, threading itself through the chaos while everything else slips away. Even now, years later, I remember the feeling it left behind—a cold certainty settling somewhere deep inside my chest, as if something important was being taken from us and I was too young to understand why.

Then even the music begins to fade, carrying the rest of the memory away with it.

Ishould be in the fighting pit right now, halfway through a workout or buried beneath three different assignments before breakfast even starts. That’s what my mornings usually look like.

Not this morning, though, because Rowan has somehow wrapped himself around me in his sleep like he belongs there.

He’s sprawled across my chest with his face tucked into the side of my neck, one arm draped possessively around my waist while our legs remain tangled beneath the sheets. Every now and then, he shifts a little closer when I move, as if he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he loosens his grip.

And somehow, somewhere between falling asleep after midnight and waking up like this, I managed to convince Rowan to sleep naked with me.