ARIA
After everything… my body shutting down, the cold, the panic, the screaming inside my own head…. When the darkness swallowed me, I expected the nightmares to come clawing.
The one where I watched my father's blood spread like ink across the floor, my heart threatening to jump out of my mouth as I watched helplessly. The one where Kael's mouth pressed against someone else's, his hands tender in ways they never were with me. The one where that little boy reached for me and slipped through my fingers, vanishing before I could even say his name.
But they didn't come.
No.
Instead, there was… calm.
A kind of warmth I couldn't describe cradled me, wrapping around me like a blanket I hadn't felt since childhood. For the first time in forever, I felt safe, like somehow… despite all the hell swallowing me whole, things would be fine. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But someday.
And then I felt it.
