The weight of newly discovered secrets and the resonance of her mother's tales followed her like shadows to the threshold of sleep. Lysandra slipped between the Egyptian linen sheets, cool and soft against her skin, in the vast and solitary bed in her chamber. Thorne Manor, with its echoes and mysteries, seemed to breathe a collective sigh as the darkness of night enveloped it completely. But the rest she sought proved elusive, a distant harbor on a raging sea.
Soon, reality blurred, and Lysandra found herself adrift in the chaotic landscape of a dream.
She was not in her bed, nor in the manor. She was on the slippery deck of a small sailboat, battered mercilessly by a storm of apocalyptic fury. The sky was an amorphous mass of black and violet clouds, torn at intervals by the blinding, ephemeral light of lightning that, for an instant, illuminated a raging sea. Colossal waves, like liquid mountains with foamy, angry crests, rose and crashed against the vessel's hull, the sound like the roar of a primordial beast. The wind howled in her ears, a sharp, persistent wail that carried with it the icy salty taste of the ocean.
Lysandra clung with all her might to an ominously creaking mast, the varnish worn and rough beneath her numb fingers. She felt the ship groan and twist beneath her feet, each surge of the waves a threat of annihilation. She knew, with the illogical certainty of dreams, that she was heading toward the island, the fractured spiral of her father's map imprinted on her mind like a beacon in a storm. But the journey was torture, a futile struggle against unleashed elements.
The air was filled with the crash of splintering wood. A flash of lightning illuminated the mast, snapping like a dry twig, and with a deafening crack, the sail tore, whipping through the air like a maddened specter. Waves of icy water swept across the deck, dragging her along, battering her against the wreckage. There were no screams, only the relentless roar of nature and the frantic beating of her own heart, a desperate drum against the immensity of chaos.
Suddenly, a monstrous blow tore her from her hold. She felt the icy impact of the water engulfing her, the total darkness, the oppressive weight of the ocean dragging her under. She struggled to breathe, but only inhaled salt water that burned her lungs. Panic, cold and absolute, gripped her.
And in that suspended instant, as life slipped away in silver bubbles that rose toward an unreachable surface, a heartbreaking clarity pierced her. It wasn't the fear of death that hurt her most, nor the image of the unreachable island. It was a different emptiness, a sudden and bitter understanding that blossomed in her chest with the intensity of a mortal wound.
She had never loved.
Not as her father, Julian, had loved Elara, with that passion that transcended words, with that devotion that turned each day into a new universe. Not as her mother, Elara, despite her initial doubts, had come to love (or so Lysandra desperately hoped), surrendering herself to a shared destiny. She, Lysandra, had collected the echoes of others' love, had felt their warmth and pain through objects and walls, but her own heart had remained like a besieged fortress, admiring the landscape of love from the safe distance of its battlements. She had built such high walls to protect herself from the echoes of the world that she had ended up isolating herself from the possibility of feeling, of surrendering to a man with that intensity that now, on the edge of nothingness, she recognized as the true essence of life. Regret drowned her more than water.
Darkness claimed her.
Lysandra woke with a strangled scream, bolting upright in bed, her heart hammering in her chest as if it wanted to escape. She was drenched in cold sweat, trembling violently, the echo of the terror and anguish of sleep clinging to her like an icy shroud. The air in her room, normally calm and familiar, seemed thick and oppressive.
The first gray light of dawn filtered through the heavy curtains, casting ghostly shapes in the gloom. But for Lysandra, the images of the dream were far more vivid, more real. He could still feel the biting cold of the wind and water, smell the salt and despair, hear the deafening roar of the storm. And above all, the feeling of suffocation and the lacerating pang of that last thought: the realization of an emotional life not fully lived.
He put a hand to his chest, trying to calm the racing heart. The anguish was a physical presence, a nausea in his stomach, a lump in his throat. The dream didn't fade with waking; on the contrary, its details were etched with terrifying clarity in his memory. The shipwreck, the island, the death
and that regret, so deep, so bitter.
She got out of bed, her legs still trembling, and walked barefoot across the Persian rug, seeking the comfort of her morning routine, but knowing she wouldn't find it. The dream had been more than a random nightmare. It felt like a premonition, or worse, a judgment on the way she had chosen to live, so sheltered, so disconnected from the torrent of life that her parents, with all their secrets and possible fears, seemed to have embraced so bravely.
The image of her mother's radiant smile, the passion in her father's letters, now loomed not just as a bittersweet memory, but as an unattainable standard, a reminder of what she, in her dream, had realized she lacked. The anguish over the dream intertwined with the confusion and longing awakened the day before, creating an emotional turmoil that threatened to consume her. Lysandra Thorne's collected stillness had been invaded, and the most disturbing echo of all now came from within her own heart.