Zane
She was still shaking in front of me, tears clinging to her lashes, while I slowly lowered my hand so she could see I wasn’t coming any closer. Her words, “I’ll try to trust you,” still hung in the air like something fragile and newly born, the kind of thing a single wrong move could shatter.
She kept looking at me, uncertain and exhausted, fear and hope tangled together in her eyes.
All I could say was, “That’s enough, Lyra. That’s really enough.”
And in that moment I saw something in her for the first time that wasn’t pure terror. A faint, flickering calm. It wasn’t trust yet, not even close, but maybe it was the doorway to it. She didn’t smile. She didn’t relax completely. But she didn’t run. She didn’t scream. She didn’t flinch at every breath I took.
That meant more to me th
