EMMALINE
The days after that conversation blur together.
I tell myself I don’t believe him. That Dante’s words were just another one of his twisted games, another careful move in whatever long strategy he’s been running since long before I arrived here. I repeat it like a prayer when I wake up and when I lie down and in all the hollow hours between.
But no matter how many times I say it, the doubt doesn’t go away.
It just sits there, quiet and patient, waiting for the moments when my guard drops — and then it whispers again.
Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night with my hand already pressed against my stomach, heart racing from a dream I can’t fully hold onto. I lie there in the dark and listen to the house settle around me, and I think about the world this child is going to be
