Four days?
Alaric’s voice lingered in the silence after his words. Four days pressing on me like a weight I couldn’t lift. My mind still tried to deny it. Four days couldn’t have slipped by—it was impossible. It only felt like a couple of hours at most. The sunlight filtering through my curtains made it feel like morning, like I’d only closed my eyes for a single night.
But Tyler’s face told the truth. The hollows under his eyes, the tight lines carved into his jaw, the tremor in his hands where they hovered close to me, afraid I might vanish if he let go.
Alaric cleared his throat softly, as though to cut through the suffocating silence. “You should know what’s happened while you were… gone.” He fidgeted with his thumbs in front of himself.
I turned my head toward him, searching his f
