The silence in the safehouse wasn’t quiet anymore. It pressed on Anais’s ears like static—unsettling, electric, and loud in all the wrong ways. The phrase scorched into the cell wall played on repeat in her mind: Ask her what happened on Day Zero.
Cassian had barely spoken since they found it. He was watching her like she was glass—like he didn’t know whether to protect her or interrogate her.
She hadn’t eaten. Couldn’t. Her mouth was dry, and her chest tightened every time she tried to breathe too deeply.
“Day Zero,” she whispered again, this time not to him, not to anyone—just to herself.
Cassian stood a few feet away, his back to her, shoulders rigid as he stared at Julien’s empty cell. She didn’t know if he was trying to put the pieces together or trying not to break.
She wished h
