Silas:
I didn’t sleep. I never do.
I just lay there—silent, still, eyes open to the dark. Not because I’m guarding the room, or waiting for something to strike, but because sleep is a language I never learned. It doesn’t speak to me.
The room is colder than it was an hour ago. I feel it in the air, in the tightness of the space around us, in the breath she exhales like fog. Not from the cracked window or the thin blankets. It's me. It’s always me.
The chill that clings to corners. The frost that kisses the windowpanes even in early autumn. The silence that settles like ash when I walk into a room.
The cold sting of death.
I cause it. I am it.
And I hate that she’s shivering because of me.
Isadora’s curled in a tight little shape beneath her threadbare blankets, her knees drawn to h
