Sophia's POV
Spring arrived slowly, the way it always did, small changes building until one morning the garden outside the estate was suddenly full of color.
I noticed it before I noticed anything else, the strange tiredness that had settled over me for almost two weeks. I brushed it off at first, blaming the long hours at Enough, the new grant applications piling up, the constant motion of a life that never fully slowed down.
Then one morning, standing in the kitchen making coffee, the smell hit me wrong. Sharp and sudden, and my stomach turned before I could stop it.
Damien found me a few minutes later, sitting on the bathroom floor, pale and shaky.
"Sophia," he said, kneeling beside me immediately. "What happened?"
"I don't know," I said. "The coffee smell. It just hit me strange.
