Amara's POV
Five years does something to a person.
It doesn't heal you exactly. Healing implies returning to what you were before, and the woman I was before Adrian Wolfe had never learned to sew hidden pockets into her son's backpack or memorize three different exit routes from every building she entered. The woman I was before wouldn't have known how to build a life from nothing in a city that didn't know her name.
But five years gives you something else.
It gives you morning.
The alarm didn't go off at 6:15 because I was already awake. I was always already awake. Some habits from the running years never fully dissolved, the particular hypervigilance of a woman who had learned to sleep with one ear open and one eye on the door. But the fear that used to live in that early morning wa
