ISLA
I woke up to silence and cedar.
For a disoriented moment I didn’t know where I was.
The ceiling was wrong; too high, too dark, nothing like the water-stained plaster I’d been looking at for three years in my apartment.
The light was wrong.
The bed was wrong in that it was too soft and too large, the kind of bed that made you feel like you’d been swallowed rather than held.
Then it all settled back into place.
The Tower. Gideon’s territory. Day one of seven.
I lay there for a moment and did a quiet inventory of how I felt.
Rested, which surprised me.
I had expected nightmares; Jaxon’s hands, his teeth on my throat, the kind of terror in the garden playing on repeat the way trauma did when you gave it darkness and quiet.
Instead: nothing. Dark, complete, dreamless sleep,
