The words hung in the dead air of the suite, more fragile and more dangerous than a lit fuse. *She had no hands.*
For months, my world had been a monochrome of ash and blood. I had moved through it, a ghost haunting the ruins of my own making, fueled by a self-hatred so pure it had become a form of energy. But Marco’s words were a fissure, a c***k in the gray firmament through which a single, agonizing beam of color pierced.
Hope. It was a poison I had long since purged from my system, and its return was a searing, convulsive agony.
I turned from the window, my movement so sharp and sudden that Marco took a step back. I grabbed the front of his jacket, my knuckles white. My voice was not my own; it was a raw, broken thing dredged from the depths of a tomb.
“Where?”
“It was just chatte
