Isla
I stayed on the floor for what felt like hours. The tension in my limbs still hummed, the echo of what I’d done lingering in my veins like residue. My breath came in shallow bursts, and no matter how hard I tried to silence the memory, I kept seeing his face—the way he looked at me. Not as a victim of petty theft. Not even as a woman.
But as something else.
A monster.
Rael had said nothing more. He sat on the couch, his golden skin still pale beneath the wrappings I’d hastily secured the night before. His dark eyes were shadowed with pain, but they watched me with a quiet stillness that made my skin prickle.
I could feel the unspoken question on his lips: Were you afraid of yourself?
The answer, of course, was yes.
"I need to... get cleaned up," I said finally, standing on trem
