DANTE:
Cinnamon reached me in a way no one ever had.
She didn’t pry or ask what I’d done or where I’d been. She just knelt in front of me, steady hands cleaning blood from my skin, fed me like it mattered that I stayed upright, then dragged me out into the cold and showed me something beautiful.
She let me be.
For a few hours, the noise in my head thinned. The constant calculation, the anger, the weight of everything all went quiet.
Peace. That was the word for it.
And then Marcus stepped into it and ruined the whole thing.
The worst part wasn’t even seeing him.
It was watching Cinnamon’s body lock up the second she noticed him. The way her shoulders went stiff and she said his name through her teeth, every syllable like it scraped on the way out.
I didn’t need her to explain anyt
