Sleep doesn't come.
I lie in bed staring at the ceiling while Clarisse's ghost haunts every shadow, every corner, every breath I take. Her face plays on loop behind my eyelids—that grin she wore when she was about to do something reckless, the way her green eyes sparkled with mischief, how she'd looked on her wedding day before everything went to hell.
The last thing she said to me: "Don't you dare f*****g die, Al."
But she died instead.
She died and I'm alive, eating expensive food, wearing clothes that cost more than most people make in a month, sleeping in a bed that's softer than anything I've ever owned.
The guilt eats at me from the inside out.
A soft knock breaks through my spiral.
I drag myself to the door, expecting another summons from Winter or maybe Ten with some late-ni
