MAETHYS POV
I wake up with bright lights overhead and immediately know where I am.
The smell—clean, sharp, threaded with herbs I don’t know the names of. The infirmary.
My body lags behind the awareness. Thought arrives first. Then sensation follows like punishment for remembering.
I went outside.
I told them.
I said it out loud, to all of them, like the truth might stop hurting if it had witnesses.
Then the pain had folded me in half.
A groan tears out of my throat before I can stop it. My back and chest rage at the sound, fire ripping through muscle and bone. Tears sting hot at the corners of my eyes, uninvited, humiliating. I clamp my jaw shut and breathe through it, shallow and uneven.
I don’t open my eyes right away. I don’t want to see the ceiling again. I don’t want to see
