Chapter 24
Chapter 24: Silent Noise [Moments Later, in the Pattern Room] She didn’t look up when the studio door clicked open. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t breathe. Just kept tracing the edge of the fabric on the table, her pencil hovering over meaningless swatches—half-finished sketches that blurred together. Feliz [to herself, inwardly tightening] You don’t care. You don’t care. You don’t care. But her ears had heard everything. Rain’s voice. Her laughter, dipped in poison. The words “the truth” and “before the lies.” And Sly’s voice—low, steady, quiet in a way that made her chest ache. He’d fought back. But not hard enough, her heart whispered. She bit the inside of her cheek and blinked down, pretending the lines on the page mattered more than the earthquake inside her ribcage. Footsteps.
- Writer
