Ariane:
The moment the last thread of that cursed chill unspooled from my bones, I collapsed into warm earth and solid wall.
It wasn’t a graceful fall. It damn sure wasn't a brave one.
My legs gave out beneath me like strings snipped from a marionette, and I crumpled against the cold stone wall of my mind with a thud that echoed beneath the silence of the canopying trees I could see from where I was still crumpled.
My palms scraped the surface of the wall, the bite of the stone grounding me in a body I barely recognized anymore.
It wasn't a long time that I had been trapped in my other body, in something beyond pain, beyond fear—frozen in a place that hadn’t just stolen time, but stolen pieces of me.
And now that I was free…
I shattered like the mirror I had been told repeatedly t
