Ariane:
I don’t know how long I lay there between them—Varek to my back, Kaelen at my front—caught in a cocoon of warmth I couldn’t feel, held by hands I couldn’t fully register. They were trying. Gods, they were trying so hard to pull me back and tether me to something steady and real.
But I was slipping, falling further into the truths we faced.
Their voices were soft, low murmurs braided with desperation, fraying at the edges with fear. I heard them, but it was like hearing sound underwater—muffled and distant, like it belonged to another world entirely. One I wasn’t sure I wanted to return to right now.
Because… how do you tell someone that the truths they’ve lived by were nothing more than pretty lies painted over horror?
How do you tell them that the world we thought was safe is
