Eliana POV
It started with a dream... or the absence of one.
No flame. No smoke. No Scarlet.
Just blackness... close, stifling, really buried alive.
I awoke gagging, with a palpitation of my chest, with the sheets entwined about me, like vines. Air was still wrong and sharp like I was breathing glass. No fire. No presence.
“Scarlet?” I whispered, reaching inward... downward... into that place in my chest where she had always burned, always waited.
Nothing.
No pulse. No heat. No bond.
I caught my breath.
“Scarlet, say something," I pleaded again, and now more loudly, but there came no answer but silence. Not like usual, not the after-nightmare kind of quiet. This was a hollowing.
I felt empty.
Then I screamed.
Alex flung the door open like a thunderbolt and dashed in, half-clad
