LIANA’S POV
The cold air burned my lungs as I ran. Barefoot. Blind. Desperate.
I didn’t know where I was going, and I didn’t care. My legs moved on their own, driven by the storm raging inside me. The forest swallowed me whole, its towering trees stretching into the night sky, their gnarled branches clawing at the moonlight. Shadows flickered between the trunks, but I kept running, crashing through the underbrush, my breath coming in sharp, uneven gasps.
I needed to get away.
Away from the house. Away from Seraphine. Away from everything.
My mother. My mother was alive.
The words echoed in my head, looping over and over until they lost meaning, became just sounds rattling inside my skull. My mother, the woman I had never known, had just appeared—like a ghost stepping out of the pa
