Anna
Mara did not offer them safety.
She offered them time.
That distinction mattered.
The rooms above the bookshop were narrow and uneven, built long before anyone thought buildings should be symmetrical. Floors slanted gently toward the windows. Doors remembered hands that had opened them a thousand different ways. Nothing here had been optimized.
Anna slept for nearly twelve hours the first night.
Not the brittle half-sleep she had learned while running—no dreams bleeding into waking, no pressure at the edge of thought—but deep, unguarded rest that left her limbs heavy and her mind disoriented when she finally surfaced.
She woke to rain tapping softly against glass and the smell of coffee drifting up from below.
For a moment, she did not know where she was.
Then memory returned
