EMMA
I didn’t mean to come back so soon.
That was the lie I told myself as the estate rose out of the trees again, stone and shadow cutting through the snow like nothing had happened. Like I hadn’t just run from it with my lungs on fire and my heart splitting open.
But the truth was simpler and uglier: I didn’t know where else to go.
The road beyond Lune Noire was long, winding, and half-buried under ice. My phone had no signal. My bag—everything that made me me—was still inside those walls. And beneath all of that, beneath the fear and the fury and the humiliation, there was something worse.
The pull.
I hated myself for it. Hated that even now, with my trust in shreds, my feet had carried me back instead of farther away. As if some traitorous part of me believed there were answers h
