The rain had stopped.
Not outside—no, the sky above Hollow Pine still wept in sheets—but inside Vivienne’s ears, where a storm had lived for hours, there was only silence now. Not peace. Not calm.
Stillness.
Rafe hadn’t moved in ten minutes. His blade remained clutched in white-knuckled fingers, though the weight of it seemed too much. Clara leaned against the frame of the ruined doorway, her breathing ragged, eyes distant, like she too had gone somewhere else in her mind.
Vivienne sat in the center of the kitchen like a relic, smoke curling from the mark on her collarbone. Her skin had cooled, but inside—inside she boiled with something not entirely her own.
“I remember,” she said again.
No one replied.
Outside, the wind shifted.
And something knocked.
Not at the door.
From bene
