ACE
I had spent years mastering restraint.
It was a discipline, like anything else—learned, sharpened, perfected through necessity. Control wasn’t just a preference for me; it was survival. It was order carved out of chaos. It was the only reason anything in my life functioned at all.
And Lily had stepped straight through it.
I stood in the hallway long after Alice wandered off, the echo of her laughter still lodged somewhere behind my ribs like a splinter. The bruise on her knee replayed in my mind over and over again, each time sharper, angrier, more damning. I didn’t need to raise my voice. I didn’t need to pace. The fury settled deep instead, heavy and precise, the kind that didn’t burn out quickly.
I heard Lily’s footsteps before I saw her.
Light. Careful. Hesitant.
She rounded
