Elara Pov
I stood in the middle of my childhood bedroom and felt like I was suffocating.
Everything was exactly how I'd left it months ago.
The embroidered curtains I'd picked when I was twelve, the bookshelf full of poetry I used to read.
The vanity where I'd learned to braid my own hair, it was all here, preserved like a shrine to a girl who didn't exist anymore.
Servants came and went without speaking to me, bringing a hot bath that smelled of lavender, laying out clean dresses in soft colors I used to love, setting trays of food on my desk, all my favorite dishes like they thought I'd be grateful, like they were doing me a kindness instead of preparing me for s*******r.
I picked at the food because my body needed it but everything tasted like ash.
I kept thinking about Kael in
