The broken charm lay in a small bowl on Mara’s kitchen counter, its pieces dull and lifeless like cooled embers.
She’d barely slept.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the glowmart ceiling cracking.
The shelf tipping.
Noah’s face when she told him to leave her alone.
Every time she opened her eyes, she saw the shattered charm.
Her phone buzzed twelve times overnight — all from Sasha — but Mara ignored every message.
She wasn’t ready to explain the unexplainable.
She wasn’t ready to talk to Noah either.
She wasn’t ready for anything.
She stood at the counter now, staring at the charm fragments under the weak kitchen light.
“Why did you do that?” she whispered to the pieces. “Why did you break?”
The charm didn’t answer.
Of course it didn’t.
It was dead.
Her stomach twiste
