Page 153 of Dark Night of the Soul

“Read the instructions,” he said.

I glanced at him. “Is that your love language? Orders?”

“It’s my survival language.”

I handed him the cookies to hold while I grabbed the box and pulled out the paper, squinting at the German. “It says… apply… thing… do not panic.”

“That last part isn’t on the page.”

“It should be.” I shoved the instructions back into the bag, took the cookies from him, and continued to indulge. “How hard can it be?”

He didn’t answer.

He kept walking like a man escorting someone toward a minor disaster he’d already predicted.

He glanced at the bag like it contained a live grenade. “You’ll stain everything.”

“I will stain nothing.”

He made a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “We should buy gloves.”

“There are gloves in the box.”

“We should buy more.”

I crunched a cookie. “You have so little faith in me.”

“Wrong,” he said. “I have extensive experience with you.”

And annoyingly, that was correct.

Forty-five minutes later, I stood in the bathroom with a hair dryer in my hand and a sink stained black. And the floor. And the towels. When I rinsed my hair in the shower, it looked like black ink had exploded all over the walls.

It was a total disaster. I’d deal with that later.

Right now, I stood wrapped in a towel staring at a face I hadn’t seen in months.

The woman in the mirror looked like me.

Not the me I’d been for the past six months. Not the woman with white hair and haunted eyes who’d survived the impossible.

Me.

With violet eyes and long black hair.

The way I used to look. Before he showed up unannounced and claimed his place beside me. Before prophecy demanded my life. Before Vormund. Before the alteration that had rewired my nervous system and stolen pieces of who I was.

I’d forgotten what I looked like.

I stared at myself for a long time, trying to reconcile that with who I was now.

There were hints of the new me—the scar on my cheek. The ever-present fatigue lining my face. The shadows under my eyes.

Something in my chest loosened. Something I hadn’t realized was wound tight.

I steadied myself.

“Hello, there,” I whispered. “I remember you.”