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Cool air hit me as I turned the corner. The space opened.
I stepped into it—and hit something.
Soft.
Warm.
Wrong.
My hand snapped out, gripping hard, bracing instinctively for resistance.
None came.
No struggle.
No recoil.
Just a…stutter of breath.
My grip tightened—then slowed. Bones shifted beneath my fingers. Warped. Different.
The steady thud in my ears grew louder.
Then—
A touch.
Fingers brushed my cheek. Light. Uncertain. Real. I stopped breathing. They didn’t pull back. That was the thing that undid me—they didn’t pull back.
They moved instead. Slow. Tracing the ridge of the scar like they were reading something written there. Like they wanted to understand it rather than erase it. Anger came first. How dare you—
But it never caught.
Because something else was already there underneath it. Something I’d buried so completely I’d almost convinced myself it was gone. It moved through my chest like a fault line shifting—slow, deep, the kind of damage you don’t feel until everything above it had already changed. The longer my fingers lingered on those fragile, broken bones the more dangerous it became.
No one touched me.
Not like this.
Never like this.
“Nyssa… no.”
Vivienne’s voice cut through it. Too loud. Too late.
My focus snapped toward the sound. My lip curled.
Leave her alone.
The air shifted—
Panic bleeding into it.
“Viv?” Guild called.
A heartbeat of silence, then. “Get London, now.”
I waited, those bones in my grasp. I wasn’t letting go.
