you wouldn't be the first renegade to need somebody
The bedroom smells like home.
Like aloe pressed gently into sunburnt skin. Like juniper crushed beneath bare feet on her mother’s veranda. Like the lilac perfume she wore the year she turned sixteen, hopeful and invincible and so sure that if she just smiled wide enough, nothing could touch her. The sea murmurs softly beyond the open shutters—only it isn’t real, not really, just a dream of the Haulani coast shaped by magic and memory. But the illusion is faithful: waves roll in their lazy rhythm, blue deepening to indigo, sun-glint warm on the spray, the horizon stretching endlessly like a promise she’s forgotten how to believe in.
The sheets beneath her are smooth as water, cool against her feverish skin. She’s curled inward, limbs drawn to her chest, as if she might hold herself together by force of will alone. A loose silk dress clings to the curve of her spine, the back of it open to air, revealing the claw marks Dahlia carved into her like a signature. The worst of them are still swollen, pale ointment layered carefully over the ridged flesh. But beneath the skin—beneath even the bone—something inside her feels split.
Music drifts from the corner, slow and mournful, some stringed instrument pulling at invisible threads that wind between her ribs and tug, gently, cruelly. She doesn’t know how long it’s been since she last moved. An hour, maybe. A day. Time in this house doesn’t seem to flow so much as spiral around her, like sea foam caught in a tidepool, spinning and spinning and never getting anywhere at all.
They’d done everything right, hadn’t they?
Three of the most powerful people in Caido had come to her rescue, and still it hadn’t been enough. Still Dahlia had gotten her claws in, had whispered death into her ear with her breath hot against Flora’s cheek, and gods, she’d felt it—she’d felt herself start to go. Again. And the part that haunts her most isn’t the pain, though that was unimaginable. It’s how close it came. How utterly helpless she’d been. How she’d called for help and when it had come, things had still very nearly gone sideways. How she hadn’t wanted to die, not like that, not again. Not when she’d just started to feel like she was living again.
The silk at her knees bunches beneath her fingers, her grip gone tight without her noticing. Her nails dig into the fabric, as if she could claw her way out of this moment, as if she could scrape off the fear that still clings to her like salt after a storm.
Outside her window, the ocean rolls on. She closes her eyes against the ache behind them and listens to the waves pretend they’re real.
Like aloe pressed gently into sunburnt skin. Like juniper crushed beneath bare feet on her mother’s veranda. Like the lilac perfume she wore the year she turned sixteen, hopeful and invincible and so sure that if she just smiled wide enough, nothing could touch her. The sea murmurs softly beyond the open shutters—only it isn’t real, not really, just a dream of the Haulani coast shaped by magic and memory. But the illusion is faithful: waves roll in their lazy rhythm, blue deepening to indigo, sun-glint warm on the spray, the horizon stretching endlessly like a promise she’s forgotten how to believe in.
The sheets beneath her are smooth as water, cool against her feverish skin. She’s curled inward, limbs drawn to her chest, as if she might hold herself together by force of will alone. A loose silk dress clings to the curve of her spine, the back of it open to air, revealing the claw marks Dahlia carved into her like a signature. The worst of them are still swollen, pale ointment layered carefully over the ridged flesh. But beneath the skin—beneath even the bone—something inside her feels split.
Music drifts from the corner, slow and mournful, some stringed instrument pulling at invisible threads that wind between her ribs and tug, gently, cruelly. She doesn’t know how long it’s been since she last moved. An hour, maybe. A day. Time in this house doesn’t seem to flow so much as spiral around her, like sea foam caught in a tidepool, spinning and spinning and never getting anywhere at all.
They’d done everything right, hadn’t they?
Three of the most powerful people in Caido had come to her rescue, and still it hadn’t been enough. Still Dahlia had gotten her claws in, had whispered death into her ear with her breath hot against Flora’s cheek, and gods, she’d felt it—she’d felt herself start to go. Again. And the part that haunts her most isn’t the pain, though that was unimaginable. It’s how close it came. How utterly helpless she’d been. How she’d called for help and when it had come, things had still very nearly gone sideways. How she hadn’t wanted to die, not like that, not again. Not when she’d just started to feel like she was living again.
The silk at her knees bunches beneath her fingers, her grip gone tight without her noticing. Her nails dig into the fabric, as if she could claw her way out of this moment, as if she could scrape off the fear that still clings to her like salt after a storm.
Outside her window, the ocean rolls on. She closes her eyes against the ache behind them and listens to the waves pretend they’re real.
