Chapter 84: "I take everything from him."

Caelum doesn’t let us speak about Volta, and in the spirit of that, I let myself relax in his arms for the rest of the day. I realize it’s nice to sit in Caelum’s highrises’s arms. He doesn’t like it when I call him Highrise, and I realize I don't like it too much.

Mostly because the name Highrise reminds me too much of the family connected to it, yet at the end of the day, my daughter bears that name. I bear that name.

I want to stop bearing it because of the man who’s made the name a noose around my neck. Ulroic made the highrise name a rope by which he could tug me this way and that, and I let him. I let him do that out of the obligation I felt to be responsible for that name.

Ulric made me hate the Highrise name, but Ravenna and Caelum make me feel like some good can come out of it.

Like there’s hope, for me and for all of us who bear the name Highrise by association, and not by inheritance.

“What are you thinking about?”

I hear Caelum’s words strike chords in my heart and another