تسجيل الدخولCHAPTER 55The Boy I Left BehindMIYAKAI couldn't move.The little boy stood behind the red door as though he had been waiting there for me all these years, his small hands wrapped around the wooden horse, his face streaked with soot and his dark hair falling messily across his forehead. He looked exactly as he had in the photograph beneath the mango tree, except photographs were supposed to be memories of things that had already happened.This boy looked like a memory that had somehow learned how to breathe.My heart slammed against my ribs."Elias..."The name slipped from my lips before I could stop it.The boy smiled.It was a small smile.A sad one.The kind a child shouldn't have known how to make.Moises moved slightly beside me, and I felt the tension enter his body before I even looked at him."Miyaka," he whispered, his voice careful, almost frightened. "Don't go any closer."I heard him.I understood why he was saying it.But my feet moved anyway.One step.Then another.E
CHAPTER 54The Boy I Thought I LostMIYAKAFor several seconds, nobody moved.I could hear the rain beginning to fall harder through the trees, each drop striking the leaves with a soft, relentless rhythm, but somehow that sound felt impossibly far away. The photograph was still in my hands, its edges digging into my fingers because I was holding it so tightly that they had begun to hurt.Adrian's words kept repeating inside my head.The boy you saved was Moises.I looked at him.Then at Moises.Then back at the photograph.The boy standing beside me in the picture was small, his face partially turned away from the camera, but something about the shape of his shoulders, the way he held himself, even the tiny scar near his wrist made something inside me ache with recognition.Moises.My Moises.The boy who had stolen mangoes from my plate.The boy who used to sit beside me beneath the tree when I was upset.The boy who had once promised me that if we ever got separated, he would find m
CHAPTER 53The Memory That LiedMIYAKAI couldn't breathe.I couldn't hear anything except the pounding of my own heart.The world around me had become distant, blurred at the edges, as if someone had taken everything familiar and pushed it several feet away.The trees.The ruined house.The rain.Moises.My father.My mother.Cassian.They were all there.But none of them seemed real.Because inside my head, I was still standing in that room.Five years old.Bare feet against a floor covered in ash.Smoke burning my eyes.Someone screaming.A knife in my hand.Blood dripping from the blade.And a body beneath me.I couldn't see the face.I didn't need to.Some part of me already knew.I had killed him.Or at least my memory said I had."No."I whispered it again.My fingers trembled."No, no, no..."Moises came toward me."Miyaka."I stepped back.He stopped immediately.That hurt.Even in the middle of everything falling apart, I noticed the way he stopped when I moved away.He didn
CHAPTER 52The Man I Was Told to FearMIYAKAI couldn't move.The man standing in front of me looked nothing like the monster my memories had created.That was the first thing that frightened me.I had spent years imagining the people responsible for everything that happened to me as faceless shadows. Men in dark coats. Strangers in black cars. Voices behind doors.But Cassian wasn't a shadow.He was standing right in front of me.Alive.Calm.Almost painfully familiar.His dark hair was damp from the rain beginning to fall through the trees. His face had changed with age, but there was something about his eyes that made my stomach twist.I had seen those eyes before.Not in photographs.Not in dreams.In a memory.A little girl sitting on a motorcycle.A man's hands steadying her shoulders.His voice telling her not to be afraid.Don't be afraid of speed, Aria.I took a step backward.Moises immediately moved in front of me."Cassian."The man's expression barely changed."So you rem
CHAPTER 51The Girl Who Learned to RunMIYAKAThe darkness swallowed everything.For a few seconds, I couldn't tell which way was up.I couldn't tell where the tunnel ended or where the walls began. I couldn't tell whether the hand gripping my wrist belonged to Moises or someone else.All I could hear was my own heartbeat.Too fast.Too loud.And that voice.Aria.The name seemed to crawl through my thoughts like something alive.I had heard it before.In recordings.In memories.In nightmares I had never understood.But this time, whoever had spoken it wasn't far away.She had been standing close enough for her breath to touch my ear.I twisted around."Who are you?"Nothing."Who said that?"Still nothing.Then Moises's hand found mine."Miyaka."His voice.Low.Steady.Real.I held onto him before I could stop myself."Don't let go."The words escaped me.There was a pause.Then his fingers tightened around mine."I won't."Something inside me hurt at how easily I believed him.Not
CHAPTER 50The Memory He Was Afraid OfMIYAKAFor a moment, I forgot how to breathe.My father stood on the other side of the tunnel, older than the man I remembered, thinner than the man who had carried me on his shoulders when I was little, but unmistakably him.The same eyes.The same hands.The same small scar above his eyebrow that I used to touch whenever I was five and wanted to make sure he was really there.Except those eyes weren't looking at me the way a father's eyes should look at his daughter.They were afraid.Not afraid that someone would hurt me.Afraid of me.I felt something inside my chest collapse."You."The word came out so quietly that even I almost didn't hear it.My father didn't answer.He simply looked at me.And somehow that hurt more than if he had denied being there.All those years.All those nights when I had cried because I believed he was gone.All those questions I had buried because everyone told me that some answers were better left alone.He had







