CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY FIVE

Lyla's POV

The blanket smelled faintly of strawberries and smoke. For a moment I let the small, ordinary things keep me. It was a strange, fragile comfort, the kind that settles on you for one breath before everything else rushes back.

The rush came without warning.

Memory hit like cold water. Not the green eyes I’d been holding like a shape in my head for weeks, but the hands, the small mechanical cruelty of them the instruments lined up like tools for a job. Leilani’s face wasn’t pretty in my mind the way people sometimes romanticize monsters. It was sharpened down to function ,efficient, clinical, the pleasure gone narrow and focused. She had a way of looking at someone that made you feel catalogued, like an animal at a vet. She watched the damage she was doing and took notes in a head full of calm.

I folded forward and pressed my forehead into my knees until the world blurred. My hands shook so hard I could feel the skin on my palms ripple. The house had been a mockery of peace