I held her limp body against mine, our arms still curved instinctively around the baby—her baby—who writhed now, his small fists opening and closing as his thin, confused cries pushed into the terrible quiet. He had been still before, pressed tight against his mother’s breast as if he understood that silence was sacred. But now that her heartbeat had faded into nothing, he squirmed, sensing the absence, the change, the grief that thickened the room like smoke.I had never felt anything like this. Gods, I had spent years mastering the art of feeling nothing—locking every bruise, every scar, every memory, every emotion into a box so deep inside myself that even I could forget it was there. Ignore it long enough, and it stops hurting. Push it down far enough, and it stops existing. That had always been the rule.But this… this shattered all of it.Some of what churned inside me wasn’t even mine—I had opened myself, cracked the shell of who I was to give Zinnia strength, because she need
Last Updated : 2025-11-20 Read more