CROWNED BY BLOOD
Not memory or imagination, but genuine presence made possible by the thinning of veils between life and death, the blurring of boundaries that happened in sacred spaces where love persisted beyond mortality.
"I thought I had forgotten how to love," I whispered to the night, to the tree, to the presence I could feel but not see. "When the curse took me, when I became a monster, I thought love had been burned out of me, replaced by something twisted and terrible that wore love's name but was really just possessive hunger."