Elara’s POV

The door slammed behind me like a gunshot.

I didn’t make it past the entryway. My knees buckled and I hit the floor hard, palms flat against cold stone, gasping like I’d been held underwater. The air wouldn’t come. It kept catching somewhere between my throat and my lungs, jagged and useless.

Her hand on his arm.

I pressed my forehead to the ground. The stone was cool. Real. I needed something real because the rest of me was dissolving.

Her perfect smile. Her perfect dress. The way she looked down at Lyra like—

A sound ripped out of me. Not a scream. Something worse. Something formless and animal that scraped the walls of my empty apartment and came back to me with nowhere to go.

I couldn’t breathe.

My fingers clawed at the floor. I rolled onto my side, curling inward, pressing my knees to my chest. The panic had teeth. It sank them into my ribcage and pulled. My heartbeat was wrong—too fast, too loud, skipping beats like it was trying to escape my body entirely.

Kaelen had already started a new life.

I squeezed my eyes shut so hard I saw white.

That perfect woman was probably the one tucking them into bed at night. Tucking in my eight-year-old son, Valerius, who loved ancient texts and history more than anything in the world. And my three-year-old daughter, Lyra.

The thought of that stranger stepping in to be their mother was too much.

The nausea hit like a fist.

I barely made it to the washroom. My knees cracked against tile and I vomited until there was nothing left, then kept retching—dry, violent heaves that made my ribs ache and my eyes stream. Bile burned my throat. I gripped the basin’s edge until my knuckles went bone-white.

When it finally stopped, I stayed there. Forehead against the cool ceramic. Trembling.

You did this, the voice in my head whispered. It sounded like me, but crueler. Steadier. You walked away. You left them. What did you think would happen?

I dragged myself upright. The mirror above the basin showed me a stranger—hollow cheeks, bloodshot eyes, skin the color of ash. I looked away.

The apartment was dark. I hadn’t bothered with candles or lanterns since moving in. The darkness felt appropriate. Earned.

I collapsed onto the sagging sofa. Something hard pressed into my hip. I reached beneath the cushion and my fingers found it—the old portrait. The one I shouldn’t have kept. The one I’d hidden so I wouldn’t have to see it every day but couldn’t bring myself to destroy.

I pulled it out.

The four of us. Before everything shattered. Kaelen stood behind me, one hand resting on my shoulder. Valerius was in my arms—smaller then, still round-cheeked and milk-teethed. And Lyra—

Lyra, who had been barely anything yet. Just a promise. A flutter beneath my ribs.

My three-year-old daughter whose tiny fingers used to wrap around mine like they were the only anchor she needed in the world. Who used to fall asleep with her face pressed into my neck, breathing soft and warm and trusting against my skin.

She doesn’t need your fingers anymore. She has someone else’s.

I pressed the portrait to my chest and curled around it like it could protect me from the truth.

The tears came. Not the clean kind. The ugly, choking kind that tore through me in waves, each one worse than the last, each one dragging up something I’d spent years trying to bury.

I cried until I couldn’t. Then I lay there in the dark with the portrait clutched against my sternum and the silence pressing down on me like soil on a coffin.

At some point, I stopped being awake.

---

Light stabbed through the gap in the curtains.

I flinched. Groaned. Every muscle in my body screamed as I shifted on the sofa. My neck was locked at an angle that sent pain shooting down my spine. My throat felt like I’d swallowed ground glass.

The portrait had slipped during the night. It lay face-up on the floor beside the sofa. Four faces staring at the ceiling.

I looked away.

The room was stale. Airless. I’d been unconscious for over twelve hours. The magical timepiece on the wall read exactly 11:47 in the morning. My body felt like something that had been wrung out and left to dry in a twisted shape.

I sat up. The room swam. I pressed my palms against my temples until it steadied.

Her hand on his arm.

No.

Lyra’s face turned up toward that woman’s smile—

Stop.

I stood too fast. Swayed. Caught myself on the arm of the sofa. My reflection stared at me from the dark window glass—swollen eyes, tangled silver hair matted to one side, lips cracked and colorless.

The images wouldn’t stop. They played behind my eyes on an endless loop. Kaelen’s profile. The unnamed woman beside him, elegant and composed and there. Present. Choosing to stay. Doing everything I should have done.

Being the mother my children deserved.

I pressed the heels of my hands into my eye sockets until sparks erupted. It didn’t help. The pictures just got clearer.

She’s reading to them at night. She’s cutting Lyra’s food into small pieces. She’s listening to Valerius explain the fall of some ancient dynasty with patient, attentive eyes.

She’s perfect.

She’s everything you weren’t brave enough to be.

My breath was speeding up again. The panic licking at the edges. I needed—I needed it to stop. The thoughts. The loop. The relentless, grinding machinery of my own guilt chewing through what was left of me.

I needed pain I could choose.

The communication stone sat on the windowsill where I’d left it. Small. Smooth. Unremarkable. I crossed the room and picked it up. My hand was shaking. I pressed my thumb to the activation rune.

It pulsed once. Twice. Then Zane’s voice crackled through, rough with casual disinterest.

"Yeah?"

"It’s me."

A pause. The disinterest shifted. "Ela? You sound like death."

"I need fights."

"You have fights. Two this month already, remember? The Thornback bout and the—"

"I need more."

Silence on the other end. I could almost hear him recalculating. Reassessing.

"More," he repeated slowly. "Define more."

My fingers tightened around the stone. The portrait was still on the floor behind me. I could feel it there, pulling at me like gravity. Four faces. A family that used to exist.

A family that had found someone better.

"I need more." The words sounded full of desperation and madness. "As many as you can help me find."