Chapter 88

Alaria

I closed the door behind me and leaned against it, exhaling a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding in all day.

The weight of everything that I've been carrying finally settling on my chest as I did my best to try and stay calm.

The air in my room felt too still, too heavy. And no matter how hard I tried to talk normal, I knew that I couldn't.

Everything about today had felt like a slow unraveling. Like threads of my calm being tugged loose one by one, Darius’s words lingering in the back of my mind like poison I couldn’t wash out. His voice, his implications, the reminder of who I used to be… it all haunted me now.

It still forced me to focus on the words that he tried to use, the fact that he was looking into who I am, who I was, what I was becoming, and how I was in the past.

And the worst part was, part of me felt it too.

Felt that buried fire under the skin. The ache to lash out. To be that version of myself