Chapter 106

Sloane

I woke up in the room Cassandra had given me when I was sixteen.

It took me a moment to recognize it. The quilt was different, and someone had moved the desk to the other wall, but the window still looked out over the kitchen garden, and the crack in the ceiling above the bed still ran in the shape of a river I used to trace when I couldn’t sleep.

Cassandra was in the chair by the window.

She had a book open on her knee, and she wasn’t reading it. When I moved, she closed it and came to sit on the edge of the bed, and laid the back of her hand against my forehead the way she had when I was sixteen and pretending not to be sick.

“There you are,” she said. “Properly, this time.”

My mouth was dry. “How long?”

“Two da