Book 5: Broken

Amval

When I wake and breathe in a lungful of violet-and-ink scented air, everything seems right with the world for just a moment. There are a thousand pains to face once I open my eyes, funerals, murderers, and my siblings looking past me, but at least I have her.

I reach across the tiny bed, hoping to grab her hand, and find…empty sheets.

My mark sears. I shoot up and search the mattress as though she could be hiding somewhere.

Nothing. But her clothes are gone, the door and window shut. It doesn’t look like she’s been taken.

It looks like she left.

I drop back down and cover my eyes. All the reaching out, everything she said… I thought she forgave me.

Perhaps she never used those exact words. Perhaps I saw what I wanted to see.

No. Something changed last night, or perhaps at the festival. I get the sense Ingrid can–and has–frozen people out of her life forever. This thaw means something.

It means I have to reg