Chapter 192

It was morning, and the pale warmth of the sun brushed gently against her face, filling the room with a fragile, almost fragile kind of comfort. The first thing she did was to look up and stare at Moosa.

She remembered waking up in the middle of the night, feeling the chill in the air despite the room’s heater humming quietly, and instinctively adjusting the sheet before laying herself beside him once again. Nights had always been colder here, sharper somehow, a biting reminder that the world outside their temporary safety was unpredictable and cruel, and though the heater was on, she could still feel the cold crawling along her skin, a slow, creeping reminder of the fragility of life and the danger that had recently brushed past them. Every small sound—the faint creak of the floorboards, the distant bark of a dog, the low hum of the heater—seemed magnified in the quiet of the room, each one nudging her awareness toward the reality of her situation.

Several days must hav