Chapter 220

The chaos inside her head seemed to quiet whenever he was near, the sharp edges of her pain softening just enough to let her breathe. She was slowly progressing upwards and away from the pit of hell she thought she was in, one small step at a time, toward something that felt almost like hope.

She still had to navigate her emotions about Moosa-Hayder, the man who had once been the boy she trusted most and now carried both names like layers she was only beginning to peel back. The two names sat on top of each other, not quite aligning, not quite separate. Part of the reason she did not want to tell him about her being Nur was the deep love Hayder had held for her all those years ago, the kind of pure, unguarded devotion that had shaped so many of her childhood memories into something warm and safe. She worried that if he learned the woman he had protected back then was the same one standing before him now, scarred and changed by everything that had happened since, it would shatt