Petal's POV

The next morning began too quietly.

The kind of silence that doesn’t feel like peace, it felt like the breath before a scream.

Outside, the sky was a bruised gray, streaks of ash-colored clouds drifting over the forest. The air smelled faintly of rain and iron. The world should have felt cleaner after the night’s storm, but instead it felt hollow, as if something vital had been washed away.

I hadn’t slept. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the boy’s lifeless face, the ...