~ Author ~

A week passes.

And yet the echoes of that night—the storm, the blood, the whisper in the dark—don't fade. They settle instead, like smoke in her lungs, like something that doesn't quite leave no matter how much she exhales.

Every morning, Adeline wakes to the same silence that hums beneath her skin. She pretends it's peace. It isn't.

She stands in front of the mirror that morning and traces the mark on her neck, which seems to glow faintly through her skin when the moonlight ...