Elena's POV

When I regained consciousness, the world felt strangely distant, as though I were looking at it through a sheet of glass.

Mrs. Kensington and a nurse had already changed me into clean clothes. The sticky stiffness that had clung to my skin was gone, and the blood that had dried in my hair had been carefully washed away. My half-dried hair now hung loosely along my cheeks, still damp at the ends, framing my face in a way that might have looked fragile to an outsider.

Inside, there ...