Vera

The night after the light returned to Vanessa, I couldn’t sleep.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw it again — the moment her body glowed and my voice, not my voice, whispered through the air like an echo from another lifetime.

One crown. Two souls.

The phrase played in my head until dawn.

Nicolas didn’t sleep either. I could feel him watching us — the faint scrape of his boots on the floor as he paced, the slow rhythm of his breathing when he stood over Vanessa’s bed, ...