The Night He Arrives

Sophia's POV

It began quietly.

That was the thing I had not expected — not the pain, which I had been warned about in every possible register from Maren's clinical precision to Elara's breathless, well-meaning anecdotes — but the quiet of the beginning. The particular, settled quality of a body that has made a decision and is now simply executing it, without announcement, without drama, without consulting the person it belongs to.

I woke in the deep middle of the night ...