Prologue
Mara
The Dark Days
I watch time unfold, and a whisper reminds me I used to concern myself with it, but the voice belongs to something too far out of reach to listen to. It belongs to someone who isn’t here anymore, someone I will not find again.
A new voice, the girl with dark eyes and a wicked smile, is an echo, but her face is not. Her face, pressed next to another through a cloudy surface.
When I try to reach her, to rip her to pieces and erase the reminders she forces out of me, I smash into something. The faces don’t disappear until the window—a word snatched from somewhere deep inside and lost as soon as it comes—is painted in a red so dark it looks black.
Her voice stays. The one I can’t let go of. Her figure grows smaller, next to another familiar silhouette, until the second fades, and the girl does, too.
Then, the sound of metal breaking and the whine of a hinge. A familiar scent, lemon and salt and sweat, wafts through the house.
I am free. And so very hungry.