Chapter 16
Sixteen
Blair
I’m floating.
Not falling. Not flying. Just… suspended. Drifting through something too soft to be water and too heavy to be air. Everything feels slow. Quiet. Like the world hit pause.
The ocean glows beneath me, silver-blue and endless, licking at my toes like a whisper. I’m bare. Skin salt-kissed, hair tangled and damp, heart beating in the hollow of my throat like it’s trying to remember how to live.
Moonlight coats everything in milk-glass light. I don’t feel cold. Don’t feel pain.
I just feel… nothing.
Until I hear it.
My name.
First, a growl. Deep. Rough. Broken.
“Blair.”
Dagger.
Then, softer. Like static playing under a vinyl track, slow and scratched and strange.
“Blair.”
Noir.
They say my name like it’s the only word they’ve ever learned. Like it’s a prayer and a threat all at once.
I turn, barefoot on the shimmer of the sea, and everything around me ripples. Stars drip from the sky like dying embers.
And then I see her.
Brynn.
She’s standing a few feet away, glowing like something not meant for this world. Her eyes are a deep, familiar brown—warm and hollow all at once. Her smile is soft and sad, but it doesn’t quite reach the corners.
“Brynn,” I whisper, my throat catching like a splinter.
She doesn’t speak.
Just reaches out.
Her hand is cold when it touches mine, like she’s already halfway gone. Like she never made it back from whatever hell they dragged her to. But she’s here now, and I don’t want to let go.
“I’m sorry,” I say, voice shattering. “I should’ve saved you. I should’ve found you sooner.”
She shakes her head, the waves trembling around us.
“This isn’t your fault.”
My chest caves. “Then why do I feel like I’ve been dying ever since you left?”
She squeezes my fingers.
“You’ve still got time,” she says. “But not much.”
A single tear slips down her cheek.
“It’s not your time, Blair. Not yet.” Her voice is soft, but steady. “You need to go back.”
She gives a crooked little smile—sad, knowing. “This was always going to be me. I was the reckless one. The lost cause. No matter how many people tried to pull me out, I was already sinking. But you… you’re different.”
Her eyes shine, not with tears, but something deeper.
“You’re the one who was meant to survive. The one with fight still burning in her. You’ve got that spark, that fire I never had. And right now, you need to use it. You need to fight like hell.”
The world shifts.
The water rises.
I try to hold on. To stay in the light, in the quiet. In this place where my sister is still real. Still breathing.
“Fight? No Brynn, I don’t want to. I don’t want a world where you’re not there. I can’t take it.”
She’s fading. The moon fractures above us like shattered glass. The sea’s rushing in, swallowing my feet, my breath, my reason. Her hand starts to slip from mine.
Everything blurs. The stars fracture. The moon collapses inward. My lungs tighten, clawing for air that won’t come. The cold punches through my ribs like knives, slicing deep, dragging everything warm and alive out of me.
And I fall.
Backwards, off the shore of whatever dream this is. Out of the memory. Out of her reach.
I fall into darkness. Into pain. Into the weight of my body again—limbs heavy, throat burning, heart barely thudding in my chest.
I fall back into reality. Into the aftermath. Into the overdose.