Rowan, 16 years
Irun.
I run and keep running because no matter what I do, they never stop following me. Not after I burned the page, not after the house searches, not after Ma started locking every door twice before bed.
Sometimes weeks pass without seeing them, and I almost convince myself it’s over. That they’ve given up. That burning the sheet worked.
Then I hear footsteps again.
A shadow lingers too long at the end of the lane. A man watches too carefully in the market. Boots follow behind me after dark.
Wake up. Wake up.
But every time I think I’ve escaped them, they come back.
And the older I get, the faster my body notices it. My pulse trips before I even see them properly, the feeling of being watched settling between my shoulders before I know where to look.
I know the sound of hunting now.
That night, I hear them near the lower market again. One pair of footsteps at first, then two. Not close enough to touch me, but close enough to keep following while their footsteps echo faster behind me the second I start walking quicker myself.
Wake up.
My chest is already hurting by the time I break into a run, panic climbing higher with every step while the streets blur around me. People shout behind the market stalls as I shove past them too hard, nearly slipping against the wet stone while my lungs lock tighter and tighter.
I burned the page. So why won’t they leave me alone?
I turn down the side lane near the butcher’s district and nearly crash straight into old Mister Vale carrying crates toward the Ward gates.
“Watch where you’re—”
I don’t stop running. Don’t look back either. I can’t.
Because deep down, I already know that if I look behind me, they’ll still be there. Following me. Always following me.
By the time I reach our street, I’m panting so hard my vision blurs around the edges.
Wake up.
The front door is open. Light spills across the steps.
And Ma—
For one horrible second, I think they’ve gotten inside the house.
I stumble through the doorway, unable to breathe, and find Ma crying so hard Pa is physically holding her upright beside the kitchen table. A crumpled piece of paper shudders between her fingers.
“She’s gone,” Ma sobs, clutching the front of Pa’s shirt, wrinkling the fabric beneath her fists. “My baby’s gone. Sola’s gone.”
The whole room tilts.
It’s a lie. Sola always comes back. It might be after midnight with cold hands and wind-tangled hair, showing up in the kitchen like she was only gone five minutes instead of five hours, but she always comes back.
Don’t tell Ma, she would say. I never did, though Pa always knew anyway. She’d just grin at him over the top of her mug while he pretended to be angry.
The first time I told her somebody was following us, she laughed. Not because it was funny, but because she never wanted me to see her scared.
You’re imagining things.
The man was still there when we left the market, still there when we crossed the square, still there when we reached the bridge.
I remember looking back one last time and finding him exactly where I expected him to be.
Sola squeezed my shoulder so hard it almost hurt. Keep walking, Rowan.
I never understood why she sounded frightened until years later.
Sola always comes back.
“She left this,” Ma cries, lifting the letter with trembling hands like she still can’t believe it’s real. “She said not to look for her.”
She’s crying too hard to hold the paper steady. Pa tries taking it from her, but she won’t let go. The edges are already crumpled from gripping it too tightly.
A horrible image crawls through me. Sola sitting somewhere with a pen in her hand, choosing every word. Choosing to leave.
No. No, she wouldn’t.
“‘I’m sorry,’” Ma reads. “‘Please protect Rowan.’”
Wake up.
Something inside my chest lurches, the thought hitting so fast it nearly folds me in half.
They came for me. Sola protected me. But I burned the page too late; they were already hunting us long before I ever touched the fire.
My lungs stop working properly, drawing in a breath and getting nothing back no matter how hard I try.
The room feels too small, too hot, the kitchen table blurring with Ma’s voice while my pulse starts hammering hard enough to hurt. The air catches somewhere in my chest, refusing to go any deeper, and numbness creeps into my fingers.
“Rowan?” Pa sounds closer.
I can’t answer him, can’t explain that something is wrong. But something is… very wrong.
The floor drops beneath my feet as my heartbeat keeps stumbling over itself, every pulse landing wrong. Dread pools low in my gut.
Something is happening. Something bad.
The realization hits harder than the panic.
Not now.
Please, not now.
I hit the wall beside the kitchen table hard enough to rattle the frame hanging above it, each breath slipping away before I can pull enough air in again. The room swims.
Wake up.
Wake up.
But I can’t breathe. My heartbeat keeps skipping wrong inside my chest, stuttering until pain spreads sharply beneath my ribs. The room lurches around me again, and I clutch at my throat even though I know that’s not where the problem is. Every attempt to breathe seems to make it worse.
Panic crashes through me fast enough to make my hands start shaking.
“Not him too,” Ma sobs somewhere behind me.
“Rowan.” Pa’s hands clamp down on my shoulders, forcing me to look at him while my lungs seize up completely. “Look at me, son. Breathe.”
I try, fixing my eyes on his face and counting through the panic the way Sola taught me when I was little.
One breath. Two.
“Look at me, Rowan.”
The words drag up the memory of Sola sitting beside me and talking me through nightmares and scraped knees and every other disaster she somehow always knew how to fix.
You’re okay.
I’m not.
You are.
I’m not.
Then keep breathing until you are.
My sister’s gone. And for the first time in my life, she isn’t coming back to fix this.
My vision shakes, but I focus on Pa’s face, on his hands, on the sound of his voice. My throat feels completely locked and my heartbeat keeps slamming beneath my ribs like it’s trying to tear its way out of my chest.
Then the room pitches sideways.
Pa curses and reaches for me just as my knees finally give out. “Light, Rowan—”
Ma’s crying somewhere behind me while Pa drags me hard against his chest, one hand gripping the back of my neck as my pulse kicks against my ribs.
They know where we live. They watch from markets and side streets, following us often enough that I’ve learned the sound of their footsteps by heart.
Then it hits me. It hurts almost as much as the panic. They could have taken me.
They could have left us alone.
But they never did.
They just kept coming back.