She chuckled—soft, real. “Here. At the Shade Tower. Where were you born? Where did you grow up?”
I frowned. “What’s this about, Elle?”
“I have absolutely no memories of my childhood.” Her voice turned distant, like she wasn’t really speaking to me, but to some echo in her mind. “It’s like I just... appeared. Sixteenyears old, dropped into the world. I could read, write, sing. I knew how to speak. But I didn’t know who I was.”
“You don’t know why?”
She shook her head. “No.”
I crouched beside her and stretched my legs out, lying back against the cold, hard ground. It bit through the fabric of my clothes, but I didn’t care.
“Do you want to know now? Is that why you’re upset?”
She scrunched her face, brows pulled together in thought. One black curl slipped from her ponytail and fell across her cheek. I had to fight the urge to brush it away.
“It’s more that... it never even occurred to me to ask before. Isn’t that weird?”
I blinked. “You mean—”
“I mean I woke up in the woods with Finn at sixteen, and I just... accepted it. Didn’t question where I came from. Who does that?”
“And now, suddenly, you care.”
“Now,” she said, voice quiet, “I can’t stop caring.”
“Is that what you dreamed about? Your past?” I asked her.
“I think so. But at the same time, I really hope not.”
“What did you see?”
“A small child in a cell, locked up and screaming for her mummy,” she said softly.
I swallowed back my concern. “Gods,”
“Yeah. So now, as you can see, no sleep.”
“Does it feel real to you?” I asked, after a long pause.
She didn’t answer right away. Her fingers toyed with a loose thread on her shirt, and her eyes had gone somewhere far away.
“I mean… what’s real?” she said at last, voice quiet. “I feel like I’m both watching and experiencing it at the same time. Like I’m stuck inside this… this child’s body, feeling her fear, her confusion. But also watching her from the outside, screaming at her to move, to run, to fight—and she just sits there, sobbing for someone who never comes.”
My stomach turned.
“Elira—”
“I think it was me,” she said, gently cutting me off. “That little girl. I think I’ve seen that cell before. The way the shadows moved... the way theyfelt.”
Her hands trembled slightly as she ran them down her thighs, grounding herself.
“I don’t remember much else. Just the cold. And his eyes.”
“Him?”
“The watcher in the dark. With the red eyes.”
I stared at her. “Yousawsomeone?”
