Landing hard on my back.
Someone coughs nearby.
Someone with auburn hair.
Her skin is pale. Her dirty face, streaked with tears.
My mother.
So beautiful.
So thin.
Black sinew binds her wrists and ankles, but even if it didn’t, I don’t think she would try to get away. She looks too weak to move. The sight of her so close fills my heart with love and sadness and anger and desperation. A helpless rage to get out.
Get out, get out, get out.
Get out with her.
Get out before it’s too late.
“I came back for her,” she says, her ravaged voice but a whisper. “I was going to apologize. I wanted to make things right.”
I want to howl at the injustice of it.
Burn the world for what it has done—to her, to us.
A tear tumbles down her cheek as she turns to look at me. “Oh, Simon.”
Sucking in a sharp breath, I jerk upright in bed.
My heart thuds against my sternum.
My pulse pounds in my ears.
And the rage—that helpless rage—continues to swirl.
It was a dream.
Just a dream.
But the residue remains.
My mother wasa prisoner.
She was trapped and bound.
Alongside Simon Vandenberg.
He was imprisoned with her.
Something glows in the periphery of my vision.
I turn toward the window.
But the glowing thing is not the stars or the moon.
It’s a leaf.
