“Hello, Amara,” I started. “My name is Dr. Freud.”
There was no response, but I didn’t really expect one. Nothing was ever that easy when first starting sessions with a new patient. Though I had ulterior motives, didn’t I?
I let out a shuddering breath, scared to find out what I was capable of.
“I’m here to try to understand you,” I continued, my voice steady despite the unease crawling up my spine. “I just… I need to understand.”
She didn’t look at me. In fact, she didn’t even move. It was unnerving how still she was. It was as if she had withdrawn so deeply into herself that the world outside her body no longer existed.
I swallowed, trying again.
“Can you tell me your feelings related to Dimitros and Aria?” I asked, the lump in my throat growing. “Did you mean to hurt them?”
Still, she gave me nothing. No glance. No reaction. Just the thick silence that seemed to stretch indefinitely.
“I think you had dreams and goals before… everything,” I added quietly.
That earned the smallest reaction.
It was so subtle I almost missed the way her shoulders tightened.
Hope sparked within me. Maybe I could help her and protect the others at the same time.
“Do you want to tell me what they were?” I pressed gently. “I promise I won’t judge.”
She turned and her hair fell away, exposing part of her face. Her eyes found me, distant and hollow with a hint of something wild. She looked to be in her mid-forties, though time hadn’t settled on her so much as worn her down in uneven, quiet ways. Her dark hair, I imagine once thick and lustrous, now fell in loose, unkempt waves around a face that still held the bones of something striking, high cheekbones, a strong Grecian nose, and full lips that had gone dry and pale. There was an unmistakable Greek beauty to her, something classical and almost statuesque, but it had been hollowed, thinned by neglect; her frame slight, collarbones sharp beneath skin that had lost its warmth. Hereyes, deep and dark, were the most jarring—too bright, too restless, flickering as if chasing things no one else could see, carrying a quiet, unpredictable wildness that made it hard to tell where her thoughts truly lived. And yet, I could see that she once was the kind of beauty that didn’t beg for attention but commanded it effortlessly, making it all the more haunting to see what remained now.
Every instinct within me urged caution, but the doctor in me demanded answers.
“Please,” I said, softer. “Say something.”
But whatever emotion had surfaced vanished just as quickly and she shot me a manic smile that sent chills up my spine. Then her gaze drifted past me as if I had ceased to exist, plunging us back into silence.
TWENTY-EIGHT
LYKOS
Sleep refused to find me, so I found myself back in the room that saw me the most over the past decades.
My office.
The doors stood open to the terrace, letting the cool April night air drift inside in slow, salt-laced currents. Midnight in Greece carried a different kind of silence than most places. It wasn’t as noisy as the American cities, but it was alive in a more subtle and calm way.
From somewhere far below the cliffs came the steady hush and pull of the sea, waves folding against the rocks in rhythmic breaths that rose through the darkness like a living thing inhaling. The sea sounded gentle, but also ancient at night.
I could relate to it.
Wind moved through the olive and lemon groves beyond the estate, stirring leaves into a dry whispering shimmer that carried across the dark hillsides. Every so often, the branches clicked softly together, skeletal and hollow in the dark.
Cicadas pulsed in uneven waves from the stone terraces and cypress trees, their chorus rising and falling hypnotically in thecool spring air that wasn’t quite as deafening as summer, but enough to fill the spaces between thoughts.
Somewhere farther into the city, a dog barked once. Another answered. A lone owl called from somewhere near the grove. Then silence reclaimed the darkness.
The scent of damp earth mingling with sea salt drifted in after the night. Occasionally the wind shifted hard enough to carry the smell of the sea and lavender.
I sat behind the desk with my sleeves shoved to my forearms and a half-finished glass of whiskey sitting beside the keyboard.
Another wave crashed below the cliffs and I leaned back slowly in the chair, rubbing tired fingers over my mouth. Greece at night always sounded old, almost as if the land remembered every civilization that had marched across it or lived on it.
