SARAH
Watching Aria cry did something to me.
Not the neat kind of crying. Not tears sliding quietly down a composed face. This was raw. Her shoulders jerked. Breath kept catching, like her lungs forgot the rules.
Sound escaped her in broken pieces, small and humiliating, and I stood there with my hands useless at my sides while something inside my chest twisted the wrong way.
It was not triumph.
It was not relief.
If it was guilt, it came tangled with grief, regret, envy, longing, and a dozen other feelings that refused clean names. They stacked on top of each other until I could barely tell where one ended and the next began.
She looked wrecked.
Smaller than I remembered. Folded in on herself. Nothing like the woman who had walked into Kael's office a lifetime ago with her spine straight and her smile easy, confident in a way that made rooms tilt toward her without her even trying.
I had done this.
