Where is she?
The question echoed through Sara's mind, sharp and insistent, refusing to fade. She sat on the branch of an ancient oak, her back against the rough bark, her violet hair stirring in the night breeze. In her hands, she held the saucer, the same chipped ceramic dish that Anaya had brought every night, filled with her blood, her hope, her desperate need to be seen.
She had not taken it. She had not drunk from it. She had simply held it, waiting, watching the forest for any sign of the small figure that should have appeared.
Did she die?
The question burned in her chest like a coal, hot and painful and foreign. She had not felt this way in centuries, not since she had lost everyone she loved, not since she had sworn never to care again. But the child's absence, the silence where her voice should have been, the emptiness of the clearing where she should have stood, it tore at something inside Sara, something she had thought was dead.
