Morning comes too soon. Pale light filters through the blinds, slicing across my bed in thin bars that feel too sharp, too harsh. My body is stiff, heavy, as if I'd actually fought on that battlefield instead of dreaming it. The sheets are damp with night sweats, clinging to my skin like ghosts of the dream. My ribs ache when I breathe, my chest tender as though the memory carved itself into bone.
The mark lies quiet now, but I don't trust it. I press my hand over it anyway, half-expecting the skin to sear me again. Nothing. Just the steady thud of my heart and a phantom echo of fire.
From the kitchen comes the faint clatter of dishes, unnervingly steady, each dish a discordant note in the morning silence. The kettle's low whistle pierces the air, sharp and shrill, contrasting starkly with the stillness of my room. Grace is already up. The ordinary sounds stretch, lingering, and I am reminded of the weight of the night. I should get up too, pretend I slept fine, pretend I'm not rattled to my core.
Dragging myself out of bed feels like wading through molasses. My reflection in the bathroom mirror startles me—dark smudges under my eyes, lips pale, shoulders tense. I look like I haven't slept in days. Maybe I haven't, not really.
Cold water helps. A little. The sting against my face shocks me back into my skin, though it doesn't erase the battlefield from my mind—the wings torn, the light bleeding out, his eyes burning as he fell. My stomach knots. Why do I care so much...?
By the time I shuffle into the kitchen, Grace is humming softly, pouring steaming water into two mugs. She glances at me, eyebrows lifting.
"You look rough," she says bluntly, pushing a mug across the counter toward me. "Nightmares again?"
I force a small smile, wrapping my hands around the cup to ground myself. "Something like that."
She doesn't press. She never does. And I'm grateful.
But as I sip the tea, hot and bitter on my tongue, the mark throbs faintly under my shirt—just enough to remind me it isn't finished with me. Just enough to remind me that neither is he.
We eat breakfast in the quiet way only sisters can—Grace chattering about little things, me pretending to listen while pushing eggs around my plate. By the time I've finished half my tea, the heaviness of the night still clings to me like smoke.
Grace gets up, brushing crumbs off her hands. "I'll grab the mail before I forget."
I lean back in my chair, staring out the kitchen window while she disappears down the hall. The morning feels too normal, too soft, and part of me hates how easily the world keeps spinning after a dream like that.
When she returns, there's a small stack in her hands—bills, junk flyers, and one envelope that makes her pause.
She frowns. "This one's from Uncle Robert."
A scoff slips out before I can stop it. "Great. Hopefully it's not another one of his I just need a little money to get back on my feet letters. We don't exactly have anything to give him."
Grace shoots me a look, but she's already sliding her finger under the flap. The paper crackles as she unfolds it, her eyes darting across the page. Her lips part.
"What?" I ask, bracing for the worst.
Her voice is quieter when she reads aloud. "He says the doctors told him he has… a month or two left. Liver failure. He… he's leaving us his house. And… Evelyn, he wired us twenty-five thousand dollars. He says it should cover what our parents and us loaned him over the years. He says he's sorry for everything that happened."
The words hang heavy in the air, more surreal than any dream.
For a heartbeat, I just stare at her, at the pale blue stationery trembling in her hands. My stomach twists, not with relief or gratitude but with suspicion.
The first thought that hits me isn't of Uncle Robert finally making amends. It's him.
Adrial.
The words blur on the page as my mind snags on the idea. Money. A house. Security falling into our laps after years of scraping by. It feels too sudden, too impossible. Like strings being pulled from the shadows, tightened around my throat. I remember the time he promised to pay for Dad's surgery but disappeared for months, leaving us scrambling to gather funds. That memory fuels my suspicion.
"This isn't him," I mutter, shaking my head as if that can dislodge the thought. "It can't be."
Grace blinks at me. "What are you talking about?"
"Nothing," I say quickly, too quickly, but the mark burns faintly beneath my shirt, like it heard me—like it's laughing. "Sorry doesn't exactly erase twenty years of being a selfish bastard."
But my chest feels tight, conflicted. The bitterness comes easy, but underneath it there's something else—an ache I don't want to name.
Grace folds the letter carefully, smoothing the creases like it's something fragile. Her eyes shine with something softer.
"Maybe it's not about erasing it. Maybe it's just… the best he can do before it's over."
I look away, clenching my jaw. The mark on my chest thrums faintly, like it's listening, and I hate that the thought of forgiveness feels more foreign than the memory of fire in my ribs.
I carry my mug to the sink, letting the water run over the remnants of tea, but my hands won't stop trembling. It's not the letter—it's the dream.
No, not a dream. A nightmare. Or maybe something worse.
I can still see it every time I blink—the battlefield, the blood like molten gold, the way his wings tore open under the light of their blades. My ribs ache as if they really cracked with his, my chest tightening as though I'd swallowed the fire myself.
It was just a dream, I tell myself for the hundredth time. Just some twisted byproduct of stress and that cursed mark branded into my skin. My brain weaving stories out of smoke.
But it doesn't feel like a story. It feels lived. Like memory, like history carved into my bones. And what's worse—there's a weight in my chest that isn't mine. Whose heartbeat echoes in my ribs? The thought unsettles me, leaving me wondering where Adrial ends and I begin.
Sadness. For him.
Adrial, the monster who bound me, the Fallen who burns me alive from the inside out… and yet in the dark of my room, I'd touched his face, and there'd been something human there. Something broken.
I don't want to care. I don't want to feel anything except fury for what he's done to me. But I can't shake the image of his eyes—ember-red, but dimmed with grief when he spoke of the human he loved, when he admitted he fought Heaven itself to keep her.
That kind of devotion should terrify me. It should disgust me. Instead, it lingers, gnawing at me like a splinter I can't dig out.
Grace hums softly behind me as she tidies the table, folding the letter into its envelope again. She looks almost hopeful, like the world just tilted toward something brighter.
And me? I'm standing in the middle of our small kitchen, haunted by a sadness that isn't mine, mourning a war I never fought and a man I shouldn't pity.
The mark pulses once, faint but steady.
I press my palm against it, closing my eyes.
"It was just a dream," I whisper.
But even as I say it, I don't believe myself.