The key turns in the lock with a sound too loud, too final. I stand in the doorway of the house, my bag sliding from my shoulder to the floor with a dull thud. The motion feels borrowed, like I'm watching myself from somewhere distant and numb.
Three days. I've been back three days, and I still haven't seen her.
She'd texted while I was on the bus, some cheerful message about staying at a friend's place in the city, helping with a wedding dress fitting. I'd stared at the screen until the words blurred, relief and terror tangled so tight I couldn't tell which was which. I'd typed back sounds good with fingers that didn't feel like mine, then thrown up in the bus station bathroom.
Now the house yawns around me, empty and too bright. Afternoon sun slants through the kitchen window, illuminating dust motes and the ghost of normalcy. Grace's mug sits in the sink, rim stained with the lipstick she stopped wearing when she got sick. Her shoes wait by the door, arranged with the neatness she never lost, even when the chemo stole everything else.
I move through the rooms like I'm cataloging evidence of a crime.
Her bedroom door stands open. The bed is made, corners folded with hospital precision. On the nightstand, her pill bottles line up like soldiers—empty now, supposed to stay empty. I pick up the nearest one, turn it in my hands, and read the label until the letters swim. Take with food. May cause drowsiness. The words belong to another life, one where the only thing I feared was losing her to something I couldn't bargain with.
I couldn't bargain with.
The bottle slips from my fingers. I don't hear it hit the carpet.
My hand finds my chest, pressing through fabric to the smooth skin beneath. The habit hasn't broken, even now. Especially now. I close my eyes and reach inward, searching for any flicker, any ghost of warmth, any whisper of—
Nothing.
The severance was complete. Adrial made sure of that.
And if he was thorough, if he stripped everything connected to the bond, then what else—
I freeze.
The thought hits like ice water. My knees buckle against Grace's bedframe, fingers digging into the mattress. What if the mark wasn't just a beacon? What if it was the tether? What if severing it didn't just hide me from angels—
I can't finish.
The memory surfaces unbidden: Adrial's voice in the motel, rough with exhaustion. I made sure of it. Sure of what? That I'd be safe, or that the connection would be severed completely? Did he think about Grace? Did he think about what the bond might have anchored beyond my own skin?
I push myself upright, move to the bathroom, and splash water on my face, which does nothing. The mirror shows someone I don't recognize—hollow-eyed, sharp-cheeked, a stranger wearing my clothes. I stare at her until she blinks, until the silence of the house presses in loud enough to hurt.
Grace's toothbrush sits in its cup. Her towel hangs folded on the rack. Everything in place, everything as it should be.
Everything except me.
I check my phone again—no new messages. The last one from her—be home Tuesday! can't wait to show you the fabric samples!—stares up at me, cheerful and blind and crushing.
Tuesday. Tomorrow.
I should feel relief. I should feel anything other than this grinding dread, this certainty that something has gone wrong, that I've missed the signs, that I've traded my sister's life for my own safety and didn't even realize—
The mark used to pulse when she was near. A faint warmth, a gentle recognition. I'd told myself it was a coincidence, proximity, nothing more. But what if it was the bond acknowledging its purpose? What if Grace's health was written into the contract in ways I never understood?
I press both hands to the bathroom counter, lean close to the mirror until my breath fogs the glass.
"What did you do?" I whisper to the empty room. To him, wherever he is. Whatever remains of him. "What did you take?"
No answer. There will never be answers. He made sure of that, too.
I stay in the bathroom until the light shifts, until evening bleeds through the small window and the house grows cold around me. I don't turn on the heat. I don't eat. I stand in the darkening kitchen and watch Grace's mug in the sink and wait for the sound of her key in the lock, her voice calling my name, her footsteps in the hall.
I wait for proof that I haven't destroyed everything.
She'll be home tomorrow. She has to be home tomorrow. She has to be—
Healthy. Alive. Unmarked by whatever I sacrificed.
I press my palm to my chest one more time, smooth and cold and empty, and wonder which of us I'm really trying to convince.
The coffee maker sits where it always has, clean and waiting. I fill it with water from habit, measure grounds with hands that don't feel connected to my body. The machine gurgles to life, filling the house with the smell of something normal, something that belonged before.
I watch it drip into the carafe, brown and steaming and utterly wrong. The thought of drinking it turns my stomach. Not because I'm sick. Because it tastes like morning. Like Grace humming at the counter. Like Adrial's shadows coiling around my wrists while I pretended to be annoyed.
I leave the mug on the counter. Full. Untouched. One more small act of violence against the person I used to be.
My bedroom door opens with a sound too soft for the weight behind it. I stand at the edge of the mattress and begin peeling off layers—the coat, the sweater, the shirt I wore at work. Each garment falls to the floor like shed skin. I should fold them. Grace would fold them. I step over the pile instead.
The bedside table catches my eye.
The feather lies there, black and impossible, exactly where I left it. I don't remember placing it there. I don't remember much of anything from the motel floor, from the bus ride, from the three days of mechanical existence that followed.
My hand moves before I decide to reach for it.
The shaft is cool against my palm, lighter than it should be, carrying a weight that has nothing to do with physics. For one breathless moment, I press it to my chest, directly over the scar, waiting for something—heat, recognition, any sign that the bond remembers what we were.
Nothing.
The tears come then, sudden and humiliating, spilling over my fingers where they clutch the feather. I don't sob. I don't make sound. They simply fall, hot against my chin, my collarbone, the pale line where his mark used to live. I stand in my empty room with my work clothes scattered at my feet and cry for a man who tore himself out of me, for a sister who might be paying for my bargains, for the terrifying, gutting realization that I would do it all again if it meant having him back.
My phone buzzes on the bed.
For one stupid, impossible second, I think it might be him.
My hand moves too fast, the feather still trapped between my fingers as I grab the phone.
Grace's name glows on the screen.
Don't freak out, okay? I'm at the ER. I started coughing, and there was a little blood. They're checking me out. I'm probably fine.
The room drops out from under me.
The feather slips from my hand.
And all I can think is:
What did he undo?