HAZEL
Sleep never came.
I lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling, watching the shadows shift as the hours crawled by. My cheek still burned where Mother had slapped me. My hands throbbed beneath the bandages. But those pains were nothing compared to the rage coiling in my chest like a living thing.
A prisoner. In my own room. In my own pack house.
The absurdity of it should have made me laugh, but I couldn't find anything funny about it. Not when every breath felt like swallowing glass. Not when Baruch's face kept flashing through my mind—his smile, his touch, the way he'd looked at me like I was something precious right before he destroyed everything.
I rolled onto my side, then my back again. The mattress felt wrong. Everything felt wrong.
Around three in the morning, I gave up on sleep entirely.
I stood and walked to the door, testing the handle even though I knew it was locked. It didn't budge. Of course it didn't. Mother had made sure of that.
