The feeling started slowly—like the first crack of dawn after the longest night in existence.
Their world, which had been fracturing at the edges ever since Nyxavere disappeared, began to piece itself back together. Not with the violent snap of broken bones healing, but with the gentle whisper of flowers deciding to bloom again after winter.
Parker's carefully constructed walls—the ones he'd built around his grief, his fear, his desperate need to appear in control while his daughter was God-knew-where—started to crumble. Not collapse. Dissolve. Like ice meeting spring water.
Maya's breath came easier for the first time in months. The constant ache in her chest, the one that felt like someone had carved out her heart with a rusty spoon and left the wound to fester, began to heal in real time.
