The hours after Azazel left that day had been long, dragging like an endless evening that refused to settle into night.
Ava could still hear the echo of her own voice—sharp, raised, cutting into the air like a blade she could not sheath again. It wasn't just the sound of her words that haunted her; it was the look on his face when she told him to leave.
The faint flicker of hurt in his eyes, the tension in his jaw as though he was trying to hold himself together, and then the silence—his silence—that followed.
Now, two weeks later, she sat restlessly in the wooden chair by her bedroom window, her knees pulled together and her hands clasped so tightly that her knuckles had gone pale.
Her eyes were fixed on the backyard garden, though the colors blurred before her.
The fading sunlight spilled across the flowers outside, tinting them with gold, but Ava barely noticed.
