IMARA'S POV
The door creaked open, but no one greeted me. No low hum of breathing, no soft rustle of someone turning in the other bed. Just silence. Cold, pressed-into-your-bones kind of silence. I stepped inside and shut the door behind me, and that was the first time it hit me.
She was really gone.
My side of the room looked untouched, but hers was still made up the way she'd left it. Perfectly folded blanket. Pillow fluffed just so. Little trinket box still sitting on the nightstand, lid open like she meant to come back for it. Except she wouldn't. Not after what they did to her.
They said it was suicide. That she'd lost her mind after getting too close to something she shouldn't have. That's how the rumors went, anyway. She'd messed up some part of the Elder Prince's plans, and Beta Gavron had sealed her fate. A fate worse than death, they said. And she hadn't survived it.
It was my revenge in a sense to Nisha but gods, did I feel empty.
