"She burst in with shopping bags and no apologies."
Silver had eventually surrendered to exhaustion sometime before dawn, her body finally overriding her psychological turmoil with the biological necessity of rest. But even sleep had provided no refuge from the emotional chaos, her dreams filled with fragmented images of Eli's handwriting and Carroway's calculating smile, the two figures alternating like competing voices in a psychological opera that offered no resolution.
She'd awakened still curled against the stone wall where she'd collapsed hours earlier, her neck cramped at an angle that spoke to sleeping in positions designed for emotional protection rather than physical comfort. The letter remained exactly where she'd thrown it, face down on the medieval floor like evidence of a crime she wasn't ready to acknowledge.
