I don’t even have time to breathe between the waves of nausea, between the violent spasms wracking through me, trying to expel something that isn’t just sickness but something deeper. Something I can’t get rid of, no matter how hard I try.
By the time it stops, my hands are shaking, my entire body trembling like a leaf in a storm. The taste of bile lingers at the back of my throat, sharp and acrid, but I barely register it.
Ada is there before I can even catch my breath.
She drops to her knees beside me, her presence steady, grounding, but I can’t meet her eyes. I feel raw, like my skin has been stripped away, nerves exposed to the cold air pressing in from all sides. My breaths come in ragged, uneven gasps, and my fingers still clutch the porcelain like it’s the only thing keeping me upright.
‘‘Isabella.’’ Her voice is quiet, but firm. I hear the worry laced between the syllables, the way it coils beneath the usual composure she wears like armor.
I shake my head. I can’t speak. I don’t know how to speak.
She hesitates for only a second before reaching out, pressing the back of her hand against my forehead like she’s checking for a fever. It’s an instinctive gesture, one that should be comforting, but I flinch anyway. Not from her touch, but from the world pressing too close, from the weight of what just happened suffocating me from the inside out.
Her eyes flick over me, assessing, searching, like she’s trying to figure out what’s happening inside my head.
“You’re in shock,” she murmurs, voice steady, even as her own hands shake. “Just breathe, okay? In through your nose, out through your mouth.”
I try.
The first inhale is sharp, painful. The second barely makes it past my throat before my stomach twists again, like my body is still trying to purge something that isn’t there.
The grief I’ve carried for weeks, the heavy, suffocating kind, the kind that settled into my ribs like cement, shifts, twists, morphs into something else entirely.
Hope.
Hope unfurls inside me, slow and steady, a creeping wildfire licking at the edges of my grief, turning it into something sharp. Something dangerous.
I press my palms against the floor and push myself up. Ada watches, eyes flickering with something unreadable, concern, maybe. Or something close to fear. She knows what that nickname means, from who that nickname is.
Chapter 22
The Devil’s Tomb
Isabella
The drive home is silent.
Sawyer doesn’t ask questions. He doesn’t press, doesn’t pry, but I can feel his eyes flick to me through the rearview mirror, quick and sharp, before returning to the road. He heard it all.
The snow outside has thickened, swallowing the streets in a slow, creeping blanket of white. The headlights cut through the dark, casting long, ghostly shadows across the pavement.
Ada sits beside me in the backseat, arms crossed tightly over her chest. She hasn’t spoken since we left the clinic, and I can feel the tension rolling off her in waves, thick enough to choke on. Her knee bounces, a tell. She’s trying to keep herself from unraveling, but I know better. Ada doesn’t fall apart, not where anyone can see.
The air inside the car feels too small, too tight. My body still hums with adrenaline, fingers twitching in my lap as I replay the night over and over again in my head.
The man. His words.
Diable.
I swallow hard, staring out the window at the city rushing past. The neon lights of passing signs flicker in the reflection, stretching and twisting like specters in the glass. My pulse hasn’t slowed, my heart still hammering against my ribs like it’s trying to claw its way out.
I don’t even realize we’ve stopped until Sawyer kills the engine.
“We’re here,” he says, voice low.
Neither Ada nor I move right away.
The house looms before us, dark and quiet, a stark contrast to the storm brewing inside my chest. The cold is the first thing that hits me as we step out of the car, sharp and biting, curling against my skin like a warning. My hoodie does little to stop the chill from seeping in, but I don’t care.
