To breathe
A gasp rips from her arid lips.
Eyes snap open.
Tears stream down her temples, her blurred gaze fixed on the grey ceiling above.
"You're awake?"
Neva flinches at the sudden, gravelly voice.
She turns her head.
He lies beside her. So close to her face.
That's when she feels it: the weight of an arm heavy around her waist.
The man with dark, esoteric eyes stares into her cocoa-brown gaze, where her lashes—long, curved, and damp with tears—frame a soul already shattered.
He reaches to touch her cheek, flushed and fragile.
In her daze, a single name escapes her lips.
"Rhett."
Silence tightens.
His hand stills.
His jaw clenches. His gaze darkens.
"Don't ever take that name again," he growls, voice low, venomous.
Neva blinks at him as she sobers, eyes wandering over his face as reality blurs into delusion.
Where does she live?
In this reality? Or in this nightmare?
If she didn't know better, she would pretend—just for a moment—that Rhett's warmth still lingered in this man's cold stare.
A sob escapes her.
She wills herself to wake.
But no dream lifts her from this horror.
He retracts his touch.
His eyes, softer now, observe the tears that continue their descent.
He leans in. Kisses her closed lids, as if sealing her cries within them.
A shudder courses through her from the touch of a soul long lost.
His lips brush her nose, drift to her mouth.
Her palms press to his chest, trembling.
She pushes—he does not move.
"Please," she breathes. "Take me back to Rhett."
"I can't," he murmurs into her ear.
"Because I've burned them... and they died a deserving death."
Her heart seizes.
Her irises quake. This cruelty strips away her senses.
"No," she whispers.
"You're lying."
Amused, he watches her crumble.
"I don't lie, my love."
He brushes aside her hair.
His lips graze her neck, branding her with silence.
Her chest tightens.
It rises, falls, rises, falls.
Then she collapses inside.
She begins to cry—softly at first.
Then louder, the grief clawing out of her throat, echoing off every wall.
The memories return like waves in a storm—sunlit days turned ghosts of joy.
Her hands try to resist, to reach, to reclaim something lost.
But he traps her again—like a shadow pinning down light.
And then—
The scene dissolves. The air thins.
Her cries turn into wind.
The world folds in on itself.
In that sacred place of the soul, she flees.
Her body lies still, but her spirit escapes—
into a garden, where laughter once lived.
Into the arms of a man with a lion's heart and a child's hope.
Into the warmth of a child she never stops holding.
Her skin, her form, these bones are only a cage.
The ache becomes a distant thunder.
This horror is a dream she denies.
Her breath turns into prayer.
Her silence is a sanctuary.
She floats to where no hands can reach.
To where Eden still exists.
To where love still breathes.