Serenya
The glow of the ring light still lingered in the back of my vision long after the live had ended.
I hadn’t even made it to my bed. I was too drained, too wrung out to pretend I had energy left to climb down the grand staircase to get water or face my own thoughts in bed. My body ached from sitting stiff-backed for nearly two hours, spine straight like a rod while I smiled into the camera and answered comments from strangers who didn’t know that I felt like glass—cracked in places only I could feel.
The reading room was quiet when I padded in, barefoot, arms wrapped around my torso. The faint scent of old paper and lavender oil drifted through the air, mingling with the more recent note of jasmine tea someone—probably Kaelith had brewed earlier. It grounded me. Here, in this sma
