The wind bit at my skin as we emerged from the tunnel hours before dawn, Luca just a few steps behind me, his breath shallow and quick.
The scent of moss and night-chilled earth clung to us like ghosts refusing to let go. But it was the silence......the heavy, oppressive silence that spoke the loudest.
We didn’t say her name. Not yet.
Mrs. Thompson’s words echoed in my skull, looping like a dirge:
"You’re not what you think you are, Caitlyn. You were made for someone else’s purpose. But now... now it’s your turn to reclaim it."
She had cried when she said it. Real tears. Not the kind of tears she used to feign in the theatre class she forced us to take. Not the delicate, elegant sadness we were taught to mimic at The Haven.
These were broken sobs, messy and raw, seeping from the co
