PERSEFONE POV
When I opened my eyes, sunlight was all I could see, and for one terrifying second, I did not know where I was.
My body knew pain first. A deep, slow ache under my skin, like every muscle had been taken apart, and put back in the wrong order. My throat felt dry. My wrists burned. My ribs hated me. My head was full of cotton and gold ash, and my whole body was trapped in warmth and tingles.
It could have been worse. It could have been so much worse.
Then I smelled my room.
My books. My laptop. The quiet mess of cables on my desk.
The faint vanilla candle Penny had bullied me into buying because, according to her, “a bedroom should not smell like caffeine and unresolved emotional repression.”
Home.
I was home.
I had told them to go home, and they had brought me here.
