OLIVIA POV
I didn’t know how much time had passed since I’d last slept a whole night. My body couldn’t even remember what it felt like anymore—rest that didn’t come in fractured scraps, sleep that wasn’t an ambush of screams and claws in my head. All I knew was the haze around me, heavy and warm. At some point in the night there had been a nightmare—blood, red eyes, the echo of children’s cries like knives in my brain—and then Albert. Albert holding me. His scent had anchored me to the present, his voice a rough murmur I barely understood, but I’d drifted back down into darkness, not alone this time.
And now… now something was different.
There was another heartbeat next to me. Solid. Heavy. Slow and steady, like the tick of a drum inside my skull. At first I thought it was part of the d
