Layla returns on the eighth night.
Not quietly and not as the restless presence that had retreated to the back of my mind, but as something vast and steady that rises like a tide beneath my ribs while I stand alone at the northern ridge and watch the moon hang pale and ordinary above the trees.
The land hums faintly beneath my boots, and the air carries the scent of rain that has not yet fallen, and for the first time in days the heat inside my chest feels balanced rather than volatile.
Then she speaks.
Not as a murmur and not as a flicker of instinct.
Clearly.
Bella.
I freeze, because Layla has never formed my name in words before, and the sound of her voice inside my head is not wild or fractured but measured and ancient in a way that makes my pulse stutter.
“You are back,” I whi
