The first sensation that reached Olivia was warmth.
It wasn't peace—merely warmth. It felt heavy and alien, as if her physical self had been hauled back from a threshold it wasn't yet ready to leave.
Her eyelids parted with agonizing slowness. Above, the ceiling was a dim expanse, its edges blurred and fraying like a memory that refused to anchor itself in the present.
She remained motionless for a long beat. She simply lay there, submerged in the silence, listening.
Then, she heard it: a soft, uneven hitch of breath nearby.
Olivia tilted her head by a fraction. Isabella was there.
She was slumped in a chair that had been dragged too close to the bedside, her posture broken by exhaustion. One of her hands lay anchored near Olivia's arm—a tether maintained even in sleep, as if she had been terrified that Olivia might slip away the moment she closed her eyes.
