The villa was silent in the deep hours of the night when Jake woke without knowing why, his body pulling him from sleep with the sudden alertness that came when something fundamental had shifted in the room around him.
Chelsea and Rosa were sleeping soundly. Rosa's legs were entwined with his while Chelsea's hands were on his chest. Their naked bodies glowed with silver radiance under the moonlight.
He lay still for a moment, listening, and found the silence wrong in a way he couldn't immediately name—too complete, too heavy, as though the air itself had stopped moving.
Then he saw her.
She hovered above the foot of his bed, not sitting or standing but simply present in the space between the floor and ceiling, her form wrapped in that pale gold light that hummed against the darkness with the same warmth he remembered.
