Chapter twenty two — The voice in the Flame

Keya:

I wake to the smell of smoke.

Not real. Not burning wood or ash — but something phantom. In my mind. In my bones.

Like a memory that doesn’t belong to me.

I sit up slowly. The room is still. DiCaprio’s chair is empty. The door half-cracked. Sunlight cuts across the bed in golden stripes, but it doesn’t warm me.

Because the dream is still clinging to me.

She was there again.

Her voice was fire. Her eyes mine. She tried to say something important — something urgent.

But I can’t remember it.

Only the way her fingers curled around...