REINA

I felt a knot tighten in my stomach, so hard it was like something inside me was twisting itself to pieces.

My saliva burned, too hot to swallow. My eyes stung as if filled with tiny shards of glass, making blinking impossible. Even breathing felt like a task I wasn’t built for.

I knew this feeling. I’d felt it before—the same sick, hollow ache that had swallowed me whole eleven years ago, the night my stepfather dropped me at my aunt’s doorstep. The same day my mother was laid to rest.

This feeling... This same feeling that made me feel like my world was about to come to an...