"I watched her die." That day would forever be etched into her mind, preserved with merciless clarity, every single detail down to the weather itself. It had been a pleasant spring afternoon, the kind filled with gentle warmth and cloudless blue skies, as though the world had chosen to celebrate while hers was quietly unraveling. It was, without question, one of the worst days she had ever lived through.
Just three days after Rowen was born, Circe had sat at her mother's bedside, her fingers wrapped tightly around Thalora's hand, unwilling to loosen her grip. She had watched the slow, fragile rhythm of her breathing falter then cease. She had watched her mother close her eyes for the very last time. "And I watched her burn on the funeral pyre."
She would like to believe that her mother was somehow alive out there. She wanted to cling to that possibility with everything she had. But there was no reality she could imagine where such a thing could be true.
