Her eyelids felt like leaden weights, peeling back to reveal a world fractured by a pounding, rhythmic ache behind her temples.
As she forced herself upright, the grim tableau of the previous night's violence sharpened into focus.
The room was a graveyard of memories and glass; crystalline shards littered the floor like fallen stars, glinting coldly in the dim light.
"Ah," she whispered, her voice a dry rasp against the silence. "I forgot I slept here."
A sharp, searing sting hissed through her palm.
Glancing down, she saw a jagged fragment of a broken bottle buried deep in her flesh.
She hadn't noticed the jagged neck of the carafe lurking beneath her weight; a second longer, a pound more of pressure, and the glass would have carved through muscle and sinew alike.
Crimson silk began to bloom from the wound, flowing with a relentless, rhythmic pulse that made her head swim with sudden vertigo.
