Sienna's POV
The past few days had done nothing but settle my nerves in the most gruesome way possible.
Each time I closed my eyes, the mist came back. The shifting face. The layered voice turning the word over like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
You are a witch. Stop disgracing us.
I would snap my eyes open and stare at the ceiling until my heartbeat returned to something manageable, and then I would close them again and the mist would be there waiting, patient and entirely unbothered by my refusal to engage with it.
I had not told Xavier.
I had not told anyone.
There was no version of that conversation I could construct that didn't end with people looking at me differently, and I had spent twenty years being looked at differently. I was not adding witch to the list of reasons until I was certain.
I was also, if I was being honest with myself in the particular way that only worked when no one else was watching, not entirely uncertain either.
