Adriana
The wind smelled like ash again. That acrid undertone buried beneath salt and rosemary, like the sea had tried to cleanse something that refused to be washed away. Even now, years later, I could still feel it in my lungs, the way it had settled there the night everything changed. That night still haunts me. It comes back in fragments whenever the air turns sharp, whenever I catch the faint scent of burning on the breeze.
Alessia had been so small then. Seven, maybe eight. Her face was pale, bruised around the cheeks like shadows had kissed her there. I hadn't meant to get close, but she'd curled into a ball on the couch, clutching a photograph of Victor to her chest. And I'd broken my first rule. I sat beside her. The couch had been old and sagging, the kind that creaked under any weight, and I remember how her small body had felt so fragile against mine, like a bird with a broken wing.
