Page 56 of A Touch of Madness

“Sylvie?”

Ravenna.

Her voice is firm, steady in a way I am not.

I drag in a breath, swallowing back the dizziness threatening to pull me under. “Come in.”

The door creaks open, and Ravenna steps inside, the candlelight catching on the deep green of her robes. Her sharp gaze sweeps over me, assessing, cataloging, and then narrowing slightly when she takes in the state I’m in.

She exhales slowly, crossing her arms. “Well, dear. I wish I could say you look better.”

I almost laugh, but there’s nothing in me to summon amusement.

Ravenna moves closer, eyes flicking over my unsteady posture, the way my fingers still clutch at the nightstand for balance. “How long have you been awake? It’s early in the morning.”

I don’t answer.

I don’t care.

Instead, I lift my gaze to hers, my voice hoarse, raw from disuse. “I need to leave.”

Ravenna lifts a brow, unimpressed. “No. You need to rest.”

My hands curl into fists, nails biting into my palms. “Lara?—”

“Isn’t going anywhere,” she interrupts, stepping closer, her voice calm but resolute. “Lucian and Dorian are tracking her as we speak. They’ll bring her to us when it’s time.”

I shake my head, something frantic, desperate curling in my chest. “You don’t understand.”

Her expression doesn’t shift, but something in her energy sharpens. “If I fail to understand, then explain it to me.”

I force a breath through my teeth, the weight of it pressing against my ribs like lead. “I saw her.”

Ravenna stills.

For the first time, I have her full attention.

The shift is subtle, but I catch it—the way her stance stiffens slightly, the way her focus narrows in on me, no longer just scanning me for signs of exhaustion but listening.

“What do you mean?” She looks around my small room, as if I mean I saw her here, in the flesh.

I swallow hard, my throat tight. “Just now. In my dream, my vision—whatever it was. I saw her. She was standing in front of her reflection, staring at herself like she was trying to remember her own face. She didn’t recognize herself, Ravenna.” My voice cracks, the weight of it pressing down on me. “She doesn’t know who she is.”

My mentor doesn’t speak right away.

Instead, she moves toward the chair beside my bed, lowering herself onto the seat with a slow, deliberate motion, eyes never once leaving my own. There is no disbelief in her face—only contemplation, the weight of her knowledge settling over the room like a thick fog.

She exhales, folding her hands in her lap. “This is a normal stage in the process,” she says. Flames burn just beneath my skin because no one ever told me this. “Once humanity is erased, eventually, the unfortunate soul will no longer remember even themself.”

I grip the sheets beneath me, fingers digging into the fabric. “So it could be too late,” I say, my mind racing as I try to make sense of what I thought could never be true: she may be too far gone to ever come back again.

Five nights of watching. Five nights of waiting.

Patience has never been a virtue I struggle with—it is, after all, the gift of eternity. A lesson carved into the marrow of my existence, honed over decades of watching those in power rise and fall, men burn themselves to ash with greed, and time itself erode all that was once sacred.

But this waiting has been different.

This waiting has been forher.

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