Page 103 of Own

And then I feel her. Amorette.

She’s not here—not really—but her voice comes so clearly in my head that I don’t even question it.

“You always did get sentimental when you were tired,”she says, teasing me like she always did.

I almost smile. “I’m not sentimental,” I whisper. “I’m just trying not to forget how to talk to you.”

“You’re the one who left.”

I don’t bother arguing with that. I left everything. Her, home, the version of myself who grew up wanting big dreams, wanting fame, and maybe even fortune. I had those things now, but I didn’t haveher.

My hands were in my lap. Knuckles bruised, a thin line healing along the side of my thumb. The scar on my wrist seemed to be permanently etched there. My nails were still a disaster and I’dforgottento fix them. Just like I’d not bothered with my hair, just braided it back and out of the way. Still, I stared at my hands for a while, trying to figure out when they started looking like someone else’s.

“I think I hurt someone,” I said, barely audible. Was I actually talking out loud? Or was I asleep? I really didn’t know anymore. “Not out of panic. Not because I had no choice. I had the choice, and I still did it.”

Her silence in my head is louder than the engine hum.

“I didn’t feel sick afterward,” I admitted. “No shaking. No hands clenching the sink. Just… quiet. Like it was over and that was enough.”

“So you’re getting good at it.”

“I am,” I said. “I’ve been watching the guys. I sat there while they interrogated someone. Seen just how violent they can get, actually did a raid. Me—on a raid.” I closed my eyes. “I used to cry if I had to kill a spider, remember?”

No answer. Not really. Just the heaviness of her not being there.

“I don’t flinch at blood anymore. Not mine, not theirs. It’s just color. Noise. Sometimes I don’t even see the person, just the angles.”

That scared me more than the blood ever did.

“I keep thinking…” My throat tightened. “What if this is just who I am now? What if the part of me that remembered youin the middle of all that—the part that felt something—what if that’s gone?”

“Then why are you still talking to me?”

I swallowed. “Because I’m scared I’m getting numb to the separation. And if I stop feelingyou… then I won’t know who I am anymore.”

Someone behind me coughed, stirred, and then quieted again. I stole a look at Alphabet, he was out, sprawled back in his seat, legs stretched out and Goblin slept on the floor between us.

“What if I never find you?” I glanced at the window, met my reflection’s eyes. “What if I do but I’m no one you recognize anymore?” Am saved people. She was a crusader. I was so much not that at the moment. Would she be able to forgive me? “What if I’ve forgotten how to be me?”

I waited. Just the engines, the occasional beep of a seatbelt sign. The quiet stretched.

Then, softer: “Am, what if I was never who I was and now I’m this? What do I say then?” DidIeven know what I was now?

That’s the part I couldn’t stop circling. If we found her, what happens then? What did I say?

Sorry I disappeared? Sorry I became someone you wouldn’t recognize? Someone who doesn’t recognize herself?

Would she look at me and see a sister, or just a stranger wearing her face?

I don’t cry. I hadn’t in weeks. I wasn’t sure if I’d forgotten how, or if I’d just learned not to need it.

The window reflects just enough to show me my own eyes—strange, shadowed, unfamiliar. I don’t look like me. I look like someone waiting for impact.

I pressed my fingers to the glass and whispered, “Please don’t forget me. Even if I forget how to be me.”

And just for a moment, I swear I feel something brush my hand. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s memory. Maybe it’s her.

Or maybe I just really, really need it to be.

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