Chapter 46 I Should Have Been Here

• Roman
• The sterile walls of the hospital wing feel like they’re closing in on me, their whiteness too harsh, too glaring against my turbulent thoughts. I can’t enter the room—not yet. Not when every fiber of my being is a cocktail of fury, self-loathing, and a kind of visceral fear that shakes me to my core.
• I glance through the glass door, catching sight of Aella lying in the hospital bed. Machines beep softly, echoing the frail rhythm of her life now hanging by a thread. It gnashes at me, this helplessness, this inadequacy.