Chapter 217: Like A Flash Of Sunlight…

LOUISE’S POV

Louise closes her eyes.

For a moment, there is nothing. No sound. No movement. No familiar hum of the air conditioner or the distant footsteps of the guards stationed outside the hotel room. There is no bed beneath her, no white ceiling above her, no faint light slipping through the curtains. There is only silence.

Then she opens her eyes again.

She is standing in a valley. At least, that is what she thinks it is. She cannot see any mountains, trees, or stones.

There is no sky above her, no ground she can recognize beneath her feet. There is only a vast stretch of blackness, rising on both sides like enormous walls.

It surrounds her, stretches ahead of her, and goes on for so long that she cannot see where it ends.

Louise looks down at herself. She is small. Her hands are tiny, her arms thin, and her clothes hang loosely around her little body.

She recognizes the faded dress she used to wear when she was six years old, the one with a loose thread near the hem that Mateo once promised to mend.

Yet she barely has time to wonder why she looks this way before something moves around her feet.

The blackness shifts.

It rolls over her toes, then her ankles, cold and thick as mud. Louise jerks backward, but there is nowhere to go. The darkness follows her, climbing her legs with a terrible patience. She tries to run, but her feet barely move. She tries to scream, but nothing comes out.

The blackness rises to her waist.

Louise stares at it, her little chest rising and falling in quick, frightened breaths. What is this? Where is she?

She looks around desperately, searching for a door, a path, anything that might lead her out. But there is nothing. The valley stretches endlessly in every direction, and the blackness keeps rising.

It reaches her chest.

She cannot breathe.

Louise opens her mouth and gasps, but the air feels thick. Every breath is harder than the last, as if something invisible has wrapped itself around her lungs and is squeezing.

She claws at the darkness, but her small fingers sink into it without finding anything solid to hold. She tries to pull herself free, yet the more she struggles, the faster it climbs.

It reaches her neck.

Louise shakes her head. No. No, no, no. She does not want this. She does not know what this place is, but she knows she does not want to stay here.

She is afraid, not the kind of fear she knows from childhood, when Alice’s footsteps approach her bedroom door and she has to pretend she is asleep.

Not the fear she feels when Henri’s cold eyes settle on her or when any elite looks at her with that familiar expression of disgust.

This is different.

This fear has no face she can hate, no person she can blame, no door she can run through and lock behind herself. It is everywhere. It is inside her.

The darkness slips into her mouth, and Louise coughs, choking on something she cannot see. She tries to spit it out, but it keeps coming. It fills her throat, presses against her tongue, and forces its way into every breath she takes.

Her eyes sting. She cannot think. She cannot remember how she got here. She cannot even remember what she is supposed to be afraid of. All she knows is that she wants to live. She wants to be somewhere else. She wants—

My little flower.

Louise freezes.

The voice is so faint that she almost mistakes it for something the darkness has made up. She lifts her head, searching the valley, but there is nothing to see. The blackness rises to her chin.

My little flower.

Her heart gives a painful little twist.

She knows that voice. She knows it so well that something deep inside her recognizes it before her mind can catch up. It is warm and gentle, a little playful around the edges.

It is the voice that once called her name from the doorway of a tiny apartment, the voice that used to read stories to her on rainy afternoons, the voice that promised her she was special when the rest of the world made her feel like she was nothing.

Louise tries to turn toward it, but the darkness drags at her neck.

My little flower.

This time, the voice is louder. It echoes through the valley, reaching places inside her that the blackness has not yet managed to swallow. Something moves in her chest.

A memory begins to surface, bringing with it the image of a little kitchen, the smell of pancakes on a Sunday morning, a thick black Bible resting beside a plate, and a man with soft brown eyes smiling at her as though she is the most precious thing he has ever seen.

Louise’s lips tremble.

No. It cannot be.

She has spent years telling herself that she will never see him again. She has spent eleven years visiting a hospital room where he could not hear her, where he could not open his eyes, where he lay so still that sometimes she had to grip the edge of his bed to keep herself from shaking.

She has stood beside him and told him things he could never answer. She has apologized to him. She has begged him to wake up. And when he never did, she learned to live with the knowledge that some people could disappear from your life without ever truly leaving it.

But this voice—

My little flower.

A sob tears through her.

She fights the darkness with everything she has. Her little hands rise above the blackness, fingers spreading as she reaches for something she cannot see.

She struggles to lift her head. Her throat burns, and her chest aches, but she has to see. She has to. Even if this is another cruel trick, even if her mind is playing some final, merciless game with her, she has to look because if there is even the smallest chance that the voice belongs to the man she has loved for most of her life, she cannot bear to miss him.

Louise forces her eyes open.

And there he is— Mateo.