Layla ran so fast, rain misted around her. Her feet slipped on the soaked ground, but she kept going, not stopping until she made it to her destination. A place she hadn’t been in years, the empty clearing shocked her enough to vanish Elise from Layla’s mind, even if it was just for a few moments.
Layla considered this part of Central Park forbidden. She refused to return to the place where she had died, the place where she watched her parents die. She couldn’t believe how much of it looked the same—the hill sloping down to the Harlem Meer, a river that mirrored Layla’s greatest nightmare right back at her. She still remembered her hand clutching the snow while life trickled out of her, her parents’ blood staining the brilliant white a scarlet so deep, she wondered if it had soaked all the way through to the earth beneath the ice. The moon’s reflection on the water shone back at her, and when Layla opened her eyes one last time, she saw herself, bloody and battered.
Reaper venom already had a hold on her system then, and even through the shimmering reflection she could see the blackness spreading across her eyes while the venom changed her body.
Now, Layla collapsed onto the ground, breathing so hard, her ribs ached. Her fingers dug into the damp earth, and she released a shattering scream. Everything rose to the surface at that moment. Years of unresolved trauma, the feelings she had buried since being betrayed, the grief for her parents and her own lost life that she had never fully processed.
This had been the first place Layla had thought to come to because if there was anything that could snap her out of that damned Saint’s cyclic manipulation, it was the place that shifted her entire existence. But now, Layla feared she was just breaking herself over and over. And just like five years ago, there was no help on the horizon.
Layla dropped her face into her hands and wept.