Chapter 291
ELENA
The first thing I felt was cold.
Not the kind of cold that settled into your bones. Not the chill of snow or wind. It was sterile, dry, antiseptic. The kind of cold that came from machines humming, filtered air, fluorescent lights A hospital.
I blinked slowly, and the world came into focus in jagged pieces. Pale ceiling. Distant beep. IV in my hand. My body felt heavry, like I’d been drugged, like I’d been asleep for days.
Groggy didn’t even begin to cover it.
I turned my head with effort. Caroline was there. Sitting in a corner chair with her feet tucked under her, a glossy magazine open across her lap. Her hair was pulled back, dark circles under her eyes. She wasn’t reading. Just staring
I let out a low, rasping sound.
Her head snapped up.
“Elena?” The magazine dropped to the floor. She was at my side in an instant. “You’re awake.”
I opened my mouth to speak but only a wheeze came out. She grabbed a cup of water from the tray and held the straw to my lips.
I drank. Slowly.
“Where…” I tried.
“You’re in Reykjavík,” she said gently. “The hospital. You collapsed during breakfast.”
Collapsed.
The word echoed in my head like a dropped stone.
Breakfast. Yrsa. Her words. Derek—
My stomach rolled.
“What time is it?” I managed.
“Late afternoon.”
I swallowed hard. My body still didn’t feel like mine.
“Your mom and Erin are on their way,” Caroline added, glancing toward the door. “Flight landed half an hour ago. They should be here any minute.”
My heart twisted.
Of course they’d come.
Before I could ask more, the door opened. The scent of my mother hit me first–rosewater and wild lavender, warm and familiar. And then she was there.
“Elena!”
My mother rushed into the room, her heels clicking too fast on tile her hair windblown, eyes wild. Erin was right behind her, calmer, but her expression was taut with worry.
“What happened to her?” my mother demanded, whirling on Caroline. “How could you let this happen?”
“She collapsed. We don’t know everything yet,” Caroline said, tight–lipped but calm,
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“She’s my daughter!”
“And she’s conscious now,” Erin cut in quietly, placing a hand on ur mother’s arm. “Let’s not overwhelm her.”
My mother hesitated, then turned back to me, eyes shining. She sat on the edge of the bed and cupped my face between her hands.
“Sweetheart, are you alright? Can you hear me?”
I nodded, slow and careful. My throat felt tight.
Erin moved to the other side, brushing her fingers along my wrist where the IV was taped down.
“Your blood pressure’s stabilized,” she said softly. “The doctors said it was some kind of memory overload. A psychic trigger. You must have remembered something–something sharp and fast enough to knock everything loose. Do you remember what it was?”
I did.
It came in waves–surreal and fractured. The breakfast room. The crystalline light pouring through the snow–bright windows.
Yrsa’s voice, crisp and smooth, gliding across the table like a knife wrapped in velvet. Her eyes were sharp, amused. The tilt of her head condescending. I could see it all. The shape of her lips as she spoke.
Your ex.
On–again, off–again relationship.
Derek.
That word—his name–shattered something in me. I had blinked then, just like I did now, as if trying to clear the fog.
My chest ached with the effort of breathing. Each breath dragged like it was moving through water.
Erin leaned closer, concerned. “Elena?”
I couldn’t look at her. My eyes stayed fixed on some point beyond the edge of the room. The memory was falling into place. Unstoppable now.
“I think I know who Derek is,” I whispered.
The words didn’t feel like mine, but they were the truth.
I heard my mother inhale, a sharp sound of grief or shock, I couldn’t tell. Erin stilled completely, like the air had frozen around
her.
And suddenly, the memories weren’t fractured anymore. They poured in like floodwater through a broken dam.
His face at the altar. The ivory and gold of the hall. Cassandra’s scream. Her clutching her arm. The looks on the faces of the
guests.
The betrayal. Derek–his hands around another woman, carrying her away. Turning his back on me. The crack of my heart splitting open.
The devastation.
The humiliation.
The way I broke.
I remembered going to my own funeral. Watching Derek mourn me and not believing he meant anything that he said. Though in hindsight…
And then–our moments now. The way he looked at me in the moonlight. His voice saying my name. That damn rose on the
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pillow. The way he smiled at me like I was someone worth holding onto.
The contrast was too much.
My hands clenched the thin hospital blanket.
He had left me.
He had loved me. And then he had left me.
And I had let myself fall for him again without knowing.
I didn’t speak much for the rest of the day.
They tried. Gently. Quietly. Offering food. Tea. Company. I shook my head. Closed my eyes. Said I needed time. Space. Please.
Eventually, they left.
And I curled onto my side, facing the wide hospital window.
Snow drifted down in soft curtains, blanketing the rooftops of Reykjavík. Endless. Quiet. Clean. I pressed my fingertips to the cold glass.
How could I feel so much for him now knowing what he did to me then? How could the same man be the one who broke me and the one who held me like I was whole?
He had held me with reverence, like I was something rare. Something sacred.
He had kissed me with devotion, like every breath between us mattered.
He had looked at me with a kind of hunger that wasn’t just desire–but recognition. As if I was already his, and always had been.
And once, I had been.
But memory didn’t lie. And that same man had turned away from me when it mattered most. He had chosen Cassandra over me, again and again. Left me standing alone at the altar. Left me sitting with our brokenhearted son at a restaurant. All for her.
He’d let me believe I was the problem. He’d let me shatter.
And still, I had fallen for him all over again.
A sound in the hallway pulled me from the spiral.
Muted steps. Voices hushed behind the door.
I didn’t need to see to know.
His voice came next, muffled but unmistakable. Low. Tentative.
“Can I see her?”
My heart clenched.
Reflexively, I turned toward the sound. My pulse stuttered. My chest tightened with the familiar ache of wanting and warning at
once.
Then I heard her.
My mother’s voice, steady and soft and cold as stone.
“I think it’s best if you don’t.”
The hallway went quiet.
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A silence heavier than any shot One that settled into my tones.
1 didn’t speak
Didn’t reach for him. Didn’t ask her to let him in.
Part of me wanted to. Goddess, I wanted to
But I stayed still. I stayed silent.
And I turned back to the window.
And let the snow keep falling.
