Chapter 11 Hollow Thrones

• The storm didn’t come with thunder. It came in silence—just like the way he’d once unmade her.
• She woke to another morning of cheap coffee and cracked floor tiles. The bar had let her pick up extra shifts, and she’d taken them all. Time spent working was time not remembering. Time not bleeding from the inside out.
• Every morning began the same. Shower. Coffee. Silence. A glance in the mirror to remind herself she wasn’t the same woman who wore diamonds for a man who didn’t see her. Now she wore bruises from tables too heavy to lift and tips too low to survive on.