Chapter 303

• Three days had passed since Karen and Linda’s deaths, but the memories refused to leave Thalassa. They lived in her head, vivid and relentless, surfacing at the worst times—when she tried to sleep, when she played with Tessa, or even when she sat in silence.
• The fire. The screams. The burnt remains.
• By the time the authorities had arrived twenty minutes later, there had been nothing left but blackened skeletons. The fire had consumed everything. Linda’s body was charred, a shell of the powerful woman she had once been. Karen’s body, too, had been unrecognizable, save for the remnants of her frame.