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Liam’s mouth tightens into a thin line, yet his touch remains gentle as he cups my cheek. “Tell me what to do, please.”

“There’s nothing,” I whisper, the emptiness inside me growing deeper.

A soft knock interrupts the grave moment, and my bedroom door opens to reveal Vance. The sudden appearance of the doctor sends a jolt of adrenaline through me, and I sit up straight as hope crashes into my chest, tangling with a complex blend of anger and fear.

Because I don’t trust hope—not when it’s done nothing but yank me around in unabashed violence since the day I was born.

And yet…

I can’t help but ask the only question worth asking. “Did they find him?”

Vance gives his blond head a solemn shake. He normally wears his hair in a ponytail, but now it falls past his shoulders, wild and messy, like he’s been running his fingers through it all day.

“No sign of survivors,” he says quietly. “Axel’s body was recovered a few days ago, but…”

Dread bands around my chest. “But they’re still looking, right?”

Liam rises to join Vance, and my gaze darts between them, desperation cresting. No one speaks at first, and that’s when I ache for the numbness of winter air, the crash of waves, the endless dark.

The fog.

God, bring the fog back, because I can’t face the answer written in Vance’s expression—as if he’s trying to swallow the words so he won’t have to say them out loud.

“It’s been a week, Novalee.”

A week.

Seven days.

168 hours.

10,000 and some odd minutes since Sebastian’s plane went down, and my world imploded.

It feels longer.

It feels like it happened five minutes ago.

That day is a blur, just distorted images I don’t want to remember, and yet I still recall Liam and the Brotherhood ambushing me in my studio with the news. Can still smell Liam’s spicy cologne as he engulfed me in his arms. Still hear the wailing and screaming.

My screaming.

At some point, Vance sedated me, and that’s the last thing I remember about that day.

“So?” Hysteria holds my vocal cords hostage for a beat. “I don’t care if it’s been a month. He could have deployed a raft, made it to an island, or…something.”

Pity.

I despise that mask more than anything. Vance wears it now as he crouches in front of me. “They called off the search.”

A glacier fist squeezes my heart, and I want to scream against the agony. Pain floods my senses, burning my nose, pounding at my temples, coiling around my neck.

It’s too much.

I can’t do this.

The clock above the armoire counts the seconds in a stoic rhythm I can’t help but embrace.

Tick, tick, tick.