ELIANA'S POV
"You're where you belong."
The voice reached me before anything else did. I lay still for a moment, without fully opening my eyes, just letting the sound of the familiar voice settle into the air above me while my mind did the slow work of piecing together where exactly I was and how I had gotten here. Again.
The ceiling came into view first when I finally opened my eyes propely. I stared at it while the memories dropped back into place one by one, not in any order that made sense, just arriving the way memories arrived after your head had been introduced forcefully to a stone wall.
The tunnel first.
The darkness and the smell and Kael's quiet voice telling me to keep moving. Then the men pouring through the entrance. The fighting all of it, every exchange, moving through that dark space ferociously and completely because my life depended on it and I had never needed more motivation than that.
Then the click of an empty shotgun.
