Prologue / Teaser
The airport smelled of coffee and disinfectant, too bright and loud after the slow rhythm of the island. I drifted through it in a kind of daze, Felix’s handprint lingering on my wrist where he’d squeezed too tightly at the port. I’d told them not to come inside, that goodbyes are cruel enough without the sterile glare of departure gates, but still I looked back twice before security swallowed me.
The first flight was short, inland to Athens, but it felt like a chasm opening beneath me. I pressed my forehead against the oval window, the sea glittering below, impossibly blue, the surface sippled by the winds. My chest hurt in the way it does when you know you’re leaving something behind that you might never find again.
The long flight to London was worse. Trapped in a row of strangers, the hum of the engines a lullaby I refused to surrender to. When we hit turbulence, my fingers clenched hard around the armrest, and for a moment I imagined it was Felix’s steadiness I was holding on to. But it wasn’t. It was just me, alone, hurtling back to a city of rain and deadlines.
And when the lights of London finally glittered beneath the rain, something sharp twisted in me because this was home, yes, but it no longer felt like the only one.
London felt heavier than the island, like the air itself was made of stone and glass. The first morning back, I woke to sirens instead of cicadas, to the rumble of buses instead of waves. My suitcase still sat unopened in the corner of my small flat, sand clinging stubbornly to its wheels, as if refusing to let me forget.
And as my phone buzzed with their names lighting up the screen—first Felix, then Ariadne, I realized the distance might not break them. It might only sharpen the ache.
