𝐋𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐥𝐲 𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐬; 𝐑𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐦𝐞𝐞 𝐂𝐮𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐧

00 | 𝐋𝐚 𝐃𝐚𝐧𝐳𝐚 𝐃𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐞 𝐎𝐦𝐛𝐫𝐞

𝚉 𝙴 𝚁 𝙾

THERE'S A PARTICULAR KIND OF SILENCE THAT ONLY AN ISLAND CAN HOLD. It isn't just the absence of noise, but something more—something old, something watchful. Like the stones remember. Like the sea has secrets and is too tired to whisper them anymore.

L'Isola Rossa is beautiful. Breathtaking, even, in that lonely, romantic way my mother adores. There's ivy that wraps itself around the old stone balcony like it's trying to hold it together. Wild roses claw at the garden wall. The air always smells faintly of salt and lavender. Some mornings I think it's paradise. Most days, I call it a prison with a sea view.

I stretch my leg up against the barre, toes pointed, arms poised. I breathe out slowly—though I don't need to breathe—and try not to look at the mirror. My mother says ballet is a language of control. Discipline. Grace. And magic, if done with love. But all I see in the glass is someone trying too hard to be calm. Someone pretending she didn't rip apart half the orchard last week because a memory hit too hard. Because of a dream I didn't ask for.

I close my eyes and I feel. My gift is chaos. Subtle, inconvenient chaos. It swells with every flicker of emotion—envy, grief, longing. And sometimes, if I'm not careful, it seeps out of me like ink into water. My father tells me I should learn to regulate it. That understanding emotion is the first step to mastering it. But he doesn't feel things the way I do. I don't think anyone does.

Except her.

The name tastes forbidden even in my thoughts.

Renesmee.

Ten years is a long time. Ten years since I left Forks, since I tore away from the only thing that felt like mine, like home. I told everyone it was wanderlust. That I wanted to find my own place, carve out my identity, escape the suffocating embrace of coven life. They believed me. Or maybe they wanted to. No one asked twice.

Not even her.

I laugh bitterly under my breath. The sound is like glass cracking in a quiet room. No one knows why I really left. Not my father, who watches me with the eyes of a soldier pretending to be a poet. Not my mother, who loves so gently it makes my fangs ache. And not Bella—my mother's Sorella di Sangue, bonded by more than time and tragedy. She cried when we left. I didn't.

I couldn't.

Because if I'd said goodbye to Renesmee, I wouldn't have left at all.

I never told her we were mates. I don't think she knew. Maybe she did, in the way animals know storms before they come. But she never said a word, and neither did I. We were too young. She was warm and curious and dazzling in ways that made my skin itch. And I was always staring too long, too entranced, trying not to fall apart in front of her.

She gave me a bracelet once. Silver, delicate, with little charms that jangled when I moved. A wolf, a book, a swan, a snowflake, a pointe shoe, and a heart carved from onyx. Christmas, ten years ago. I still wear it. Stupid. Pathetic. I tell myself it's habit, that I like the sound. But every now and then I catch myself running my thumb over the wolf and I feel her. Like sunshine through fog. Like something lost that still wants to be found.