Chapter 3: Tangled Hearts

The sun pierced Silverridge’s lingering fog, casting a pale glow over the jagged peaks, but the storm in Amy Harper’s heart raged on. Behind the counter of Pages by the Peak, her auburn hair caught the morning light, her hands fidgeting with a book as she wrestled with the pull of two women: Suzanne’s wild, otherworldly fire and Alice’s vibrant, grounding warmth. At 32, Amy’s scars—from a city childhood shadowed by her mother’s addiction, a betrayal at 16 by a family friend, and Claire’s manipulative love—pulsed with every heartbeat, a reminder of the trust she’d fled to Silverridge to rebuild. The bookshop, its shelves heavy with novels and scented with cedar, felt less like a haven and more like a battlefield where her desires clashed with her fears. {Suzanne’s kiss lit me up, but Alice’s touch feels like home. How can I want them both when I’m terrified of losing everything?}She reflected on the thin places lore, wondering if her heart was a liminal space, caught between two loves.

Suzanne had become a constant, her leather-clad figure a nightly specter at the shop, her jade-green eyes blazing with a hunger that mirrored Amy’s own. The 35-year-old enigma carried a shadowed past: born in the Veil, a liminal realm of shifting hallways and courtyards where worlds bled together, daughter of a human mother and a father whose reality-shifting powers coursed through her veins. At 16, her sister’s envy-fueled betrayal had led hunters—enforcers of balance between realms—to slaughter her mother and drive her father into hiding, leaving Suzanne to wander for 19 years, her power a magnet for pursuit. Amy was her anchor, tethering her to a world she’d never dared call home. Last night’s rift on the ridge, a chilling glimpse of the hunters, had deepened their bond, but Amy’s heart wavered. {She’s a storm I can’t resist, but her shadows scare me. Can I be her home when I’m barely whole?}Suzanne shared more about the Veil’s culture, the way envy corrupted its inhabitants, adding depth to her backstory.