Sacrosanct. It was familiar as the name of the city echoes within her thoughts. Truthfully, she was surprised to find herself here again at all. After what had happened here, it has shaken her so much to the blue-eyed blonde's core that she seemed wildly incapable of escaping the memories which always seemed to be following her like shadows. They found her regardless of where she was. She had hoped that moving back home to Willowhaven and living with her parents would have healed the scars from her past... but it hadn't. They found her in the comforts of her childhood bedroom at night, slipping through the cracks of her window as she slept, taking any dreams she may have had and tearing them apart until only the nightmares remained. She'd would wake up either screaming or crying, drenched in sweat or salty tears. Of course, at the sound of her distress, her mother or father would very nearly be racing into her room and wrap her up in their arms to try and comfort Beylani. And, it worked for a little while. Until they let go. She would not be able to find sleep again that night, curled up tightly within the familiar scent of her blankets, slender fingers clutching the fabrics fiercely as though she feared it would all happen again... that Cass would come back from the dead and find her, lock her away in that empty room, and run that obsidian blade through her pale skin again and again and again... Fear would grip her heart as viciously as it had those seemingly endless days she'd spent imprisoned, and she would find it almost impossible to breathe. She remembers wondering if that was what drowning might feel like...

But it wasn't always her captor who haunted the blue-eyed blonde. It seemed that no matter how hard she tried - and gods how she has tried - to forget his predatory hazel gaze, the way his lips would twist into a devilish smile that once made her weaker than anything she'd known before her death nearly two years ago, or how the tenor tones of his voice whispered into her ear as he towers over the petite woman from behind would practically have her trembling, she just couldn't. Whenever she would look at the camera he had gifted her once because of her foolishness resulting in the destruction of her first one, her heart shattered like glass crashing against the floor beneath her all over again. When it wasn't Cass sneering down at her as he ended her mortal life, it was his lips touching her own in a passionate kiss as snow fell silently around them. It was his less than innocent touch brushing against the softness of her flushed cheek as he removed sunshine hair from her eyes of summer sky so that she could see him perfectly. It was his scent surrounding her when he pulled her slender body into him, his strong arms wrapping around her as a large bat-like appendage hides them from the light which had poured into the warm cabin she knew was still nestled within the trees just a small walk away from his cabin in a world so far from this one. She remembers the tears that fell from her tired eyes as she wept the night she'd told him to leave, how it felt as though she'd lost everything when she now believes she might not have had anything at all to begin with. You foolish, fanciful girl. You knew better.

Those were the sleepless nights where screams of fear did not awaken her. No, those were the nights where she woke up crying as she relived that heartbreak yet again. One would think that, after all this time, his face would have become blurry, or perhaps she might have forgotten the way his strong hands once felt wrapped around her own. Maybe she couldn't quite recall how his voice could sound like velvet when he murmured or the snarl in his voice as he ended the vampire who'd nearly killed her the first time. Some would even say that she shouldn't be able to remember it all so perfectly, the way that the sunlight in Somnia dance in his dark hair always so perfectly combed and styled or the way he hardly had to do anything at all to make her heart skip a beat. How bold he'd been... and how bold she'd become beneath his hazel gaze. The Winter Solstice Festival, her twenty-first birthday, the scarf she'd made him for christmas, the cabin he'd had made just for her in the world he'd made for the faes seeking sanctuary... she remembers it all. But, most of all, what she remembers is how she'd loved him, and how they'd fought the last time they'd seen each other the way they were when they'd first met. She remembers how he'd not just broken her heart, but rather, utterly shattered it. She doesn't know which hurt more, the day she died and the torture she'd endured... or knowing that he hadn't loved her like she'd so foolishly allowed herself to believe. As she walks those familiar streets on the southern side of the city, she can feel each and every beat of her heart ache more than the last within her breast.

The afternoon sun catches within her golden-blonde hair ever so slightly curled as the young woman makes her subconscious way to the large buildings in the distance and yet she can hardly feel its warm as it kisses her skin. At first, she hadn't realized just how lost within her own mind she'd been, finding that her feet had taken her towards the park, and it had been the sudden jerk of memories she has tried all this time to forget that have Beylani turning sharply on her heels and heading away from the trail-head which she knew undoubtedly led through the gentle, grass-covered hills spotted with trees and benches, of couples holding hands and smiling wistfully at one another... Instead, baby blues see pristine wooden fences and perfectly painted building around a large stable. For as long as she'd called Sacrosanct her home, the blue-eyed blonde hadn't really explored this place. It had been an equestrian stable once, or so she'd heard. But it seemed to be different than she'd expected. It seemed silly, really, for her to think that the paint would be chipped and faded from the unrelenting sun that has surely beat down upon the structures here as it did the local shops and cracked pavement beneath her white tennis shoes. Chances were this place was looked after very well by someone with a fair amount of money, or perhaps it was owned by owned by a family who leased out the stalls and pastures. Either one could have easily been a possibility. It was nothing like the barns and stables in her small countryside hometown where the buildings showed their age. Beylani always loved those worn barns. They always seemed to tell a story.

She walks up to one of the fences where a handsome dark bay horse and its rider occupy one of the paddocks. She tries not to be intrusive as she watches, even though she can see that she was not the only one observing the pair. On the opposite side, there were a few other people, but none whose faces the young fae woman recognized. There is both a comfort and a nervousness in this knowledge, happy to know that Ellie wasn't among them for fear that every emotion the blue-eyed blonde has barely managed to suppress would come crashing around her uncontrollably at the sight of the honey-blonde girl not much younger than herself. And yet, they were strangers. She did not know who they were, or what they were. She was still working all of that out, all the scents she never noticed before or how she could hear the softest of sounds... while almost always forgetting about the soft point to her ears hidden beneath her gently curled blonde locks that cascaded over her shoulders. Still her mind tries to block out what happened, what she was now. None of it was anything she ever wanted to remember or be reminded of. But, as she looks across the way at the other speculators, they hardly seem to notice that she's there. Maybe, hopefully, she appeared to be just another face in a sea of faces. Just maybe, she was just some young woman in a white tank top and faded blue bahama jean shorts admiring how effortlessly the horse and its companion moved together. She steps closer to the fence now, resting a hand upon the dark wood, a soft breeze brushing against her skin as she simply watches the scene before her.

Once more, Beylani pretends that she is what she so desperately wished she could be again.