It didn't take long for Evey to come back to herself again, carrying that overwhelming sense of something wrong right back with her into consciousness again. She was on her feet almost immediately afterward. If that hadn't been a wise choice, it was nevertheless navigable, and with her hand on the back of the couch for a few seconds, she managed through it.
This place was not familiar to her. A far cry from Preston's spartan apartment - from any apartment she'd ever seen, even in London - Evey had no idea where she might be. Was it a hotel? It was so large. She felt like she might break something. She felt like she made the place dirty by breathing.
Evey looked back at the couch where she'd woken and saw the blanket. And in the middle of asking herself who covered her, she remembered. A sound from what looked like the kitchen drew her forward and she stopped in the entryway.
Her mouth was dry. She leaned her shoulder against the entryway wall and stared at Aidan as if he were a ghost. She supposed he was, at that.
"You died," she said. "That world ate you alive."
She'd lost so many tears for him. She'd not thought there were any left. That made two things she'd been wrong about in an entire week. Her lips curled at the corners with nothing like mirth. "You died," she said again, more thickly than before. "Over a year ago." A lifetime ago.