Aria_Solstice

Iris Wren has spent years holding the pieces together—after losing her family, after watching her brother die, after becoming the adult in a home with a guardian too shattered to speak most days. The world thinks she’s doing fine. They don’t know she works three jobs, can’t sleep without the closet light on, and draws the same pair of brown eyes in every sketch.
Lucian is the only thing that makes sense. He understands her silence. Knows how to find her when she hides. Says the things no one else does. They meet at the edge of her breaking point, when she's numb and just starting a new school. No one questions him. Not her teachers, not the barista who takes both their orders, not even her.
But as the year unfolds, as she begins to connect with a classmate who refuses to let her vanish, and as Lucian begins glitching in ways that feel off, Iris starts to question what’s real.
The truth is simple, devastating, and silent.
Lucian never existed.
But the pain he helped her survive? That was always real.

Table of Darling, You Were Never There

Table of contents

Volume 1