Funny. I never thought Sabine had a pretty voice.
Now, I do.
“Is this where you’re keeping him?” she asks.
I can’t see her yet. She’s still at the top of the stairs.
Then he answers, voice soft with something that curdles my stomach.
“You look beautiful.”
It’s reverent.
It’s wrong.
It’s the first time I’ve ever heard him sound breathless, like the sight of her is holy. Like she’s some divine vision he’s summoned into his sick little temple.
But this isn’t worship.
This is ruin.
He’s not in awe. He’s intoxicated, drunk on control, on the illusion that she came here for him.
I yank against the rope again.
My wrist splits open even further, skin peeling like wet bark, and something gives. Not the rope, me. There’s a white-hot bolt that shoots up my arm, stealing my breath. I clench my jaw until my molars grind.
But I don’t stop.
Because something’s changed.
The rope is slipping.
Sweat. Blood. Desperation. They’re working for me now, softening the knots, slicking the fibers. If I stay still, if I timethis right, if I let him keep playing his puppet master fantasy just some time longer…
Then I can move.
Then I can fight.
And if God’s even halfway listening—
I can kill.
Iwillkill.
I’ve hated the monster inside me for a long time. I didn’t want to accept it. I kept swinging between pretending to be a normal man and convincing myself I’d never fit into society again. That I’m just broken.
But now I see it clearly.
Monsters exist because sometimes they’re the only ones who can stop another.
I chained mine. Starved it. Tried to bury it. But now it claws at the inside of my ribs, pacing, snarling, begging to be released. And for the first time since this hell began, I welcome it.
Because I’ll be damned if I don’t save my sister.
Condemned forever.
Sabine’s footsteps reach the bottom stair.
