He stared at her for a moment, then shrugged. "Whatever. Forty-nine plus tax."
She paid cash. The same amount she'd paid that night when she thought she was being clever, thought she could outsmart a bargain made with something ancient. The register looked the same. Even the pen was the same cheap Bic, though the ink was blue now instead of black.
Room 23 was at the far end, exactly where it had been. The key stuck in the lock the same way. The door opened with the same protesting creak.
Everything was identical. The water-stained ceiling. The carpet that felt damp even when it wasn't. The bedspread with its pattern of faded seahorses that had probably been cheerful once. The bathroom door that didn't quite close properly.
Briar stood in the doorway, unable to move forward. What felt like a lifetime ago, this room had been transformed into something impossible, had been claimed by forest and fury. But looking at it now, it was just a room. Ugly and sad and utterly mundane.
She made herself walk to the bathroom. The tiles were intact, grout stained but unbroken. No sign that massive roots had burst through, splitting ceramic and porcelain. She touched the spot where the toilet had cracked, where water had sprayed everywhere before being absorbed by spreading moss.
Nothing.
Just old caulk and rust stains.
The window she'd smashed through was whole, not even a crack in the glass. She pressed her palm against it, half-expecting it to shatter at her touch, for vines to grab her wrist, for Thaine's mocking voice to tell her she was predictable.
Silence.
She sat on the bed in the exact spot where she'd woken to find her mark burning, the forest coming to claim her. The mattress sagged the same way. The springs creaked with the same tired protest. But no moss grew across the floor and no roots split the walls. No voice from everywhere and nowhere told her she was caught.
Fingers traced the place where the mark had been, pressing hard enough to hurt, trying to find some evidence that it had been real.
Nothing.
The room felt bigger than she remembered. Or maybe she felt smaller. Hollow. Like something essential had been scooped out and she was just the shell that remained, going through motions that looked like living.
Outside, cars passed on the highway. Real cars with real people living real lives. Inside, she sat in a room that had once been transformed into something impossible, looking for proof that any of it had happened.
Her phone buzzed. Allegra again.
Mom says you need space but are you okay? Love you
She stared at the message. Love you. So simple and uncomplicated. From someone who would never know what that love had cost.
Love you too. I'm okay.
The lie came easily. Everything was a lie now. She was okay. She was fine. She was handling things. She was moving forward. All lies told to make others comfortablewhile she sat in a cheap motel room, looking for evidence of magic in a world that had none.
She lay back on the bed, stared at the ceiling where the stains made the same pattern as before and listened as the heater made the same rattling wheeze. Everything was exactly as it had been, as if the forest had never come, as if she'd never been marked, claimed, and then forgotten.
As if none of it had ever been real at all.
The sun set eventually, darkness filling the room. She didn't turn on the lights. Just lay there in the dark, in the same room where she'd been captured, now capturing herself in a different kind of prison. One made of memory and loss and the terrible possibility that she was the only one who remembered any of it had happened.
Tomorrow she'd find an apartment, maybe enroll in school, try to build some kind of life.
But tonight?
Tonight she lay in Room 23 of the Sea Breeze Motel, pressing her unmarked wrist to her chest where warmth no longer lived, and tried to convince herself that forgetting would be a mercy.
She failed.
Chapter thirty-nine
One Month Later
The alarm buzzed at 5:30 PM, pulling Briar from the restless half-sleep she'd fallen into after her morning shift at the hospital. She silenced it immediately, already regretting the twenty-minute nap. Sleep brought dreams, and dreams brought memories of places that couldn't exist.
