A lump swells in my throat, bile pressing behind it.
My fingers tremble as I pick up the oldest file from Gravemoor Asylum. My earliest days, my rawest scars. I skim the typed lines, the evaluations, the photographs, and the memories rip through the surface of my mind like claws. I shake my head, trying to shove them back down, but they surge forward anyway.
The page slips from my hand and flutters to the ground before my gaze lands on my school records. Tears burn hot as I snatch them up, flipping through the neat handwriting, the comments, the polaroids—me and William frozen in cheap film. My fingers trace the edges, shaking uncontrollably while a wave of hysteria climbs through my chest.
Flipping the last page, my eyes land on a small black box. My fingers shake as I lift the lid, and a gasp tears from my throat. Inside lies the first-ever souvenir Dante took from his first mission—a diamond-shaped trinket—then Owen’s pendant, and finally the last object, which hits me like a harsh slap to the face. I’d recognize that ring anywhere, even among a sea of similar ones. William wore it, and after his death, his brother took it. I remember seeing it in the photos he took for the university.
The air grows thick, stale, almost oily, pressing against my skin as I look around. Every direction I turn, there I am. Younger versions. Broken versions. Versions I tried to bury. It feels like stepping into a hall of mirrors—except the reflections aren’t warped glass but pieces of my past, staring back, refusing to let me look away.
Every relationship. Every mistake. Every fucking grade I received before prison, before the asylum, before everything twisted into what I became.
Just me. Everywhere.
And there’s no escape—not even if I close my eyes—because the memories claw at the inside of my skull when I do. The voices begin to stir, crawling out from the corners of old wounds,whispering, pushing, scratching. A sharp cry rips up my throat as I slap my palms against my skull, fingers digging in as if I can silence them by force. Tears streak down my cheeks without stopping.
I don’t want to see this.
I don’t want to relive what was done to me.
But the room forces it on me—every detail shoved under my nose, every memory held open like a wound I can’t close. It feels like invisible fingers are prying my eyelids wider, refusing to let me look away.
Daring me to step closer. Daring me to break.
Another strangled sound claws up my throat, and in the haze of panic, my eyes snag on something glinting beneath a pile of folders—the barrel of a gun. Paralysis tightens around my body, but I fight it, inching forward. I take a step toward it, drawn toward the weapon like it’s the only solid thing in a room full of ghosts.
Just then, the faint scrape of a door opening slices through the suffocating silence. I whip my head around, breath trapped in my throat, and there he is, standing on the far side of the room like a ghost pulled from the darkest corner of my mind.
His eyes are wide, blown with shock, pinned to me as if I’m a vision he didn’t expect to find. Sweat slicks every inch of him, glistening under the harsh, artificial lights. Drops slide down the lines of his throat, gather along his jaw, cling to his lashes.
This can’t be real.
It can’t be.
It has to be some twisted illusion, some sick joke the world decided to play on me. I cling to that thought with desperation, but the room doesn’t blur, the edges don’t soften, and Dante doesn’t fucking vanish.
He takes one hesitant step forward.
I move back instantly, instinct overriding everything else, my lower back pressing into the table until the wood digs into my skin. My hands fall behind me, and my fingertips brush the cold metal of the gun barrel. It throbs like a pulse beneath my touch.
“Estella.” My name breaks from him, ragged and heavy, dragged through gravel and grief. The sound shreds something inside me, and a sob explodes in my chest.
I shake my head, over and over, refusing what I see.
Refusing him. Refusing this room. Refusing the nightmare unfolding while I’m still awake.
I want someone to knock me out cold, to rip me from this moment so I can wake up in our hotel room with him beside me and this whole horror nothing more than a bad dream dissolving with the dawn.
But the chill on my skin is too real.
The map behind me is too real.
And Dante’s face—stripped of defenses, smeared with apology—is the cruelest part of all.
“Baby,” he breathes, voice splintering. “I can explain.”
And that’s all it takes for me to break. The hysteria that had been simmering beneath my ribs erupts, consuming me from the inside out as my thoughts ignite in a hundred directions.
I don’t even know if I want explanations. I don’t know if I can hear them.
