I’d cried myself to sleep so often, I’d suffered severe health issues and constant sickness.
The day the psychologist came had been one of the best and worst of my short life.
Best because he spent a full week with me, diagnosing my issues through games, conversation, and justbeingwith me. And worst because he was on Marcus’s payroll. He didn’t care that I got on my knees and begged him to take me out of here. He wasn’t affected by my violent outbursts or sobs. Instead, he told my prison guards how to ensure I didn’t have another breakdown.
The key to keeping me from going completely insane was company—which was where Whisper came in—and simulated freedom. Marcus had agreed because he needed me lucid enough to bleed and breed from, but I’d refused to participate.
The one and only time I’d ventured into the domed room, I’d been sixteen or so, and failed at yet another attempt at killing myself. I’d woken from being knocked out by the vitalsync core and couldn’t stop the screams for death in my head.
I just wanted peace.
I wanted to be free.
I’d broken enough that I’d accepted those psychologist’s tricks and entered the room in a full-blown panic attack.
My hands had trembled as I’d tried to start the program. My mind had blanked because I didn’t know how any of the technology worked and there was no one there to teach me.
I’d turned catatonic and curled up on the floor instead, feeling as if I’d been buried alive—forgotten and rotting, my head pounding until I’d passed out.
I’d forgotten all about it until Rook dragged me there. I’d forgotten quite a lot, thanks to trauma erasing certain things. Year by year, my realm of tolerance grew smaller and smaller until I never ventured into the upper levels or down certain corridors anymore.
I supposed that heartless psychologist would say I suffered from agoraphobia—fearing situations and spaces that made me feel trapped, unsafe, or powerless.
My quarters were the only place in the entire estate where I’d conditioned my mind to feel the smallest resemblance of safety. Everywhere else represented twenty years of daily torture, isolation, and helplessness.
It wasn’t just my mind that’d imposed such parameters, but my body too. Each time I ventured into different parts of Cinderkeep, my system reacted with hypervigilance, waiting for pain. My pulse would kick, my heart would race, and Marcus would think I was up to no good, giving me a higher dose of agony to make me behave.
A self-fulfilling cycle that I couldn’t break free from.
Yether...
She was the first person to try to help me instead of hurt me.
The first person who spent any effort in understanding me.
The one and only person to ever care if I washappy.
And that...
Fuck.
I could survive living in hell.
I could exist in a never-ending nightmare of agony and blood, but I wouldn’t be able to survive her.
Raking my hands over my hair, I tried to stop thinking about her.
For the first time in decades, I felt different.
Alive and dead andchanging.
I felt as if I’d actually stepped foot outside this prison and tasted the flavours of freedom. Every sense in my body believed I’d travelled to a jungle. That I’d watched creatures that I’d only ever read about in books and heard sounds I never knew existed.
And I was fuckingdesperatefor more.
It woke up an emaciated part of my soul that’d long since decayed.
A primal part of me that was hungry and thirsty, savage and greedy.
