The world tilts on its axis. It can’t be true. It’s a lie. A desperate, last-ditch lie to sow confusion. But then, how the fuck did she even know anything has happened to Ines? She’s been locked away, far from any whispering words, or secrets. “You expect me to believe that? You, who has advocated for the purge of our kind for decades?”
“Believe what you want,” she spits, a flicker of her old fire returning. “But while you’ve been down here, peeling the skin from my hands, the real threat has been growing. The ones who attacked Ines, they call themselves the ‘Unbound’. They think we’re too cautious. Too stuffy. Too… political. They want a war, Antonio. A real, bloody, burn-it-all-down war. And you, you’ve handed it to them.”
A cold knot tightens in my stomach. The Unbound. The name means nothing to me but the conviction in her ravaged voice, it has the ring of truth. It feels like a door I never knew existed has just been flung open, revealing a deeper, darker labyrinth behind the one I thought I was navigating.
“Who leads them?” I demand, my mind racing, reassembling the puzzle with this new, terrifying piece.
She laughs again, a hollow, broken sound. “You think they have a leader like me? They’re a hydra. You cut off one head, two more grow. They’re young. Zealous. They think our century-old conflict is a quaint parlour game. They want to see the world burn for their new god.”
Her eyes lock with mine, and for the first time, I see something other than pain or hatred in them. I see a shred of pity, and that is infinitely worse.
“You’ve been thrashing the wrong snake, Antonio. The one you should be watching is already in your garden.”
Has it all been for nothing?
Has my vengeance been directed at a shadow while the real enemy moved freely in the light?
No, no. I don’t believe it. I don’t…
I spring forward, wrapping my hands around her bony neck. “Tell me,” I snarl. “Fucking tell me. Give me the name…”
She kicks out, she jerks as I start squeezing out the air from her lungs and just as her eyes start to roll back her mouth moves, her lips respond and she whispers something so quietly I almost miss it.
“Ezekial Sewell.”
3 years and 10 months until auction
When the magnetic lock unseals, the sound it makes is a hiss.
Mrs Vale enters first, as she always does, not because she leads but because she has to be in charge here, and has to ensure everyone knows it too. Her body is a set of straight lines drawn with a ruler: shoulders squared by good tailoring, a waist that does not dare to swell, a neck set on a hinge so it can tip and take note.
She wears navy today, a suit that eats all the artificial light. Her hair is the white of teeth bleached too often. She glances not at me but at the corners, at the camera, at the bed I have made; inspecting.
“Stand,” she says, quiet and precise, like the word might bruise if raised. “Hands at your sides, Miss Ratcliffe. Face the door.”
I do as I’m told, setting my hands the way one sets cutlery in a place setting. My palms face my thighs, and each fingertip knows its neighbour. I face the door because it is easier than facing her.
“Remember,” she says. “No raised voice. No dramatics.”
I remember all the rules. It’s hard not to when there is nothing to your existence but rules. It has been more than a year now, and I remember everything. I am a model prisoner. The perfect image of submission.
I never beg.
I never run at the door when it opens.
I do not ask to see my mother.
I do not say my father’s name, even in my head.
Someone else comes in behind her, and more someone else’s, a small procession of dark suits and polished shoes. The temperature drops a half-degree. There is the scent of wool from garment bags and the fine chemical of new leather. It makes me think of chapels, and of morgues.
He enters last, of course. The man I used to believe would be my husband, by contract if not by affection. The man I have not seen in more than a year, and yet could sketch his profile with my eyes closed: the cut of the jaw, the pale clean shaven cheeks.
Gideon Harrow. The name sits on my tongue like a bad taste lingering too long. I do not speak it. He has always looked like winter distilled into a man. His irises are a colour I used to call grey until I discovered that grey has a hundred names in this place.
Behind him floats a man with a tablet and a stylus, a man who is almost decorative, and another one with a leather folio so soft it practically begs you to reach out and touch it.
Mrs Vale takes up a post near the foot of the bed, directly where I would have to look to find comfort.
