My throat felt raw.
My stomach churned. And yet, I forced myself forward.
I lifted my hand and knocked, slow and deliberate.
“Come in,” his voice answered—calm, measured, like he had been waiting.
I swallowed, my legs quivering beneath the ache, and pushed the doors open.
Chapter 11
ELENA
Eight days had crawled by.
Not in the way time usually passes—quiet, unnoticed, slipping through your fingers—but in slow, deliberate increments that forced you to feel every single second.
Eight days since Vincenzo ordered me to report to his bedroom every night at 10:00 p.m.
Eight days since he had decided that my nights belonged to him.
The routine had become something I could measure my life by.
The door closing behind me at night.
The silence.
His presence.
Eight days of waking up tangled in sheets that smelled like him.
I stood beneath one of the towering obsidian pillars that lined the corridor of the Crimson Chamber within the Black Veil Society Academy.
Arms crossed. Back straight.
Watching.
The academy stretched out before me in its full, intimidating design.
According to the academy’s one-year training syllabus, the first month was meant to be theory.
Codes. Hierarchies. Loyalty. Tradecraft.
Endless rules designed to strip you down and rebuild you into something useful.
But the remaining eleven months—that was where the academy showed its true face.
Everyone knew it.
By winter, half of us would be broken.
Limping.
Barely holding on.
But I refused to be one of them.
I wouldn’t break.
