I flip open the large binder with my shirt sleeve. Inside is at least ten years’ worth of madness, organized by date with notes in the margins. Analysis. Comments. Plans.
The very last page is a recent addition, dated two days ago.
They’re coming. Just as I planned. And then, together, we’ll finally be free.
“Valen.” Chief’s voice is tight. “You need to see this.”
He’s standing beside the bookshelf, pulling a table aside. Behind it is a small door, painted to blend with the wall, and easy to miss if you didn’t know what you were looking for.
“That’s…that’s my room.” Clover’s voice is void of all emotion. It’s so soft and eerily flat that I can’t breathe.
Chief tugs the door open, and the smell that wafts out makes me gag.
Not decay. Not death.
But obsession.
“Don’t,” I start to say, but Clover’s already pushing past me, into the hidden room.
She gasps.
Then she screams.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CLOVER
The room is small.
Smaller than I remember.
Or maybe I’ve just gotten bigger, it’s hard to tell.
But everything else—everything else is exactly the same.
I claw at my throat. The phantom pains of thirst feel visceral now as I spin in a circle.
The concrete floor. The bare walls. The single bulb hanging from the ceiling, casting harsh shadows that make the space feel even more claustrophobic.
This was my life.
The place Terra would lock me in when I displeased her. When I existed too colorfully in her perfectly ordered world. When she needed to ensure that Valen would return.
I was her tool, but I never resented Valen for it. Not even once.
She used me as leverage, her insurance policy. Every time Valen stepped out of line, I paid the price. Every time he tried to protect me, Terra found a way to use that protection against us both.
I’d forgotten about this room.
No, that’s not entirely true. It comes to me in my nightmares. I just forced myself to forget each time the sun rose. I’d bury it so deep that only my subconscious could access it.
But my body remembers.
My lungs remember.
The way the air tastes here. Stale and wrong. Like fear has been fermenting in the darkness, just waiting to draw me back in.
My eyes remember.
