She shifted in her sleep, pressing closer, and he forced himself to breathe. It didn't matter. Couldn't matter. Even if she was Kira, even if fate had decided to play the cruelest joke imaginable, it changed nothing about their situation.
Get her to Kilfaire. Keep her alive. Complete the job.
But his fingers still traced that familiar tear. Rell found himself hoping—against all logic, against every lesson he'd learned about the world—that he was wrong.
But what if you're not?
She obviously didn't remember him—no surprise there. The Snatchers had their methods. Memory potions. Turn the merchandise into a "clean slate" for the buyers. Wipe away everything that made themthemand leave behind empty vessels ready to be filled with whatever their new owners wanted.
He'd heard the bastards talking about it, laughing about it, like erasing a child's entire existence was just another part of the business.
Elora wouldn't remember. But shecould.
Rell wasn't well-versed in alchemy—left that shit to people who had the patience for measuring and mixing. But The Hive used memory potions regularly enough. Severance serums, recall enhancers, neural scramblers. If there were potions to steal memories, there had to be ways to bring them back.
But what would knowing change?
The question carved through him with surgical precision. Would it make him feel less like a complete failure? Less haunted by the ghost of a nine-year-old girl with sunshine in her eyes and defiance in her voice? Would it wash away the years of wondering, the sleepless nights spent cataloging every way he could have done things differently?
Kira's ghost had followed him almost as relentlessly as his sister's. At least with his sister, he'd gotten answers, eventually. Closure, if you could call watching someone you loved choose their cage over freedomclosure.But Kira? She'd just... vanished. Another casualty of his incompetence, another name on the list of people he'd failed to save.
If Elora was Kira, if she'd clawed her way out of that hell and somehow ended up here, trusting him with her sleep, her safety, her first real choice—
You need to know.
The certainty settled in his chest like an arrow finding its mark. Not want.Need.Because nine years of wondering was nine years too many, and because the alternative—spending the rest of his life seeing Kira's ghost—would drive him insane.
Chapter 39
Symond
Moonlight. A shabby mattress. Nails digging into his flesh like claws. The smell of Gerard’s soap, cheap citrus and clove.
“You’ll learn to stop flinching,” Gerard said, drenched in smug superiority.
The pressure on Symond’s back relented for a heartbeat, and he twisted beneath it, hoping to slip free. Futile. Gerard had a grip like iron, and no amount of bucking or twisting was going to change that. He was a goddamn vice.
Gerard leaned in closer, exhaling hot breath against Symond's ear. "It’s alright. Soon, you’ll enjoy it," he whispered, reveling in the power he held over the young man beneath him. Gerard adjusted his position to press himself more intimately against Symond's body.
Despite himself, Symond couldn't suppress his own arousal, and he hated himself for it. The physical sensations were too intense, too overwhelming. He tried to ignore the pleasure coursing through him, but every touch and caress Gerard bestowed upon him served as a reminder that he was trapped, controlled by this man who reveled in every moment of their twisted encounter.
“That’s a good boy,” Gerard purred.
Symond’s breath hitched, his mind screaming against the betrayal of his own body, the way his muscles slackened, the way he sank into the inevitable. It made his stomach churn, a wave of nausea mixing with the bitter taste of shame. He wanted to shout, to curse, to claw out from beneath Gerard’s weight and never look back.
Instead, he lay there, his body going limp, his eyes squeezing shut as he tried to will himself somewhere else. Anywhere else.
∞∞∞
Symond woke up with a jolt, choking on the stale air of his bedroom. He sat up, clutching the worn blanket to his chest, trying to chase away the lingering echoes of the dream. No. The memory. His heart hammered like it always did after nightmares of Gerard. He ran a shaky hand through his hair, damp with sweat.
Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he reached for the bottle on the floor. The alcohol burned his throat, a welcome distraction from the other sensations clinging to his skin, the ones that made bile rise. He leaned his head back, staring up at the splintered ceiling, and counted the cracks until his pulse slowed.
It was always the same. The bad nights, the memories clawing their way up from the depths he tried to bury them in. He shoved the bottle aside, there was no point to it. The Institute. Gerard. Thorn. They’d taken everything. Drinking didn’t numb it. Fighting only got him in trouble. Sleep was an invitation for the past to chew him up and spit out a more fractured soul.
He needed to forget.
Thememory of the torture room played in his mind like a stuck melody—the way the prisoner had gone quiet the moment the potion touched his tongue. Like something had been lifted from behind his eyes.
