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“Think about it. I’ll give you one day.”

The wind moves between us, lifting the hem of my dress against my thighs.

“And if you decide not to join me,” he says, “I’ll make one phone call to Mommy and Daddy, and they’ll drag you straight back to Des Moines.”

The entire world stills around me.

I stare at him, breathing too fast.

He knows exactly where to press, what hurts me the most.

Hatred flashes white-hot through me. Deal with his stupid Trials or be returned to my prison. As if there’s any choice.

What’s worse is that beneath that hatred, my mind shifts to where it shouldn’t go.

Because even now, after the threat, after the humiliation of what he wants from me, some traitorous part of my body still feels the echo of his hands. The force of him catching me. Being wanted with a kind of hunger I’ve never known.

I hate that too.

He steps closer one last time, close enough for his warmth to surround me completely.

“One day, angel.”

Then he turns and walks into the trees like he didn’t just shove my whole life towards something monstrous.

I remain standing alone at the edge of the bluff, the wind moving through my hair.

One day.

A countdown to the choice between two evils.

I look out at the tower in the distance, then back to the Sacred Spirit Church, the cemetery, and the life I already know I can never return to.

Nothing feels safe. Not my parents. Not the Boltons. Not Edwin.

Not even my own body, which still aches with humiliating warmth from his touch.

Shadow Bluff might be filled with hidden dangers, but home never offered protection.

CHAPTER 17

EDWIN

Iwalk until the trees thin, and the world opens into my mother’s moon garden. It waits for me like a memory too vain to die. Pale stones. Uncomfortable iron chairs gone silver in the dark. Flowers shining under the night sky as if they were planted for the dead instead of the living. A sanctuary for ghosts.

The air is cool enough to sink into my lungs. Sweet, too. Jasmine. Moonflower. All the nocturnal things she loved because they opened only after sunset. My mother used to say real beauty bloomed in darkness, and anything that needed daylight was only pretending to be alive.

Frogs and insects fill the garden with white noise. A constant hum. The earth trying not to feel empty.

I stop near the center and tip my head back. The clouds have finally broken apart. Stars burn through in scattered clusters.

A luna moth drifts into view, pale green wings moving in soft, ghostly beats. It circles once above me, then settles on a moonflower, fragile enough to look imagined.

Delicate like Zaiya when I held her over the bluff, trembling so hard I thought she might break. But she didn’t. She clung to me like her life mattered. She fought even though she had spent years being taught not to.

Mist gathers low between the flowers. I never believed in spirits until I needed to believe my mother hadn’t simply stepped off a cliff and vanished into nothing.

I straighten my spine. “Are you still here?”