Her name slips out from my lips like a prayer, because Charlie’s uncle Reggie didn’t just kill Elina, he lit a fuse, and I’ve been burning ever since.
I blink hard. Stella is tugging at my sleeve. The water is at our waists now. My hands are shaking, not from the cold, but the memory and the guilt that’s been chewing at my insides since the day Elina bled out in my arms. I want to scream. To punch through the hatch, so I do.
‘You said you’d never leave me. You promised,’I growl, but promises are paper-thin when death starts whispering. My fist pounds again. Again. Again. And something gives. A crack. More water floods in. My nails split, and there’s mud filling my mouth, but I’ll be damned if we’re dying in this hole. I owe both these women more than that. And if Mr Lewis is out there, I swear to God I hope he knows what he’s doing.
CHAPTER 19
THE CURATOR
Sal stroked my hair, and for a heartbeat I let myself believe I was safe. I was baring my soul to him – laying it out raw, hoping he’d cradle it gently. But the moment his fingers brushed through my hair, I was no longer down in the Rabbit Warren, I was back home. Knees pressed into the shag pile carpet as my mother’s fingers yanked through the knots in my hair like punishment.
Her words etched into me like scars across my skin.‘You think you’re special, don’t you?’she hissed, tugging my braid so tight my scalp burned.‘You look just like me. That’s your curse.’
I didn’t cry. I didn’t reply. I just stared at the floor, letting her bitterness braid itself into my hair.
She stopped braiding my hair soon after the tremors started. Her hands just shook too much. So I braided hers instead, whispering the same lullaby she sang to me. Pretending they didn’t sound like threats. She begged me with her eyes; hollow, yellowed, pleading eyes to help her.To end her. And I admit, during those moments, I did fantasise about crushing pills into her tea, or unplugging her oxygen machine while shouting “die mother-fucker”, but somehow it never ended that way. I don’t really know what was wrong with her. I imagine it was some degenerative disease or late-stage cancer. I never asked. She lost control of her body, her dignity, and eventually her grip on reality. And to be honest, by this stage, I didn’t really care. She was always emotionally abusive. I’m sure she never saw me as a daughter, but as a mirror – and hated what she saw. My youth, my beauty, they were both potential threats. She told me I was too pretty to be smart. Too smart to be loved.
As her body failed, her bitterness calcified. She lashed out with venom, blaming me for everything – her fading beauty, her husband’s wandering eye...to me, and the slow erosion of her dignity. She would shriek at the top of her lungs for me to brush her hair, and then slap my hand away the moment I tried.
‘You’re doing it wrong,’she spat.‘You always do it wrong.’
Still, I clung to the fragments of tenderness, the rare flickers of warmth that once made her my mother. She was, for so long, my only source of love – though by the end, it tasted more like poison than comfort.
I knew the rhythm of her breathing. I could sense the pain cresting before it reached her like a storm I forecast before the rain dropped. So when I said I miss her, I meant it. I miss the rare moments when her gaze softened, when she saw me not as a burden, but as myself. When she did braid my hair with trembling hands, the strands slipped through her fingers like water. I’d sit cross-legged on the floor, knees aching, pretending not to notice the way she looked at me – like I was the ghost of her youth, summoned to haunt her.
‘You look just like I did,’she whispered again and again.‘Before I got ruined.’I never asked what ruined her. I didn’t need to. It was written in the way her hands trembled, in the silence that followed her screams, in the mirror she refused to look into. I knew.
She lashed out again, her fingers clawing at my wrist with what little strength she had left, fuelled by the last embers of her bitter rage. The oxygen hissed beside her bed... and it reminded me she was still alive, still suffering, still hating.
I looked at her – really looked. Her face had collapsed into itself, cheekbones jutting like broken shards of glass. She swung at me, missed, and then laughed – a sound so hollow it made my skin crawl.
So I reached for the pillow. Not in anger. Not even in fear. Just a quiet instinct, like tucking her into bed for the last time. I pressed it down gently. She didn’t fight. She didn’t flinch. She just stared, as if she’d been waiting for it.
I whispered, ‘I love you.’
She didn’t say it back.
And maybe that’s why I kill bad people. Not for justice, or redemption, but to exorcise myself. Every time a man smiles like that, I see my father. Every time a woman raises her hand, I see my mother. I never believed I deserved peace. This is my penance. Black isn’t mourning, it’s rot. It’s the colour of what’s left of me. But if I can stop one scream – just one – if I can silence one bruise before it blooms, then maybe, just maybe, I’m not the monster I see in the mirror.
CHAPTER 20
THE CURATOR
I scream for Sal, but my voice barely makes it through the roar of the water pouring in through the hatch. He’s a blur of fury and desperation, mumbling incoherent words, shoulder and fists cracking against the wood again and again. His mind is elsewhere, until the wood finally gives way, groaning like a wounded animal. Water surges in. It’s cold and vicious, but Sal grabs my arm and hauls me out ofThe Rabbit Warren.The terrain is broken and slick as the rain hammers down like gunfire, stinging every inch of my skin, but I can’t cry out. I can’t give away our position. Sal’s fingers grip my arm, his touch the tether and last thread keeping me upright. Then, voices – Charlie’s gang hunting in the storm.
‘We’re sitting ducks here,’ Sal rasps. He looks at me, something unholy in his eyes. The rain eases just enough for the world to breathe again, and Sal’s eyes flick to the bushes. ‘We’ll have to hide in the mud,’ he says, teeth clenched. ‘They won’t see us.’ Cold graves, I don’t argue, because when he looked at me with all that sorrow and bone-deep terror, I knew he’d burn the whole forest just to keep me breathing. The mud is already halfway up my shins. With every step, I sink deeper. ‘We can’t outrun them,’ he pants, eyes scanning every angle like a rabbit sensing the fox’s breath. His voice drops to a whisper, ‘My dad taught me an old tracker’s trick. Mud masks body heat, hides scent, and it’s how you vanish when there’s nowhere left to run.’ He drops to his knees, fingers clawing at the ground, tearing through roots and damp soil. He smears the cold muck across his forearms, streaks of camouflage, steam rising from his breath. Behind us, twigs crunch, and my stomach churns.
‘We bury ourselves?’ I ask.
Sal doesn’t blink. ‘It’s that or we get shot.’ He leads me to a shallow, deep behind a tree. ‘Here,’ he points, clawing at the earth. ‘It’ll work. Trust me.’
We lie down together. Side by side. Skin to skin. Our bodies pressing into the soft, wet clay, matting my hair. He smears handfuls across my cheeks and arms, and I do the same for him, tracing the same earthly shield over his skin. Both our hands are shaking, fingers finally intertwining as we lie still. Boots land heavy just meters from where we lie. I can see them – Charlie and a crew member.
‘Spread out!’ Charlie barks. ‘They’re here somewhere. I swear it.’
My pulse hammers against my ribs, but Sal’s grip tightens around my hand. The boots crunch away, fading into the undergrowth. A shout. A curse. Then nothing, but the hush of dripping leaves and the throb of blood in my ears. We lie here, half-buried in a damp cradle of the forest floor. He turns his head slowly, his hand reaching up to smear mud away from my cheekbone. ‘Now, you’re using the earth itself to disappear,’ he murmurs, ‘but I still see you. I always will.’
For a moment, the clouds move. The hunters, the cold – they all dissolve beneath the weight of his gaze. And in this breathless pause, I’m not just hiding. I’m seen.Exposed. Desired. He shifts beside me, my muscles tense beneath the grime, and despite the mud clinging to us like second skins, he laughs like the world’s already on fire and he’s the one holding the match. I giggle, too. Because fear tastes like power when you stop pretending it is weakness. His eyes shimmer with madness. The kind of madness I’ve always found beautiful. The kind that says,I’ll ruin kingdoms if you ask me nicely.I kiss his knuckles like one would at a masquerade ball draped in velvet and candlelight, not hiding in a swamp. I squelch towards him, and he turns slightly as I lean into his ear, brushing my lips over the curve of his cheek, warm against the chill. ‘They don’t see us,’ I whisper, barely louder than the rustle of leaves, ‘but maybe they should.’
