Sophie leans in, her breath disturbingly calm against my neck while mine stutters out in choked bursts.
“You think you’re strong?” she whispers. “Let me show you what strength actually looks like.”
She yanks my arm higher, forcing it toward an angle it was never meant to reach.
My grief-flooded mind doesn’t catch up in time. Something inside my wrist strains. Then it gives out.
Pain shoots up my forearm—white-hot and immediate.
“Don’t,” I gasp, the word crashing into a sob. “Please don’t—”
She twists.
SNAP.
The sound comes first, sickening and sharp. Then the scream rips out of me, too loud to hold in. My vision shatters into white. The pain tears straight through my wrist and blooms into my chest, my throat, my skull. I collapse forward onto my knees, curling around the broken joint instinctively.
The world swims in and out, doubled and warped. Every pulse feels like glass grinding through bone.
Somewhere off to the side, Knox mutters, “Ouch,” like it is a joke.
But my wrist is broken. I know it. I can feel the shape of it, wrong, twisted, useless. Sophie has shattered it like she is snapping a twig.
Asher shakes his head like he isdisappointed.
But their voices feel far away, muffled under the roar in my skull:
He’s dead. He’s dead. Dead. Dead. DEAD—
Sophie stands over me, breathing evenly, wiping her palms on her pants.
“When you break the rules, I break bones.”
Everything sounds underwater. My heart is breaking in a rhythm I can’t stop. My breath shakes out in shallow, panicked bursts. My body trembles around a grief too large to fit inside my ribs.
Seth is dead. Grant confirmed it.
No.
No, he’s too strong.
He promised he wouldn’t leave me. He promised.
Sophie crouches, face level with mine.
“You point another weapon at Elliot, and I’ll break more than your wrist.”
I try to glare at her, but my vision blurs, edges pulsing, pain and grief crashing into each other until I don’t know where one ends and the other begins.
She stands and turns to Knox and Asher like she's bored with the whole performance. “Take her downstairs, she’s done being a guest.”
Something inside me cracks.
“No,” I whisper, voice trembling. “Please—John said—”
“I don’t give a fuck what John said,” Knox cuts in. “You broke the rules. You’re not a guest anymore.”
He grabs me under the arm and yanks me upright.
