I can’t answer. My throat won’t work.
“But,” he adds, gathering his tools, “Elliot has asked for you to attend dinner.”
My head lifts weakly. “Dinner?”
He gives a thin smile. “This house has… routines.”
The intercom crackles.
“Everyone to the dining room. Now.”
The physician wipes his hands and steps aside. “Up you go.”
I push myself upright. Pain shoots down my back with every twitch of muscle. My broken wrist throbs mercilessly. My vision swims. But I stand.
Asher appears in the doorway. “Let’s go.”
He grabs my upper arm, dragging me through the hallway. Every step sends a shock through the stitches. I clench my jaw and keep moving. Because stopping isn’t an option.
The dining room is too warm. Too elegant. Too civilized for a place built on torture. A crystal chandelier glows above a long polished table set with silverware and linen napkins, like a family dinner scene from a magazine, except everyone here looks starved and hunted.
Elliot sits at the head, calm and composed, like a man presiding over a celebration. Sophie lounges beside him, one leg crossed over the other, sipping red wine like it is the easiest night of her life. Knox leans against the doorway, arms folded, bored. Asher circles the room slowly, smiling like he is waiting for someone to slip up so he can enjoy it.
Next to me sits Miles, Sarah, Jared, and Emma. Every one of them looks like they have been drained hollow. Their cheeks have sunk inward, their hands tremble against the table, and their eyes carry the dull, exhausted glaze of people who have gone too long without real food.
Two servers enter the room carrying silver platters.
The smell reaches me before I even see the food.
It is hot and greasy, thick with rendered fat and something sweet that has burned too long under heat. Beneath it lingers another note that makes my stomach twist. The scent carries the faint copper tang of blood mixed with the heavy odor of cooked skin and marrow. There is something unmistakably wrong about it.
My stomach clenches violently.
The servers lift the lids. Steam rolls upward in dense waves. The platters hold roasted vegetables and thick slices of browned meat, the surface dark and glistening with juices that pool along the edges of the tray.
Miles leans slightly toward me and speaks barely moving his mouth.
“They never feed us like this,” he whispers. “It’s always shakes or soup. Never this.”
I shake my head once, hard.
Every instinct in my body screams at me not to touch it. I don’t know exactly what it is, but I know with absolute certainty that it is not food.
Sarah’s breathing hitches. She lunges forward first, grabbing at the meat with shaking fingers. Miles blinks rapidly as if he is trying to hold back tears while reaching for his plate. Emma doesn’t hesitate at all. She tears into the food with both hands. Jared follows silently, chewing so fast that he nearly chokes.
None of them question it. None of them slow down.
I don’t move. I don’t touch the plate sitting in front of me.
The smell thickens in my throat, heavy with that same burned sweetness that makes bile rise in the back of my mouth. It doesn’t smell like beef or pork or anything that should have been served at a table.
I shake my head.
“Don’t eat it.”
Miles stares at the plate.
His hands hover above the meat, fingers twitching as steam curls upward. Hunger has hollowed him out so badly his body leans toward the food without him realizing it. His throat works as he swallows, eyes fixed on the glistening slices.
