My body is stiff with terror, frozen in a cold, gut-wrenching compliance. The stove is sizzling louder, flames licking at the edges of the pan, and the kitchen is starting to fill with steam and smoke, curling around the room. The smell of scorched bread fills my nostrils, bitter and acrid, making my stomach clench. Their breakfast is ruined. I’ll have to make it all over again.
“Do you understand, Snow?” Steven says, and my gaze snaps to him, his face devoid of emotion, and I nod in response, my hair pulling against Dash’s tight hold on me. “Say it, slut!”
“I-I…understand.” My voice comes out in a choke, thin and fractured, as though it has to claw its way up my throat. Instinct begs me to clear it, to steady myself, to gather the scattered pieces of whatever I have left of my dignity. I slipped. For just a moment, I let them see exactly what they wanted to see. That they still have power to touch the parts of me I vowed to myself I’d try to bury.
They want me defenseless.
At their mercy.
A brokenthingwithout claws.
Something small enough to hold between their dirty, disgusting fingers. So that is what I will be. To save myself,that’s exactly what I will be to them. Something inside me loosens. Not my chains, not Dash’s grip on me, but the final thread tying me to the woman in this kitchen. I feel it slipping through my fingers, that fragile tether to anger, to fear, to the hope that has carried me this far. The hope of being rescued. Found. The hope of escaping.
I let it go.
Not because they’ve taken it. But because they will never have it.
Have me.
Deep inside my mind, somewhere beyond the reach of their hands, there is a place they cannot follow. A quiet forest with no doors, no windows, no sound but the wind. I step into it carefully, like someone retreating from the rain, and close the world behind me.
The woman in the kitchen is still there. She breathes. She moves. She obeys. But she is not me. I feel the distance between us clearly, as if I’ve stepped outside my own skin and left her sitting here beneath the weight of their eyes.
She will do what they want. She will bow her head and keep quiet. She will cook their food, answer when spoken to, and never let the fear in her heart reach her face.
She will endure. And she will survive.
Because that is what she is for now. A vessel ofendurance. A body that bends so the mind does not have to break.
And I will remain where they cannot touch me, folded safely in the marsh, where the air is cool and heavy with the scent of damp earth, wildflowers, and meadow. Where trees stand tall and silent, their branches closing overhead like strong, protective hands. In that quiet place, the world is distant and muffled, as though listening from underwater.
Their voices cannot follow me there.
Their hands cannot reach me.
The woman in the kitchen, she belongs to them. But the rest of me is hidden, waiting.
Waiting for the day the path opens up.
Waiting for the day I find my way home.
CHAPTER SIX
RAVEN
Three years before the present day
22 years old
The room smells like stale smoke and liquor, the stench climbing up my throat, and I try my best not to cough. A single, dim light bulb swings above the mahogany table in the center of the room, casting shadows across Vaelric’s men’s faces, all dressed in black as they finish up their meeting. I lean back against the wall while the others sit around the table, listening to updates about their leads and the successful execution of the dozen Royal fugitives they caught last night.
“We’ve been walking blind for too long,” Vaelric growls. “Cameras, listening devices, they’re all fucking useless if we don’t know what we’re looking for.”
“We know exactly what we’re looking for. We just have to look deeper,” Mortello says as he looms over Dmitry, Vaelric’s son and designated second, whosehacking skills are about as good as Ezekiel’s,methodically tapping through a stack of surveillance feeds projected across the table, the glow of monitors reflecting off his glasses.
“We’ve got every street corner wired nationwide,” Dmitry reports. “Every apartment entrance, every vehicle that enters or leaves the district. Our teams are deployed across all critical locations, actively searching for any viable lead.”
Vaelric’s gaze narrows, locking onto Mateo Cardena, sitting with the doctor who operates in his neck of the woods.
