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Then he came home early.

The moment she saw him, she stopped laughing. I thought I’d done a better job of hiding his anger from her, but now I know… she’s seen far more than I realized.

I don’t know what set him off this time. Maybe it was her reaction to him? Or maybe that she was smiling to begin with.

Whatever it was, it threw him into a rage. He grabbed her by the arm, dragged her across the kitchen and all the way up the stairs, shouting at her for making a mess.

The worst part is… she didn’t say a single word. She didn’t even cry.

Gods… she sees so much more than I ever realized. The way she reacted—she learned that from me.

‘Be quiet. Be small. Don’t speak. Don’t argue.’

She’s seven years old. This is no life for a child. But there’s no way out. I’m trapped. And I can’t change.

Because if I do—if I fight back—he’ll kill me.

And if I’m not here… he’ll kill her next.

Dax’s face drains of color. He opens his mouth, then hesitates, like he isn’t sure he wants to come across another entry like that one.

I’m not sure I want to hear another, either, but this… we owe Idril this. We—both of us—called her a liar repeatedly. We mocked her and accused her of playing the victim.

Clenching his jaw, Dax turns to the next entry.

“February twenty-third.”

He stops, flips back to the first entry, frowning.

“There are two years missing between the first and second entry,” he murmurs, so low I wonder if he’s talking to himself, before picking up where he left off.

Idril woke from a nightmare last night. She came running into our room, crying and shaking. She was inconsolable. When I finally managed to calm her down, she told me there were shadows in her room.

Shadows that could hear what she was thinking.

Of course, Jonathan heard our whispers in the hallway and woke up, and before I could explain she’d had a bad dream, he was shouting at her for waking him up.

Of course Idril was still upset about her dream. Still scared. Still crying. That only made him angrier.

And gods… he hit her.

He hit her so hard.

She went flying down the hall and into the wall.

She didn’t move. For so long, she didn’t move. I was frozen in fear, and⁠—

I thought he broke her neck.

For a long moment, no one says anything.

Then Daxen stands, lifts the book behind his head, and chucks it across the room. It soars through the air, and—just like Idril—slams into the wall.

The sound it makes when it hits the drywall makes me flinch.

Dax jerks like he’s been electrocuted, turns on his heel, and stalks out of the room.

I follow, my heart in my throat and a stinging, painful pressure building behind my eyes. There’s so much of that journal left to read. How bad did things get? How much more did Idril have to endure?