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She staggered to the door, swinging it open and made her way through the dark corridors, her mind growing darker with each step. Ruminating on her shortcomings had become a constant plight for Ophelia, but no more.

She would find Calista and ask her how she’d escaped. How she’d found her way to the very place Ophelia felt most alone, but her friend had started a new life for herself. Surely her friend would help her escape, if not from here, than from the prison that was her mind.

Before she could ever find her way to the library where her dear friend spent most of her time, she’d lost her footing, succumbing to the wormwood that ate at her mind, creating holes where memories once remained.

If only she’d known of her condition, a chronic illness that stripped her blood of necessary components, she could have prevented what came next.

If only the caged bird had opened a window in time.

Chapter 14

Four Days Before Christmas

The empty whiskey bottle laid at his feet, shards of broken glass surrounding him as he threw his fist into the mirror that taunted him with his reflection. The grief and anger too much for him to bear.

Adrian had never thought himself a particularly cruel man. Then again, his father had been the worst kind of influence, a nightmare in his own right.

The young man had been harsh, spewing words like venom, turning Philomela into his personal punching bag rather than seeking help for the never-ending well of anger that overflowed within him.

Cruelty, he thought, belonged to men who broke bones and bruised skin. He’d thought his sins were more civilized: words muttered at the wrong time, laughter that went too far, the kind of silence that leaves a mark.

Philomela had always been delicate—too delicate, perhaps, for him. At least, that’s the excuse he gave himself as he paced the cold floor, unflinching as shards of glass buried themselves deep into his flesh, leaving trails of blood in his wake.

He was no better than his father, the weight of this caused him to weep, dragging himself to the other end of the university.

Recalling Philomela’s blood-stained bathtub, her favorite record stuck on repeat, he acknowledged there might be no reason to investigate what, to others, had so clearly been suicide or an accident—a slip of wet feet on the tiled floor.

Adrian knew better though. He knew Philomela would not have killed herself. She’d thought the act selfish, leaving behind those who loved her, asking for them to pick up the pieces of their own hearts while the dead rest easily.

He knew this. Knew of her brother’s death. Her twin. The other half of her very soul.

And yet, there she laid in a pool of her own blood, her body cold and frail, sapped of the life she’d once bled before Adrian had sucked it out of her like a leech.

He’d found himself at her door, white fingers gripping the handle, jiggling it but there was no give. He slammed his shoulder into the wood but was met with a resistance that had left his blood boiling.

A step back from the door, fists balled at his sides, had revealed the truth. The final nails in her coffin. The door had been nailed shut.

He paced the halls, growing too close to the professor’s corridor where female faculty were tucked snugly in their beds, eyes sealed shut, breaths shallow and steady.

Unable to tamp down the rage, he released it into the cold, silent night that surrounded him, breathing fire with his words as he paced the halls, wringing his hands out, fisting them and seething at the fate that had once again taken something so precious from him.

To Adrian Delacort, it seemed that the bright spots in his life had always left him, one way or another.

Whether that be his sister running for her life, leaving him to fend for himself the day she turned sixteen, his mother dying at the hands of his father’s cruelty wrapped tightly around her throat, or Philomela, who had died never knowing how much light she’d shone in the shadows of his dark mind.

A mind that had grown fuzzy, movements slowing as the alcohol tugged on his soul, something in the air intoxicating him and adding to the potency of the liquor that dragged him to the bottom of the stairs to lie in a puddle of his own devastation. The same way Philomela had.

It was such a shame that Adrian resembled John so much, his voice carrying from beneath her door and into Calista’s dreams. They’d quickly shifted to form nightmares, the same ones that often haunted her, her mind forcing her body into action without a conscious thought. And when she’d slipped out of her room early that morning before the sun’s rays could peak above the horizon, she’d woken to find herself staring down at Adrian’s lifeless body in a mirage of the night she’d done the same to John.

Chapter 15

Present Day

The sun hangs low over Nocturne Frost, hiding as if uncertain behind the thinning clouds. Snow drifts down in lazy spirals, soft and harmless now, though the world it touches is not.

The university courtyard is unrecognizable. Doors stand open, propped by shovels and chair legs. Windows gape wide, curtains flapping in the wind. Every corridor breathes fog.

Students sit huddled in clusters across the lawn, wrapped in emergency blankets the color of dull gold. Their faces are gray and hollow, streaked with confusion. A few weep openly. Most stare at nothing. Paramedics move between them with quiet urgency, checking pulses, shining lights into eyes that don’t focus, pressing oxygen masks over trembling mouths.