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“You know this isn’t real,” I mumbled. So damn tired…
Miss Couper was here too. She smiled sadly. “Hush now, Valentine. It will all be over soon.”
No, no… she couldn’t say those words to me. Only Hush said those words, in the cupboard beneath the stairs, when I was trapped and alone. They’d taped up the cracks so I couldn’t escape. Then one day, a carriage had taken me away.
“Wrong, broken,”they’d said. My parents. And the door had been closed on me again. A metal door like all those around me now.
What if I’d never escaped?
What if I was mad, and they’d put me here? Fifteen years ago… Miss Couper said it had been fifteen years since I’d run away.
No, it wasn’t possible.
I heard my wrecked laughter echo off the walls.
Russo squeezed my shoulder. “One day, we’ll fix you, my friend. Until then, find some relief in dreams.”
Dreams…No, I didn’t want to dream. I wanted him to undo the straps and let me go. I had to get back to Devere. He needed me. I was the only one who knew the truth, the only one who saw through the lies…
I wasn’t mad. The fae were real. I wasn’t supposed to be here, and Devere… I’d broken his heart before. I’d promised never to leave him again. He’d think I’d abandoned him all over again.
But what if I hadn’t chosen to leave the first time?
What if they’d taken me away…?
The memories struck and clung on, each one barbed.
He’s broken,they’d said.
And I was here to be fixed.
I’d always been here. For fifteen years, I’d been here.
In dreams, I was someone else. I was free. But here… Here, I was the boy who couldn’t be fixed.
None of it was real.
My whole life was a lie.
The sound of sobbing filled the empty room, and a small voice in my head said, “Hush, Valentine. It will all be over soon.”
But it would never be over. This was my life.
I’d always been broken. Just like they’d said.
Devere holding a pistol to my head, his kiss on my lips. None of it had been real. I hadn’t studied disturbed criminals. I was one.
I’d made the dreams real because they were my only escape.
It’s too dangerous,Devere had told me. He’d known my sanity was a delicate balance of clockwork cogs.One man’s madness is another’s dream.He’d tried to tell me.
The clock had broken. And the mechanical bird had never flown away.
I’d never escaped the cage.
ChapterThirty-One
Valentine
