CHAPTER ELEVEN

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COMING BACK TO LIFE had a strange texture.

Awareness came over me gradually. The return of sight as I blinked and looked around the dawn-glowing library. A chair that looked big enough to be a throne pushed against the many shelves housing fictional classics and non-fictional manuals. Blankets strewn on the thick carpet, creating mayhem in orderly perfection.

The room was familiar.

The scent of leather and pages not jarring or foreign. I recognized it. Ghosts flittered in my mind’s eye. Girls and boys scurrying in the dark to borrow books. A man standing guard at all times with his whip.

I tried to focus on those ghosts, only for them to dissolve into dust.

I blinked again, the visions fading, leaving only a familiar room curtained with secrets.

Movement came next, the urge to sit up sending shockwaves of pain, bruises, and bone-deep agony through every part of me.

Christ.

I sat upright slowly, swaying as my nervous system assessed why my body hurt so much. I scanned the splint bracing my arm, the blackened bruises along my legs, the bandage around my shin, the countless scrapes and cuts on my chest.

What the hell happened to me?

My heart suddenly raced, remembering things my mind refused to share. Panic hissed in my blood. Something about this room. This house. This place.

Raising my good arm, I ran fingers through my long hair, finding it combed and tended instead of the usual knotty mess. Come to think of it, my body was clean—despite the obvious trauma it’d been through.

Who had looked after me?

There’s no one here.

My mind unlocked that fact as certainty. Eleven years. Just me.

Unfortunately, with that memory came a cascade of sickness and images.

I choked and buckled over my knees, tumbling into chaos.

The fractures inside me were widening, sucking giant pieces of me, erasing all my valuable parts, my worthy, positive, and honorable parts, leaving me with gaping holes of excrement.

I needed my family.

I needed their light to keep me from the dark.

I didn’t care that it was late afternoon. I didn’t worry that it’d been weeks since I’d said goodbye and had no clue how to find them.

I couldn’t stay in this place for another moment.

I’d done what I needed. I’d memorized the files Storymaker had on us. I’d burned them to ash so no one could follow, and I’d buried the guests who would never hurt another person.

I’d waited as long as I could to see if anyone would arrive. If any of Storymaker’s contacts would investigate why Fables had gone so quiet.

But no one had ventured here in over a month.

I’d been patient. I’d been wise.

But now? Now, I was being eaten alive by this monstrous house, and I had to go.

Packing a bag with some food and water, I stepped out of Fables for the last time.

And, in some serendipitous, ironic, cruel-as-fuck timing, three men smiled from the front garden.

A man with a groomed white beard and expensive suit glittered in the sunlight, flanked by two fierce guards, their hands resting on the holsters of their guns.

“Well, well.” The man tipped his head. “And just who the fuck do we have here?”

Stop.

I rocked with my fingers digging into my skull.

Just stop.

I didn’t want to see this. Didn’t want to remem—

I ran.

I was weak.

I dropped my bag and bolted back into Fables with its bleached carpets, disinfected air, and spotless bedrooms hiding all signs of a massacre.

“Get him!”

A shot rang out as one of the guards fired at me. All concepts of tackling the new guest and killing him like I’d killed Storymaker fled.

I’d lived with demons for too long not to recognize one.

Run!

Gasping, I shoved away the memory, recalling the discipline required to shut the doors and turn the keys, reinforcing the walls between my past and present.

I wasn’t strong enough.

I fell back into nightmares.

The interrogation lasted days.

I lost track of time. I lost too much blood. They broke my bones, my mind, my hope. I lived in a never-ending merry-go-round of questions, abuse, and torment.

The silver lining in being tortured was my sanity finally snapped.

I drifted into a place they couldn’t reach.

“Tell me what happened here!”

“Where is Stuart Page?”

“Where are the guests, the guards, the slaves?”

“Tell me!”

Each question came with pain.

Pain that would never be strong enough to make me give up my family.

I swallowed down answers until they were so far inside me, they’d have to kill me, resurrect me, then murder me all over again to access.

Time flickered.

The shouting and torture stopped.

Silence was my friend until the door opened and light entered and the man with a white beard squatted by my broken face. “Unfortunately, our time together has come to an end. I have a pressing engagement that requires swift attention.” He patted my cheek, grimacing as my blood stained his fingers. “I was going to kill you like you killed everyone here, but...I have a worse punishment for you.”

Standing, he braced himself over me. His heavy boot pressed against my throat. “I’m going to give you a parting gift. And you’re going to die slowly, painfully, all fucking alone in this valley. If I ever hear that you’ve survived or that you climbed out of here like a sewer rat, then I will slice you apart and feed your pieces to my dogs.” He laughed. “You think you stopped us? You think this place is the only one?” He ground his boot harder into my neck. “Stupid boy. No one, especially not you, can stop the lucrative peddling of flesh. Ponder on that while you die. Know that there are others, children, obedient little possessions all kneeling for their masters.”

In a burst of suicidal rage, I fought him. “You fucking son of a—”

And that was the last thing I remembered.

His boot crunching against my head.

Over and over and over...

Fuck, stop!

Throwing myself forward, I didn’t care about the shooting pain up my broken arm or the many aches and stiffness. I crawled out of the blankets and tripped to my feet. I stumbled across the room and slammed into the wall, my breathing shallow and quick.

Clutching a bookshelf, I swallowed hard, doing my best to calm my galloping heart and forget.

Forget.

You’ve done it before. Do it again.

Forget!

Slowly, the sharp horror in my head faded, transforming into grimy water that swirled down a drain and vanished. Only once my breathing leveled out, and I no longer shook with nausea did I turn around and face the room.

I sighed gratefully.

Just a room.

Nothing more.

No ghosts. No memories. Nothing but a—

What the fuck?

I stalked forward, noticing for the first time I hadn’t been alone in the blankets on the floor. A girl lay on her side, blond hair tangled on the pillow, exhaustion creating deep shadows beneath her closed eyes.

She slept heavily. Her forehead furrowed as if she suffered bad dreams. Her body curled up protectively.

Just as the library was familiar, so was she. I didn’t know her name, and I didn’t know where she’d come from, but she wasn’t a stranger.

Was she friend or foe?

I moved closer, my hands balled, violence simmering in my blood.

Who are you?

Whoever she was, this house was mine. Mine.

I would never have given her permission to stay—

A savage kiss in a storm.

A soul-altering moment as I sank inside her, her body welcoming me, her heart granting me peace, her kindness giving me a sliver of happiness.

I reeled backward.

Fuck.

Fuck!

Her.

Gemma goddamn Ashford.

I shook my head as more images poured through me. Recent ones instead of tarnished with history. These fresh recollections couldn’t be shoved behind rusty doors. These were far too vibrant.

Trespasser.

Seducer.

A witch sent here to ensure I found my way to hell after living so long in purgatory.

She twitched in the blankets as if she could sense my growing animosity.

She’d been my prisoner. Mine to do whatever the hell I wanted.

Yet...somehow, she’d overthrown me. She’d fought me. Cut me.

She threw me off the goddamn cliff!

I snarled in the dawn.

Who would’ve thought that the closest I would come to dying was at the hands of a woman half my size? A woman who was meant to obey me. My own twisted version of a slave.

Who was she to be so pious and grandiose to think she had the right to sleep in my house? Why was she not in the basement where she belonged? How long had she been free? Rooting through my things. Touching my books. Walking through the dirty archives that this house held.

How dare she!

I bared my teeth.

My naked feet took another step toward her. Pink-gold light from the new sun peeked through the windows, dancing over my body.

My clean body.

A body that only wore a pair of navy boxer briefs. Skin that’d been washed. Wounds that’d been tended to. Hints of her handiwork. Blatant signs she’d dressed me like a child, nursed me like an invalid, and had been there for every fissure of my heavily fractured psyche.

Soft fingers in my hair.

Gentle whispers in the dark.

Female strength half guiding, half carrying me to the bathroom.

I choked.

Fuck.

This girl had seen me at my absolute weakest.

She’d been witness to whatever hallucinations I’d endured. She’d stood over me while I was unconscious...touched me without my permission.

Christ.

I wanted to be sick.

No one.

Not even Quell, Zanik, or Wes had ever seen me so weak.

I’d always been the strong one—the one who screamed in his sleep but never shed a single fucking tear while awake.

I couldn’t—

My mind swam, black filth blending with fists and kicks and blood.

I was alone when I finally decided to live instead of die.

My eyes opened painfully, eyelashes sticky and struggling to lift as dried blood cracked and crumbled. I was cold, lying in a puddle of piss and other unmentionable waste.

I didn’t move to begin with. I hovered in a space of existing and fading, trying to gather the will to survive.

It was a while before I finally managed to crawl on my hands and knees, every piece of me bellowing in pain. Time splintered again, slipping into nothing until I had the strength to crawl up the basement steps and into the kitchen.

My hollow stomach howled for food, but when I raided the pantry, I vomited it all back up again. I lived in a vicious cycle of eat, vomit, pass out, try again.

Days after days of agonizing sameness.

One foot in death and one in life, unable to find the strength to move forward.

I had no clock or calendar to know how much time had passed.

I had no one to ask who I was or why I was all alone.

I couldn’t remember anything.

Not a single, tiny thing.

I was a stranger.

A mystery.

Alone.

I pinched the brow of my nose with my good hand, no longer willing to be a little puppet for my scrambled mind.

Goddammit, no more.

With a heavy exhale, I gathered up the slithers of memories, snatched up recollections, and erased all emotion from the past. They all went into a box. And that box went into the sea. And that sea held monsters that devoured them until I had nothing in my head but her.

Gemma.

My prisoner who thought she could manipulate and control me.

I had to admit. She’d done a better job than any of the mistresses in my past. No one else had made me feel. No one else made my heart kick or body harden for her touch.

She was my enemy.

It was time she relearned her place.

Turning on the ball of my foot, I ordered my wobbly, bruised legs to walk out of the library, up the stairs (breathing hard and condemned to multiple breaks to gather strength), and into the bedroom where my trespasser had demanded a toilet and shower.

There, on the bed, was the leather cuff I’d stolen from Storymaker’s closet.

A leash that’d been used on all of us more than once.

A leash that would now be hers.

Snatching it from the covers, I dragged it over the carpet, the leather hissing behind me. My strength rapidly dwindled. My eyelids threatened to shut. My mind held autumn leaves and bracken.

I just wanted to sleep.

The ringing in my ears upset my balance. The fuzziness of my vision made me tired. The throbbing in the back of my skull hinted my broken arm wasn’t the worst of my injuries.

Touching the bump on my forehead from where she’d hit me with the shovel, I stiffened when I found none. No bump. No cut.

How much time had passed since that day and this?

What did it mean that I still suffered a concussion? One that seemed to have the power to steal, not just hours but days from me.

Gritting my teeth, I shoved away my questions, commanded my body to stay lucid for just a little longer, and tripped my way down the stairs to the library.

My steps were no longer coordinated as I stumbled over the threshold, back into a room full of paper words and fictional worlds. I crashed against the doorframe, the bookshelves spinning, my mouth turning sour with sickness.

I kept my swirling attention on the girl still sleeping on the floor.

Had she heard me buckle against the door? Was she still unconscious or just faking? If I went over there, would she pounce on me again? Would she use my weakness against me like she’d done ever since she’d pushed me off the fucking cliff?

Bits and pieces came back to me.

Her tying a rope around my wrists.

Her apologizing but still trapping me like all the others.

It didn’t matter that she’d tended to me. Storymaker himself had given me drugs and overseen my healing when a guest had grown particularly cruel.

My health was valuable to him. I had to stay alive to do his bidding. We all did.

She’s the same.

I didn’t think she’d found my valley by accident after all. I bet it was all planned. Her trespassing on my home, her running so I’d follow, her skills at climbing and knots and ropes, giving her the chance to push me into the sky.

Had I foiled her plans by surviving, or had I only played into her hands?

Now, I was broken in places and concussed in others.

I was easy prey.

Or so she thinks.

Rage flowed through my veins, granting me the power to push off the doorframe, cross the room, and tower over her.

Even if she was faking, so what?

She was small compared to me. Regardless of her unnatural strength; despite her stamina and knowledge that kept putting her above me in every possible way...she was still mine.

And I was done letting her think our roles existed in any other direction.

Dropping to my knees, I shoved off the blankets, snatched her leg, then lashed the cuff tight around her ankle.