The Cliff’s Edge
1053 Words
I did not go back to my room.
I left my father’s wing with my pulse still hammering in my throat and my chest still hot from the mark, but I did not let myself slow down. The house was too quiet, the kind of quiet that meant people were already talking, already guessing, already deciding what to do with the marked daughter of Rodrigo Castellanos. I kept walking before someone could stop me, before someone could ask questions, before I could think hard enough to break.
The front drive opened ahead of me in a sweep of marble and black iron, and beyond it the night spread out over the coast like a wound. The sea was dark, the sky darker, and the air had that sharp salt bite that cut clean through my lungs. I got into the car before anyone could come after me, before any guard could step too close and say my name like it still belonged to me.
My hands shook once on the wheel, then they stopped.
I started the engine and drove.
The road twisted down along the cliffs, silver from the moon and empty except for the occasional flash of a distant estate light. I did not stop to think about where I was going because thinking was the one thing that would have made me turn around. My father had already tried to turn me into a tool, the pack had already seen the mark, and Bastián Valdemar was already somewhere out there, real and impossible and bound to me by fire.
I could not stay.
The sea came into view below the road, dark and endless, and I made my decision before fear could talk me out of it. I drove straight toward the curve at the edge of the cliff.
The tires screeched against the gravel as the car lurched. My stomach dropped so hard I thought I might vomit, but I did not lift my foot. I did not turn the wheel. I kept my eyes open and drove the car over the break in the stone barrier, into the open air, and then gravity took the rest.
For one suspended second, everything went still. Then the car hit the water with a brutal crash that swallowed the night.
Cold slammed through the windshield and flooded the cabin in an instant. The impact cracked my shoulder against the door and drove all the air out of my lungs. I fought against the seat belt with numb fingers, already tasting salt and oil, and hearing the dark groan of water rushing in around me.
The seat belt gave out, I shoved the door open and spilled into the sea.
The water closed over my head like a fist.
For a few terrible seconds, panic tried to drag me under. My clothes were heavy, my hair stuck to my face, and the cold was so sharp it made my skin burn. I kicked hard, blind at first, then found the surface and surged upward, gulping in air that tasted of salt and smoke.
Behind me, the car sank into the dark.
I turned only once, treading water with aching arms, and watched the last shape of it disappear beneath the waves.
Let Ximena Castellanos die so I can live.
The thought came clear and hard, like a vow made with a knife pressed to the throat.
I did not know how long I stayed there, drifting in the black water, but it was long enough for the search to begin.
A shout carried from the cliff.
Then another.
Bright lights swung over the shoreline in long, restless sweeps, cutting through the night like blades. I saw torchlight first, then the pale beams of searchlights from the estate grounds, sliding over the rocks and the thin line of surf below. Castellanos scouts were moving fast now, their voices rough and urgent as they called out orders and spread across the coast.
They were looking for me.
Good… Let them look.
I ducked lower in the water until only my eyes stayed above the surface, and the sea rocked me in its cold grip. My body wanted to shiver, but I held still and watched the lights search the shore where I should have been. Their beams crossed the place where the car had gone under, men shouted to one another, and somewhere above, a guard barked my name.
They still thought I might be alive.
I let my head sink lower in the water and waited until the sound of their boots faded farther along the rocks. The waves moved against my mouth and chin, my arms ached, my chest burned, but I did not climb toward the shore. That shore belonged to Castellanos men, Castellanos lies, Castellanos blood, and I was done belonging to any of it.
A light swept past the waterline again, closer this time, and I froze.
One of the scouts had moved nearer to the edge of the cliff. I could hear him now, not far above me, his voice rough and tense as he spoke into a radio. “No body yet. Keep scanning. She could have gone under farther out.”
She? Not even daughter, heir or Ximena, just she.
The word hit harder than the cold.
I moved without sound, kicking gently backward into darker water where the lights could not reach as easily. The sea swallowed me again, and I let it. My fingers went numb around each stroke, but I kept swimming out, farther from the cliff, farther from the estate, farther from every version of myself that had ever existed under Rodrigo Castellanos’s roof.
The shore blurred behind me.
The lights kept sweeping.
The voices grew smaller.
I finally turned onto my back and looked up at the night sky, breathing hard while the water carried me without mercy. My wet hair spread around my face like weeds, and my heart hammered with the sick, steady force of one thought.
They are searching for Ximena Castellanos.
Let them.
I was not Ximena anymore, I was the ghost they had not found yet.
Then, through the dark, a new light flared on the water, brighter than the others, lower, and moving fast.
It was a searchlight.
And it was turning straight toward me.
- Writer
