MINA
Was I… dead?
For a moment, that was the only question drifting through the empty space inside my skull.
Everything felt muffled, even the pain that should’ve been clawing at my bones like a feral animal. Instead, it was distant. It felt like I wasn’t inside my own body at all.
I remembered being so thirsty I thought my tongue would c***k. I remembered lying on the cold floor of that secret basement, drifting in and out, unable to wake up. I remembered drinking the water from the old flask even though I should’ve preserved it. But what would preservation have mattered? No one was going to stumble into that house. Rowena was too cunning. Calista, too selfish. Corvin, too cowardly.
No one would even bother checking the place.
They’d just create a story—a dramatic, tragic lie abou
