Chapter 38 #3
Briar couldn't promise. She didn't know if she could keep coming back to this house, seeing the life she'd saved while mourning the one she'd lost. But Allegra was looking at her with such hope, such desperate need.
"I'll try," she said instead. "I'll really try."
Allegra hugged her once more, fierce and quick, then stepped back. "Okay. But I'm texting you every day and you better answer."
"Deal."
Briar climbed into her car and started the engine. In the side mirror she could see where Allegra stood on the sidewalk, shivering in just her sweater. Briar waited a moment, but Allegra didn't go inside. She stayed there, watching, as Briar pulled away from the curb.
She glanced in the rearview mirror and saw her sister wave. After a moment, Briar waved back, trying to match her sister’s enthusiasm, but coming up short.
Briar drove through town without thinking, muscle memory guiding her through turns while her mind stayed carefully blank. The streets blurred together, familiar landmarks she didn't want to recognize, memories she didn't want to acknowledge.
Then she saw the sign.
Sea Breeze Motel. The same faded turquoise paint. The same flickering neon with the "e" in Breeze dark. The same cracked asphalt parking lot.
If she had known she would end up back here, she might never have left to begin with.
Her hands turned the wheel without her permission.
The parking lot was nearly empty. Just a beat-up sedan and a motorcycle that had seen better days. No forest. No vines breaking through concrete. No impossible trees older than memory. Just an ugly motel that rented by the hour and didn't ask questions.
She sat in her car for a long moment, engine running, staring at the office door. The same door she'd burst through while running from Thaine. The same window where she'd seen the clerk wrapped in roots and white flowers, dreaming terrible dreams.
Her hand was on the gear shift to reverse when something made her turn off the engine instead.
The office smelled exactly the same—mildew and air freshener that didn't quite cover the underlying rot. But the clerk was different. Younger, maybe twenty, with gauged ears and tattoos creeping up his neck. He didn't look up from his phone when she entered.
"Forty-nine plus tax."
The same price. The same bored tone. Different voice.
"Room 23," she said.
That made him look up, a flicker of annoyance crossing his face. "I got eighteen available. Take your pick."
"I want 23."
He stared at her for a moment, then shrugged. "Whatever. Forty-nine plus tax."
She paid cash. The same amount she'd paid that night when she thought she was being clever, thought she could outsmart a bargain made with something ancient. The register looked the same. Even the pen was the same cheap Bic, though the ink was blue now instead of black.
Room 23 was at the far end, exactly where it had been. The key stuck in the lock the same way. The door opened with the same protesting creak.
Everything was identical. The water-stained ceiling. The carpet that felt damp even when it wasn't. The bedspread with its pattern of faded seahorses that had probably been cheerful once. The bathroom door that didn't quite close properly.
Briar stood in the doorway, unable to move forward. What felt like a lifetime ago, this room had been transformed into something impossible, had been claimed by forest and fury. But looking at it now, it was just a room. Ugly and sad and utterly mundane.
She made herself walk to the bathroom. The tiles were intact, grout stained but unbroken. No sign that massive roots had burst through, splitting ceramic and porcelain. She touched the spot where the toilet had cracked, where water had sprayed everywhere before being absorbed by spreading moss.
Nothing.
Just old caulk and rust stains.
The window she'd smashed through was whole, not even a crack in the glass. She pressed her palm against it, half-expecting it to shatter at her touch, for vines to grab her wrist, for Thaine's mocking voice to tell her she was predictable.
Silence.
She sat on the bed in the exact spot where she'd woken to find her mark burning, the forest coming to claim her.
The mattress sagged the same way. The springs creaked with the same tired protest. But no moss grew across the floor and no roots split the walls.
No voice from everywhere and nowhere told her she was caught.
Fingers traced the place where the mark had been, pressing hard enough to hurt, trying to find some evidence that it had been real.
Nothing.
The room felt bigger than she remembered. Or maybe she felt smaller. Hollow. Like something essential had been scooped out and she was just the shell that remained, going through motions that looked like living.
Outside, cars passed on the highway. Real cars with real people living real lives. Inside, she sat in a room that had once been transformed into something impossible, looking for proof that any of it had happened.
Her phone buzzed. Allegra again.
Mom says you need space but are you okay? Love you
She stared at the message. Love you. So simple and uncomplicated. From someone who would never know what that love had cost.
Love you too. I'm okay.
The lie came easily. Everything was a lie now. She was okay. She was fine. She was handling things. She was moving forward. All lies told to make others comfortable while she sat in a cheap motel room, looking for evidence of magic in a world that had none.
She lay back on the bed, stared at the ceiling where the stains made the same pattern as before and listened as the heater made the same rattling wheeze. Everything was exactly as it had been, as if the forest had never come, as if she'd never been marked, claimed, and then forgotten.
As if none of it had ever been real at all.
The sun set eventually, darkness filling the room.
She didn't turn on the lights. Just lay there in the dark, in the same room where she'd been captured, now capturing herself in a different kind of prison.
One made of memory and loss and the terrible possibility that she was the only one who remembered any of it had happened.
Tomorrow she'd find an apartment, maybe enroll in school, try to build some kind of life.
But tonight?
Tonight she lay in Room 23 of the Sea Breeze Motel, pressing her unmarked wrist to her chest where warmth no longer lived, and tried to convince herself that forgetting would be a mercy.
She failed.