Chapter Five
Rowan
It feels like I’ve been on my knees in the middle of my sister’s bedroom for hours, even though the clock on the wall insists only minutes have passed.
Time bends here, warping under the weight of the past I can’t undo.
The carpet is shredded, the furniture splintered from Ronan’s earlier fury, fragments of wood and fabric littering the floor like remains.
The carnage digs into my knees, sharp and unrelenting, but I don’t move.
I can’t. My body is a monument of stone, too heavy to shift, too consumed by the storm inside me.
It feels as though every drop of blood I have has drained into my chest, pooling there, pressing down until I can’t breathe, until even the thought of drawing air is a punishment I don’t deserve.
My hands hang useless at my sides—trembling with rage, twitching with guilt too big to hold.
My fists ache to swing, to break something else, to bleed the violence out of me, but there’s nothing left to destroy that will erase what’s been done.
The room already wears the scars of Ronan’s grief, his devastation carved into every overturned object, every shattered picture frame.
All that’s left is me—on my knees, staring at ghosts no one else can see.
It’s like staring down the barrel of a gun, waiting for the trigger to be pulled.
Only this weapon doesn’t fire bullets—it fires memories.
Mistakes. Sins. Each one slamming into me harder than the last. The sound of Reign’s laughter in this very room, followed by the silence that smothered it forever.
The hollow look in Berkley’s eyes when I raised my hand to her, when I became the monster I swore I’d never be.
My father’s voice, whispering poison into my ear, twisting grief into obedience.
Each memory lands true, carving a scar deeper than steel and etching failure into my bones.
There’s no hiding, no softening the truth.
I failed her. I failed them both. My sister, Reign—my blood, my triplet, my other half—she trusted me to protect her, to shield her from the monsters in our house.
Instead, I let them in. Let our father and our uncle touch her with their filth, let them corrupt her innocence, taint everything she was, until the light I’d grown up alongside was crushed beneath their weight.
I wasn’t there when she needed me, and then I let them murder her, burying her truth beneath a lie they fed us like poison.
I told myself I didn’t know. That I couldn’t have known.
But deep down? Did I? I saw the cracks. I just didn’t want to face them. That makes me just as guilty.
And Berkley… fuck, Berk. My girl. The girl who had always been fire and loyalty, laughter and rebellion.
I hurt her with my own hands. Became the blade my father sharpened, the weapon he forged from all my rage and grief.
I let him turn me into his puppet, his trained monster, and I unleashed that monster on her.
Every strike I dealt, every backhand, every time I forced myself to stare her down while I demanded answers she never owed me—I was him.
I was them. I was the very nightmare I swore I would never become.
The worst part isn’t even the violence. It’s the betrayal.
Because she looked at me, and she still saw Rowan—her Rowan—buried somewhere underneath the fury and the fists.
And I proved her wrong every time. I proved her wrong until she bled.
Until her body wore my sins. Until she had no reason left to look at me and see anything but another monster.
And that truth sears deeper than any blade ever could.
I can almost hear them now—my father, my uncle—their laughter thick and cruel, a sound that slithers into your bones and festers there.
It echoes in the back of my skull, a phantom chorus that won’t shut up, taunting me with every choice I made, every line I crossed.
I can see their smug faces, mouths twisted into grins that drip poison, eyes gleaming with the satisfaction of victory.
I know they’re mocking us. Mocking me. Marveling at how easy it was to break us; how simple it was to bend us until we snapped into the perfect shape for their game.
How the fuck did we fall for it? How did I fall for it?
I replay it over and over—every moment I swallowed their lies like they were gospel.
They played us with precision, carving us open with loss, then stuffing the wounds full of their version of the truth until we didn’t know what was real anymore.
They dangled guilt like a leash around our necks, pulling tight whenever we dared to question.
Painting themselves as the only anchors we had left, the only foundation after the fire tore everything else away, and we let them. We let them poison us.
They used our devastation like clay in their hands, molding us into weapons they could wield, soldiers who would march blind into their war.
They blinded us with grief, twisted our love for Reign and Berk into shackles, and made us believe the narrative they wanted us to.
A narrative that kept their hands clean and left us drowning in filth.
They fed us just enough truth to make the lies palatable, just enough evidence to seal the cracks in our doubt.
We swallowed it whole, choking it down until it became our reality.
Now, the taste of it makes me sick, bile rising in my throat at how easily we were played. How easily I was played. I can still hear their laughter, like they’re sitting in the shadows of this room, grinning while we unravel, while the truth finally rots its way to the surface.
Now, kneeling here, I’m swallowed by the ghost of my sister—but not in some untouched shrine.
No, this place is wreckage, a graveyard of what used to be hers, torn apart by Ronan’s rage and left scattered across the floor like bones.
Her perfume still lingers faintly in the air, but it mixes now with the sharp sting of splintered wood and torn fabric, clinging to the dust that rises from the destruction.
The photos that once sat neatly on her dresser or hung on the walls are strewn across the carpet, glass shattered, frames cracked.
Reign’s smile stares at me from the rubble, her eyes frozen in time, accusing even in their silence.
Everywhere I look is chaos—the mattress half off the frame, blankets ripped and twisted, nightstand splintered and toppled, her lamp shattered into a thousand jagged pieces.
Clothing litters the floor like shed skin, some of it tangled with shards of broken glass.
This room used to be her reflection—warm, lived in, alive—but now it’s just carnage, the kind that mirrors what was done to her.
It feels wrong to be in here, like I’m intruding on her pain all over again.
Still, the questions burn, eating at me like acid.
How could I not see it? How could I not recognize the truth when it was right in front of me?
Every hollow smile, every laugh that didn’t quite reach her eyes, every moment she pulled away from us just a little too quickly—they were warnings.
Signs. And I ignored them. Or worse, we chose not to face them, because admitting the truth would’ve cracked my world open.
So, I clung to the lie. I let myself believe she was fine.
Now here I am, on my knees in the ruins of her room, surrounded by evidence of all the things I failed to protect.
I was supposed to shield her, to be the one constant in her life she could rely on.
Instead, I let myself be blinded, manipulated into silence, while the monsters we called family tore her apart piece by piece.
This wreckage? It’s not just the remains of her room.
It’s the remains of my failure. A physical reminder that I was too fucking blind to save her. To save both of them.
My soul feels cracked wide open, fissures running so deep it feels like there’s nothing solid left inside me to hold together.
Every breath scrapes raw against the edges of those breaks, bleeding me out in ways I can’t stop, no matter how hard I fight.
It’s a slow, steady hemorrhage, the kind that doesn’t kill you fast but drains you piece by piece until there’s nothing left but an empty husk.
Reign. Berk. The two women who anchored me to this world, the two people I was supposed to protect more than anyone, ripped away in different ways that both feel like death.
One buried under lies and blood, the other slipping through my fingers, choosing distance over the wreckage I’ve become.
And me? I’m left hollow, a shell carrying the weight of all I failed to do.
The grief doesn’t settle—it hammers. A relentless pulse in my chest that shakes my bones and marks every beat with what I’ve lost. It isn’t just sadness; it’s despair sharpened by heat, tearing at me from the inside, demanding surrender.
It drowns out the world until all that remains is loss—and their faces, burned into my vision.
Reign, with her laugh that used to fill this house before it became a tomb.
Berk, with her defiance and fire, even when it was me standing in front of her, dealing the blows.
My ghosts. My punishments. My reminders.