5. Jayson
JAYSON
W e walk up the stone steps slowly, a slowness that isn’t about pace but gravity. Like the weight of the past makes the air heavier the closer we get. My boots scuff the moss that’s crept over the edges of the old stone, each step a memory clawing its way back.
At the top, I reach for the hidden key, still tucked inside the cracked brick above the doorframe, half-swallowed by ivy grown thick with time.
I shove open the front door. It gives with a long, low groan—wood and iron straining like they remember me. Like the house itself isn't sure it wants me back.
The air spills out thick and musty, tasting of old, forgotten memories. I step inside.
And the house… exhales. Not a welcome. Not forgiveness. Just recognition. The kind that makes your skin crawl.
Footsteps echo above us—measured and deliberate. Then comes the sharp, unmistakable tap of a cane tapping against polished floorboards.
She appears at the top of the staircase like a ghost conjured from another lifetime.
Elegant. Imposing. Draped in a silk robe the color of ashes, as though mourning something she never planned to bury.
Her silver hair is pinned with surgical precision, not a strand out of place.
But it’s her eyes that stop everything—piercing and cold, like twin blades honed on disappointment.
She studies me like I’m a painting hung crooked on a wall.
“Well,” she says at last, her voice rich and dry with age. “The prodigal son returns.”
Her gaze flicks to the girl, trailing over her like a tailor assessing damaged fabric.
“And you brought…a girl.”
I say nothing. What could I possibly offer that wouldn’t sound like a lie? There are no explanations she’d understand. And I’m not ready to strip myself open for anyone. So I just stand there, breathing through the fury curled low in my gut, as Nina’s eyes shift from me…to the girl at my side.
She looks like she’s been dragged from a grave. Mud cakes her from collar to ankle, streaking her face, matting her hair, dripping off her fingers like blood that hasn’t decided whether to dry or stain. Her clothes hang off her like they’re part of the wreckage.
She’s shaking—she’s cold and she’s full of rage—and I feel the tremor through my hand still gripping her elbow.
I don’t know what Nina sees when she looks at her. Maybe just another casualty of my war. Maybe she’s already tallying the cost.
All I see is something feral. A girl who should’ve broken halfway through the woods, but didn’t. A girl who kept fighting even when she lost. And somehow, that makes it worse.
Nina doesn’t move. She just stands in the hallway like she’s been waiting for this moment since the day I left.
Then, without looking away from the girl, she speaks.
“You had to drag a girl through the woods for you to come home?” Her voice is low, smooth. “Your father would’ve been proud.”
The silence that follows is sharp enough to bleed.
The girl stiffens beside me. I do too.
My grip tightens on her arm, not to hurt—just to ground myself. Because that? That was a fucking knife.
I look at Nina, and for the first time in ten years, I feel fucking twelve again. Mud on my shoes, blood on my hands, standing at the threshold of a house that couldn’t contain all my rage and anger.
“I’m not him ,” I grit out.
Nina’s eyes flick to mine—cold, steady. “Aren’t you?”
The words are not loud or violent, but they’re just true enough to make me bleed.
I hold her gaze, jaw locked, the silence stretching between us like barbed wire. If she wants to test me, now’s not the time.
Not with Keira standing here, barefoot and broken, looking like something that crawled out of a nightmare I created.
So I just say it.
“She stays downstairs.”
My voice echoes in the quiet, cold and final. No room for questions.
My grandmother doesn’t flinch—of course she doesn’t. Her mouth just tightens, as if the words scrape against some ancient code she’s spent a lifetime following. Then she nods, slow and regal. “Of course.”
The girl stiffens beside me, a tremor of unease slipping down her spine. Her eyes jump between us, wide and desperate. “Wait—what do you mean, downstairs?”
I don’t answer. I just start walking, footsteps muffled against the thick rug until I reach the narrow hall that leads to the service stairs.
The door creaks open with a reluctant groan, and a musty draft escapes from the dark below.
Stone and silence and the kind of cold that sinks into your bones and whispers that no one’s coming to save you.
I look back at her. “Come.”
She doesn’t move. Her arms fold across her chest, hugging herself like she’s trying to hold her fear in. “Is this… are you locking me up?”
“You have two options. Locked up or death. Your choice.”
“For what?” she demands. Her voice cracks, and it slashes something inside me, but I ignore it.
“Technically, you should be dead,” I say. “Which is the only other option if you choose not to go downstairs. NOW…,” I roar.
She hesitates—then follows. The basement door swings shut behind us with a thud that sounds a little too much like a prison cell sealing. She sucks in a breath and stares down the stairs like they’re a slow descent into hell.
“This place is—” She stops herself. Tries again. “It’s not safe down here. It’s—cold. It smells like mildew and…”
She doesn’t say it. But I hear it anyway. Death.
I reach the bottom and flick the light. A single bulb hums to life overhead, casting a pale yellow glow across the stone floor and walls. The basement is mostly empty—just old furniture covered in white sheets, dust thick in the air, and shadows that press too close.
She wraps her arms around herself, her voice trembling now. “Please don’t leave me down here. Please. I’m cold .”
I turn to face her. She looks too small. Too breakable. But I can’t afford to be soft. Not now. Not with what she saw. There’s too much at stake-a whole fucking empire to consider, and I can’t be the one who lets it crumble to the ground.
“Move,” I say, voice low enough to cut glass. I guide her past the staircase into the service corridor, stone walls sweating with damp. The air grows colder the deeper we go, the scent of mildew wrapping around us like a grave .
At the corridor’s end, the cell waits: rust-bitten bars, a concrete floor stained with sins I don’t care to name. My father kept his problems here. Sometimes they walked out. Sometimes they didn’t.
She stops at the threshold, hugging herself. I can smell the fear on her skin—sharp, metallic, all-consuming.
“I can’t stay here,” she says. “I’ll lose my mind. Please—I’ll do anything . Just don’t lock me down here by myself.”
Her voice splinters on the last word, and she grabs my arm, fingernails digging into my sleeve like she’s trying to anchor herself to me. Her eyes are glossy with panic, with something rawer than fear—abandonment. It hits me like a deeply buried memory.
“I’ll bring some blankets,” I offer, because cruelty without reason is sloppy. And I’m not sloppy.
“That’s not what I need.” The words whip out, sharp and brittle. Then softer, breaking: “Don’t lock me in there. Please.”
A memory slams into me—smaller hands than hers clawing at these very bars, begging in the dark. I swallow hard, shoving it down where old ghosts belong, but the punch in my chest lands anyway.
This is the cost of the throne, I remind myself. Mercy is expensive, and I’m already in debt.
“This is where you stay,” I say, voice rough.
Her grip slips. She looks defeated. And then I close the door.
The key scrapes. The hinges groan. But even as the door slams shut between us, steel biting into steel, her sob cuts through the air like a fucking blade.
Not soft or delicate. Brutal. Raw. The kind of sound that should gut a man if he had anything left to lose.
I turn away anyway. Let it echo. Let it haunt. I’ve made worse bleed for less.
Upstairs, I don’t speak. I sit in the hallway, stare at the wall across from me like it holds the answers I seek. My hands are laced with nerves and won’t stop twitching.
I tell myself it was the only choice. She saw too much. Her silence isn’t a promise; it’s a gamble. But I can’t keep her in that cellar forever.
The weight of what I’ve done presses down, heavier than anything ever handed to me. She doesn’t belong in this world. She doesn’t belong in mine. And yet, here we are. Back in the house where all my nightmares sleep. And I just brought her to meet them.