Chapter 34 Elle
Elle
Light slices across the floor in narrow, trembling beams when I open my eyes. Everything feels distant as if I’m floating inside a dream that doesn’t want to let me go. My body doesn’t quite feel like mine.
I register the ropes biting into my wrists, but even that pain feels dulled, filtered through a fog I don’t remember walking into.
The scent of wax, dust, and a sickly sweetness clings to the air, thick enough to coat my tongue.
Footsteps echo across the room, slow and measured. I know them without looking. Some things stick even through the fog of Kys.
When I blink, Clo appears in front of me with a smile too smooth to be genuine. She glides as if the floor is as silken as her flowing gown. She must’ve spun the silk herself, since all she’s been is a spider stalking through her own web. And unfortunately, I’m trapped in it again.
“Why, hi there, dear thing,” she says, voice dripping with sarcasm as if it was sweet syrup.
I used to miss such subtlety, but I know now that she never meant to express her words kindly to me. They’ve always been condescending and manipulative. Not concerned or motherly, like I had believed. Like I was brainwashed to believe.
I blink against the weight pressing down on my lashes. My ear feels strangely empty. They took away the comms, my earpiece, my only way to reach the others for help.
Clo circles me with quiet satisfaction. “Still sensitive to Kys, aren’t you, you poor thing?” she coos mockingly. “Always were so delicate.”
Her eyes trace the burn scars running down my legs.
“Of course, it was obvious it was you,” she murmurs with a scowl.
The shame tries to reach me, tries to curl inside my ribs. But it drifts by like smoke. I don’t let it settle. She moves her gaze past me after. There’s a flash in her eyes, and I know who she’s looking at without having to turn.
Sterling. Even through the haze clinging to my mind, I feel him like a second heartbeat, steady and always somewhere close to me.
Clo shakes her head. “And that silver hair,” she says with a condescending sigh. “The most obvious part of it all.”
The anger stirs deep inside me, molten and heavy. I meet her eyes when she leans closer, her voice a breath against my skin.
“Sterling’s first failure,” she whispers, “was not saving you.”
Then she straightens, smoothing out her gown.
“My greatest accomplishment,” she says, wistful, “was saving you.”
My fingers twitch against the ropes, nails scraping against rough wood. Clo circles me again as though she’s admiring her handiwork.
“How ungrateful of you to slap me in the face by fighting me back, after everything I’ve done for you.”
She leans low in front of me, tilting her head as if she’s offering a secret meant only for me.
“Don’t you ever wonder,” she asks, “why no one came to save you?”
Her words sink into the fog hanging over my thoughts.
“Your darling boy killed them. Every last one.”
A deep sadness tugs at me. But it doesn’t take me under. I shake my head, the movement slow, dragging against the gravity of Kys.
“I know you’re lying,” I say despite my dry throat. “I remember some of it. Sterling and Lix filled in the rest.”
The sharpness of her smile dulls. “The only reason you’re alive,” she says, “is because I protected you. I gave you a life free of suffering. You should be grateful, little girl. I made everything easier for you.”
The anger in me rises higher and hotter. I shake my head again. “That wasn’t living,” I say. “That wasn’t ease. That wasn’t protection.”
I glare at her, not blinking, barely breathing.
“You didn’t save me. You erased me. You stole every version of who I could’ve been.”
For a moment, Clo stares at me, her lips a firm line of a disapproving frown. I can feel her recalculating, slipping new threads through the web she’s trying to keep me trapped in.
Then her hand flies to hold my cheeks. “You were supposed to be my most treasured triumph.” I twitch when her nails bite into my skin. “You were my living, breathing proof that Kys works. You obeyed. You remade yourself for me. You were mine.”
Her voice changes, sweetened like poisoned honey.
“Slow down,” she whispers by my ear.
Bile lurches up my throat. The words strike deep the way they used to. A whispered command woven into bone, into blood, and into the spaces between my thoughts. My pulse falters. My breath drags. The world dips sideways. It feels like I’m falling into darkness.
But then I think of him. Sterling. I don’t even have to look at him.
I know he’s here. Somewhere close. Always close.
I can feel it in my chest, that steadiness Sterling always carries, the way his presence fills up a room without making a sound.
That unwavering pull of someone who never stopped choosing me.
He’s fought too hard for me and pulled me out of the fog so many times.
He held me through the worst nights. Kissed the parts of me I couldn’t face.
The past me who couldn’t stop my father from doing what he did, releasing Kys into the world.
Sterling watched the whole mayhem of me unfold and still stayed and took care of me, even when I didn’t know how to ask for any of it.
He never stopped. He never gave up on me.
So I won’t let her win. I owe him this much. I owe myself more.
I fight the pull. Cling to the sting of the rope. The press of the light behind my eyes. The breath still moving in and out of me. But the room blurs a little more. The urge to give in is so inviting. I almost step into it.
No, I can’t. I won’t. In my mind’s eye, I see Sterling, giving me his rare smile.
I see Kaye laughing over coffee that she snorts out.
Stan cursing and pouting when he butchers a stitch on a mask.
Damon knocking his knuckles on the table to keep us focused, but he gets distracted soon after, smirking when Kaye catches his attention.
I see my brother taking my hand in his. The same hand I once pulled from the fire.
I see myself in a hundred mirrors in this room.
I imagine how I looked before Clo took me.
An eighteen-year-old with brown eyes and a broken nose from when my mother hit me hard for defying her.
And even then, that didn’t stop me. So how could I ever let Clo dare to try again?
I clench my jaw until it aches and force myself to look at Clo. I won’t blink. I won’t bow. The words slow down slide off me the way they never belonged in my mind.
Her eyes narrow, the sickly sweetness draining away. She blinks like she can’t believe her words didn’t work. “Still fighting,” she mutters.
The edges of her voice fray. She stands, much stiffer and tense.
“Ah, well. It’s the new kind of Kys,” she says with an aggravated groan. “Too diluted in the air, perhaps. I suppose it’s not strong enough.”
She flicks her fingers toward one of her masked men. He moves at once, turning on his heel.
“Have them increase the Kys in the vents,” she calls out. “I’ll be giving my speech soon, and the timing needs to be perfect.”
He disappears. Clo steps toward me, her spine taut. I meet her gaze without wavering, even as the world weaves circles around me. Her frown fractures further, becoming brittle and vicious.
“Sterling killed your parents,” she spits out each word like a curse, “Yet you don’t care?”
I stay still. I keep her words out of my mind.
“I knew I shaped you into this pliable thing.” She gives a short, bitter laugh. “But this is ridiculous. Falling in love with that monster when your mother’s blood is on his hands? How naive can you be, you foolish girl?”
She tilts her head, the gleam in her eyes cold.
“For a mother-in-law, I’m not half as bad as Asami Smith,” she hisses.
“We would have been a formidable little family if you had simply stayed put. I even ensured that Stan would love you forever. You would have had the Song-Smith name. Our fortune. Our empire. One you were meant to inherit from your father. You would have never want for anything.”
Her words are meant to lure. “That wouldn’t have been a life. That would’ve been a lie,” I say. “I would never trade truth for comfort.”
Her eyes darken. But I hold her gaze, steady as stone, while the truth lodges between us and refuses to move. My fingers fidget against the ropes again, faint yet defiant. Clo watches me for a long, simmering second, then snaps her fingers with a sharp, furious crack.
More masked figures appear from the shadows as if she summoned nightmares from the dark.
My eyes track their eyes, and I realize they’re the same color as mine.
Their hands clamp down on my arms. The chair jerks forward and up as they drag me out of the room.
My legs buckle under the weight of the drug and their rough handling.
They pull me forward, dragging me toward the top of the stairs, toward her stage.
Over my shoulder, I catch a glimpse of the mirror room we’re leaving behind.
Sterling still lies there on the floor, motionless.
The sight nearly makes me scream for him.
But I stop myself and keep breathing. I can’t get to him right now, but I will soon. I have to find a way out first.
My lungs take in air and exhale out Kys. I try to steady each heave of my chest, counting the seconds between breaths, as I stare at Clo, who places herself at the top of the spiraling stairs.
Resting on the golden railing, Clo stands with the practiced grace of someone who believes the world was made to worship her.
The gala sprawls below in a black sea of masks and murmurs.
There are hundreds of guests, looking up at her.
On cue of her arrival, the music fades, the hush builds, and all their eyes glisten under the glow of sparkling chandeliers.
How cruel of Clo to host a beautiful event built on such bad intentions.
She looks down at the crowd under her. “Tonight,” she announces with a perfect grin, “we celebrate new beginnings!”