Chapter 37
Quinn
I woke in a gray box. Dizzying patterns smothered the walls and ceiling. Overhead, a chandelier dripped green mist.
There was no sign of Brit. Before I could dwell on it, I had to figure out the here and now. I pulled the sheets off myself and found a long dressing gown covering my clean body from neck to foot. A shiver ran through me. I forced myself to breathe.
Our Prophet waits.
This had to be Cayden’s family, and that terrified me.
My heart thudded hard enough to shake my ribs. The man in the mask hadn’t seemed interested in Brit. Maybe he’d left her. He had to have.
I rolled out of bed and crossed the two steps to the only door. I called on my Majekah. The wood turned to scraps at my touch. Relief caught in my throat until I saw the bathroom.
“Just beautiful,” an ancient voice rasped, dry as dust.
Cayden had always avoided talking about his family. He promised I’d never end up here. Fear ran down my spine as I turned.
An ancient man stood, outlined against a black pulsating entry. His wrinkled face wilted under the weight of his skin, and a too-tight minister’s collar held the bright-orange robes I’d seen on Cayden’s brothers.
The sight of that collar made my own feel tighter, like an invisible chain. A draft touched places normally shielded by underwear. Someone had stripped me and bathed me. I hugged myself, suddenly feeling very small.
“Welcome to your new home, Quinn.” He closed the space in three slow steps, milky-green eyes set in the same deep sockets as Cayden’s, only colder. A gnarled cane with a large crystal on top supported his weight.
“The correct response…”—he smiled, slow and sure—“…is to kneel. I am your Prophet. The father of your children. Your reason to exist.”
I pressed my abdomen, feeling the cold edge of my belly button ring, proof I was still me. For now. Bile burned at the base of my throat. Would I even know if I’d been raped? My heart thundered. I forced the rising vomit down.
“Your magic’s strong,” he said, closing in. “Submit, and I’ll remove your collar. There’s no need for this to be unfriendly. I am a kind Prophet. Our family walks in the light of the Sun God.”
I forced my gaze to the crystal on his staff, clinging to the harmless rainbows it threw across the gray room.
“No.” The word came out stronger than I felt, like it belonged to someone braver.
The milky green of his eyes churned, as if something alive moved beneath the surface.
Beneath the wrinkles of his cruel smile, Cayden’s bone structure mocked me. I knew. This was Cayden’s father, the man who had impregnated his own daughter.
He stepped back, spreading his hands in mock benediction.
“God shines only on believers,” he said with a sad smile curving his lips. “Until you believe, you are tainted. Untouchable, even to me, without risking His wrath.”
His words didn’t comfort me.
He beckoned, palms open in false welcome. “You will believe, Quinn. My word is truth. I will lead you into the light.”
I shook my head.
He carved a slow shape into the air, and the gray room warped around me. I was suddenly inches from the Prophet with my back to the bed. He reached out and wrapped my sparkling locks in his fist. I jerked back, for him to yank me forward again until my scalp burned.
“You’ll beg me to touch you,” he promised. “They all do.”
He released me, and in his place, Brit stood: pale, trembling, bleeding.
“You left her to die.” His voice boomed. “Bleeding. And all because she tried to help you.” Brit blinked out of existence, and the Prophet’s shadow filled the room again.
Guilt slammed into my chest. I’d left Brit. Abandoned Everly. Turned my back on Cayden. Too blinded by fear to see Xan had been my friend. I didn’t know how to look beyond myself.
The Prophet’s smile sharpened, a blade forged from my guilt. He drifted into the dark, voice slicing through the space between us. “You’re no friend. No ally. Just useless.”
The worst part? He wasn’t wrong. I’d flinched from danger every single time it stared me down.
“How many times have you fallen, girl, and needed saving?”
My dad, hauling my crazy ass up over and over. Xan healed me because I couldn’t survive without a grocery store or bug spray. Rowan found me broken and bleeding under a table. Cayden pulled my skewered body off a crashed train. Every failure whipped into a storm, tearing through my head.
The Prophet’s smile sharpened into a knowing smirk, as if he could taste my guilt. “You’re not just a problem; you make their lives harder just by breathing.”
I couldn’t see the old man. The storm in my head swallowed him whole. My heart hammered as failures pelted me like hail.
Tears burned hot down my cheeks. The collar around my neck grew cold.
The edges of my vision bled into an impossible, cerulean blue, and my failures split apart, peeling back to reveal the Prophet framed in the dark opening.
I hurled myself toward him. His eyes widened in surprise, and the dizzying wallpaper melted into smooth, seamless walls.
I slammed shoulder-first into the doorway, pain ricocheting up my arm and shattering through my teeth.
The collar pulsed with heat, syncing with my heartbeat as though it were mimicking my actions.
At first, I thought it was the chandelier creaking… until the sound bent into words.
“You left your friend to die,” a child’s voice breathed, so close it stirred the hair on my neck.
I flinched, but another voice slid in, silky, cold, and sharp as glass.
“You’re not a friend or an ally. You’re useless.”
More voices bled in, overlapping, worming into my skull until I couldn’t tell where one ended and another began.
“You’re a burden,” someone spat, as if sealing a truth I’d always known.
“You shouldn’t exist.”
“You’re nothing. Nothing.”
Then Cayden’s voice cut through them all, steady, certain, and cruel. “You make their lives harder by existing.”
The words crowded in, pressing against my skull, hissing and multiplying until there was no air left to breathe. The room pitched sideways, dragging my balance with it. I clamped my hands over my ears, but the whispers burrowed in, writhing where only my thoughts should be.
“Every fall, someone else had to pick you up,” one hissed.
My dad’s hand in mine, Rowan’s arm lifting me from blood, Cayden’s grip pulling me from the train all spiraled.
“You’ll never be worth saving.”
“You’re nothing.” The words hit again. And again. Until there was no space left inside me.
My breath hitched in sharp, useless gasps.
I folded in on myself as the whispers pressed closer, too many to separate, too loud to silence.
Time dissolved. Hours, days, I couldn’t tell, leaving me suspended in an airless moment. I hadn’t moved from the bed, but every muscle ached. My failures jabbed at me like dull knives, again and again. Only the sharp gnaw of hunger could cut through the whispers.
The room was a sealed box, no windows, no escape, just the four walls breathing with me. A wooden mug in the bathroom held water, but nothing else. I’d run out of tears hours ago. There had to be something worth saving in me… right?
“You’re a burden.”“You shouldn’t exist.”“You’re nothing.”
The words fell like blows, one after another.
“Am I?” I whispered.
The voices stopped. Not peace, just a hollow, waiting kind of silence.
The door clicked open. The Prophet entered with a silver tray, steam curling from a bowl of soup. My stomach twisted painfully.
“I want you to have this,” he said, “but you must show me gratitude.”
If this place was even real… if I was.
Oh, hi, Miss Q. You’re back. I’ve missed you.
One corner of my mouth twitched, too many teeth, too little sanity.
He faltered but pressed on. “A simple thank you.”
I stared. None of this was real.
Rainbows from his crystal staff scattered across the ceiling, the only beautiful thing in the room.
I clung to them until they vanished, and the voices returned.
Time bled away in loops. I counted seventy-two whispers before Cayden’s voice told me I was a burden.
I lost track after a hundred and fifteen.
When the old man came back, he brought something minty and rich… and a necklace I recognized. The sleeping cat pendant Xan had given me. My promise of escape.
He swung it, and I followed it like a kitten. The pendant heated, arching toward the wall until a wad of molten metal splatted against the wall. A sharp ache bloomed in my chest.
“Cheap. Broken. Just like you.”
I rocked, whispering, “You don’t exist,” over and over, until a giggle slipped out, followed by the theme song from my favorite childhood cartoon.
Insanity was a defense. If I couldn’t be safe, I could at least be mad.
He came in and out five more times. Hunger eventually snapped my world into focus. I couldn’t remember why I wasn’t thanking him.
He sat on the bed, patting the space beside him. I obeyed.“And who will you thank for this bountiful feast?”“The Prophet,” I said.
He held out a sandwich. I bit in. The acid hurt my jaw, but I was starving. When only one piece was left, he held it between his fingers.
“Suck every morsel off them. Your Prophet needs you.”
My stomach turned. I jerked back.
“You’ve begun,” he said with a chuckle.
Before I could stop myself, I asked, “Could you stop the voices?”
“They’re helping you see who you are.”
The voices returned, wearing his tone, carrying his verdicts, erasing the thin line between his cruelty and my own thoughts.
“You’re worthless.”
“A drag on everyone around you.”
“A burden.”
I tried to be Miss Q again, the crazy woman who would wake up any minute, but my mistakes, both worlds, haunted me.
A tear slid down my cheek, the only thing in me still moving.