Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CLOVER
The room is small.
Smaller than I remember.
Or maybe I’ve just gotten bigger, it’s hard to tell.
But everything else—everything else is exactly the same.
I claw at my throat. The phantom pains of thirst feel visceral now as I spin in a circle.
The concrete floor. The bare walls. The single bulb hanging from the ceiling, casting harsh shadows that make the space feel even more claustrophobic.
This was my life.
The place Terra would lock me in when I displeased her. When I existed too colorfully in her perfectly ordered world. When she needed to ensure that Valen would return.
I was her tool, but I never resented Valen for it. Not even once.
She used me as leverage, her insurance policy. Every time Valen stepped out of line, I paid the price. Every time he tried to protect me, Terra found a way to use that protection against us both.
I’d forgotten about this room.
No, that’s not entirely true. It comes to me in my nightmares. I just forced myself to forget each time the sun rose. I’d bury it so deep that only my subconscious could access it.
But my body remembers.
My lungs remember.
The way the air tastes here. Stale and wrong. Like fear has been fermenting in the darkness, just waiting to draw me back in.
My eyes remember.
The darkness. There are no windows in here. The light above my head was a luxury I could earn, but most times I did not.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
My lungs aren’t working.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
My vision swims.
One. Two. Three. Four—
And then I see them.
The letters.
My letters, or photocopies of them.
All of them.
Every single one I’ve written is stapled to the walls in neat rows.
Three things, Clover. Touch three things.
They’re organized by date. By year. My life laid out in chronological order. My pain, displayed like wallpaper.
I’m going to throw up.
It’s a timeline of my life presented like evidence in a murder investigation.
The murder of the life I was never meant to have.
Because that’s what this is, isn’t it? The systematic destruction of Clover Danforth. The girl who thought she was writing love letters to her lost childhood sweetheart. The girl who poured her heart onto paper, never knowing that every word was being read by the one woman I thought had saved me.
And then it clicks—the timeline. Six months ago, I wrote about hiring someone to find Valen. A private investigator, maybe. Someone who could tell me once and for all if he was alive, if he remembered me, if there was any hope left.
Maybe that letter was the trigger. Miriam realized I might actually find him—on my own terms, outside of her control. So she started writing back, pretending to be him, feeding me just enough hope to keep me passive. Waiting. Exactly where she wanted me.
The scream works its way up from my gut. Rolling and gaining speed and velocity until it escapes my lips.
I don’t mean to, but the sound rips out of me like something alive and desperate. Valen’s with me the next second. He grips my shoulders, turning me away from the walls, tucking me into his muscular chest.
“Don’t look,” he’s saying, his voice rough and panicked. “Clover, don’t look—”
But I can’t stop. I am the accident everyone cranes their head to view. Even I twist in his arms to get a better look at the horror show that is my life.
There are photos too. I notice them now that Valen’s touch grounds me to the moment.
So. Many. Photos.
Me at Blissful Beans & Leaves in Happiness. Me walking Wrecks. Me at the grocery store. Me with my nose pressed to the window of my own freaking home. Me laughing with Madi and Savvy at the Chug.
She took these.
I claw at my skin, feeling dirty and itchy.
She was there in those moments when I felt secure and happy. She was watching me, photographing me, studying me like I’m an insect pinned to her board.
There are notes too. Red ink. Harsh, slashing handwriting that makes my stomach turn.
She thinks she’s safe in Happiness.
She thinks she’s safe.
She’s wrong. Wrong. WRONG.
Soon she’ll come home, and then we’ll finally be free.
Home.
This place. This nightmare. She thinks this is my home.
“Oh God,” I whisper, my knees buckling. I cover my mouth, as if I can keep the trauma in my head from spilling out and making this real.
Valen catches me before I hit the floor, his arms wrapping around me so tightly I can barely breathe, but I don’t care. I need his pressure. Need to feel contained. Need to know I’m not going to fly apart into a thousand pieces.
“Chief,” Valen bellows, his voice cracking. “Get Roman.”
Behind me, Chief sucks in a whistling breath before the sound of him shuffling out of the room is all I can focus on.
Then I stop listening altogether because my gaze snags on one photo in particular.
It’s of Valen and me at the Happiness town fair. This must be the moment right after I fainted. My head is tilted back, and I’m staring at him as if he’s an angel. He’s wearing an expression that makes my heart ache even now because there’s no recognition in his beautiful blue eyes.
She took this photo. She violated the very safety she helped create.
Miriam. It has to be her.
“Oh, fuck.” Valen steps forward, almost as if he forgot he was still holding me because he drags me with him.
That’s when I see it. Something morbid and too disturbing to be real.
“V—Valen. What is that?” I wrench out of his hold and practically fall into the wall.
Two women. Same DNA. One standing. One on the ground with unseeing eyes.
“Jesus Christ. Is that…is that Terra or Miriam?” His voice is deadly calm, low, dangerous.
“She’s alive.” The words leave my mouth, but they sound so flat, so dead, that I don’t recognize them as my own. “Terra’s alive. She’s been alive this whole time. She killed her own sister. She took her place, and she’s been watching me for months. Maybe longer.”
Shock numbs me, thankfully.
“We don’t know that yet,” Valen says.
“Look at the walls, Valen!” My voice cracks when anger and fear creep in.
“Look at them! Miriam wouldn’t do this. My gut has been saying that this entire time, and I didn’t listen.
The woman I knew—the woman we knew—she wouldn’t do this.
But Terra? That miserable bitch would. She’s the only one who would care this much about making us suffer.
I was her darkest obsession, Valen. It has to be her. It has to be.”
He doesn’t speak because there’s nothing to say. Without his memories to back me up, I’m on my own in my certainty, and I have to make him see that I’m right.
It means I force myself to take in every detail of the room, even though every instinct I’ve honed over the years is telling me to run, to hide, to keep myself safe.
Now I know safety is an illusion my mind created because I wasn’t strong enough to fight back.
My gaze drifts to Valen.
Today, I’m strong. Today, I stop hiding.
I shift to the desk in the corner. It’s small, metal, institutional. The kind you’d see in a prison. On it are more papers. More notes. But beside it, stuffed into a shadowy corner, is something else.
A dress. It’s white lace—Terra’s favorite—and the old-fashioned style hangs on the dirty dress form like a ghost.
My empty stomach heaves.
“That’s—” My voice won’t work properly. It’s broken, as though shattered glass is tearing my throat raw. “That dress is just like the one she sent me in the package.”
Valen’s hand tightens on my shoulder. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. It’s exactly the same as the one with a knife stabbed through it.” I point with a shaky finger. “She’s planning— She’s— She wants—”
I can’t finish. Can’t say it out loud. But the implications hang in the air, heavy and horrible.
She plans to indoctrinate me back into the order. Here. In this place. Under her control.
Terra wants to fulfill the plan she had all those years ago, before I escaped, before Valen’s aunt took him away. Before we had a chance to grow up and choose for ourselves.
She’s here to finish what she started because she believes I’m her chosen one.
The pieces fall into place with sickening clarity. Terra didn’t just want me back—she wanted us back. Her two prized seedlings. Chosen in her name. When we ran, we ruined her grand design, and now she wants to force us into the roles she created.
Footsteps thunder up the stairs before Roman bursts into the room, his face draining of color as he takes in the space.
“What the fuck?” He steps inside, his gun in hand, though there’s no threat here now. Just evidence. Mountains of evidence. “We didn’t even know this room existed, but all that shit out there. That wasn’t—none of that was here two hours ago.”
“What?” Valen’s sharp tone echoes in the room.
“We cleared this building twice. Every room, and I’m telling you, that shit wasn’t out there.” Roman moves along the wall, studying letters and each photo. “Someone did that today.”
The words land like a physical blow, and my gaze darts to each corner, then the exit. My chest sinks. Trapped. I’m trapped in here.
She was here. In this room, setting up her horror show, knowing we’d come back. Knowing we’d find it.
She’s waiting for us…somewhere.
“How?” Chief demands, coming into the room with Wrecks right behind him. The dog takes one look at the walls and starts growling, low and continuous, as he tugs and pulls to get to my side. “You’ve got cameras on this place. How did someone get in without you seeing?”
Roman’s jaw flexes. “I don’t know, but I’ll find out.” He unlocks his phone, pulling up what looks like security footage. His face darkens with each swipe of his thumb. “Nothing. No one entered through any of the doors or windows, and we’re monitoring from every goddamn angle.”
“There’s another way in,” Valen says.
“Has to be.” Roman turns to me. “Clover, do you remember if there are passages? Other secret rooms? Other entrances?”