Chapter 79
Chapter Seventy-Nine
ALICE
Hook walks ahead of me. Not by much—just a step or two—but it feels like miles.
His steps are purposeful, strong. I don't really know what to say to him, because although he says nothing, I see it all, feel it all.
It isn't my memory, but it clings to me like a vine around my heart that I can't shake off.
It's thick and raw, and every piece of it hurts, as if I can't breathe from it.
I want to go to him and tell him I'm sorry. I want to go to him and make him know that it's okay. He was a child. I know he won't accept it though. His silence isn't just silence—it's a wall, a barrier.
I have to take in a deep breath against what plays over and over in my head. How can anyone have done that, have seen that? I can't even imagine the aftermath of it, but Hook... The way he ran, the way he screamed. When he practically threw himself into the water to pull his brother out.
I want to reach for him. I want to do something. Anything.
My fingers twitch at my sides, remembering how his skin felt under my touch when I cupped his face. The warmth of him, the way his pulse jumped beneath my fingertips, even with him locked in that memory. Hook doesn't want comfort. He doesn't do vulnerability.
His jaw is locked, muscles jumping beneath the skin as he grinds his teeth. Even his shoulders are tight, his fists clenched and the one around the sword, more so. The silver of it catches the light of this place, throwing fractured reflections against the walls.
Hook doesn't look at me. Doesn't slow. Just keeps walking.
I let him take the lead here. Whatever it is I feel inside my chest, is this way, and maybe he feels it too.
Or maybe he just happens to be going the right way.
I can't even describe how it feels. It's like something inside me knows that we have to go this way. Something knows this is right.
There are many doors. Hook opens two or three, and eyes them, but we don't go into them. I don't think either of us trusts it. One of the rooms is a bedroom—a child's bedroom by the looks of things. But it morphs into a graveyard, and then a grave with flowers and teddy bears on it.
The air here feels wrong. Too thick, like breathing in syrup. It carries the musty scent of old books and something else—something metallic that catches in the back of my throat. Magic. But not the clean, bright kind I'm learning to control. This is older. Darker.
"Are everyone's memories here?" I ask out loud. "Is this where all the things end up?"
Hook stops so suddenly I nearly crash into him. The scent of leather and silver and something uniquely him—pine needles and storm clouds—wraps around me.
I catch myself just in time, my hands hovering, unsure if I should steady myself on him. He exhales sharply through his nose, rolling his shoulders back. The movement draws my attention to the breadth of them, to the way his coat stretches across his back. Not that I'm noticing. Not now. Not here.
"Do not," he says, voice low and tight, each word precise and cutting, "start philosophising. This place is already enough of a mindfuck."
He's not wrong. God, he's not wrong.
We keep moving. "I can't believe there's no one in here," I say. "Not even inside, no guards, nothing."
He pushes open another door and this one has steps to it and pauses, as if debating, then he takes the first step. "They don't need them by the look of things. This place is enough to send you running." We get down the steps, to the bottom, and it is dark. "This place is like a god damn maze."
"It doesn't look this big on the outside."
"No. I don't think it is." He narrows his eyes to look around us. "I think this entire place is fucking with us."
Up ahead, a doorway flickers. Like there's a fluorescent light inside the room. Hook halts again and this time I do bump into him. My chest colliding with his back. The solid warmth of him sends an inappropriate flutter through my stomach, despite everything.
He doesn't react. Just lifts his sword, fingers wrapped tightly around the hilt. My heart lurches, then plummets, because the voice that calls my name next is nothing to do with here, and nothing to do with Hook.
It's me.
I know that voice.
I'd know it anywhere.
Something in my chest cracks open, spilling warmth and pain in equal measure. I shove past Hook, barely registering his sharp "Alice—" before running forward, heart hammering against my ribs like it's trying to escape.
Gran. She stands just ahead in the archway, looking exactly like I remember her.
Before the illness. Before the care home my mother put her in.
Her grey hair still streaked with blonde, her blue eyes bright with warmth.
She's wearing that awful cardigan she loved so much—the one with an embroidered little witch on it.
It was so out of shape and god knows what, but so Gran.
"Oh, Alice," she says, and there is so much love in those two words that I nearly break right then and there.
My eyes burn, my vision blurs. I go to her, but before I do, something in her expression shifts, her mouth tightening.
A new light enters her eyes, one colder, sharper.
Wrong. "You left me, Alice," she says. I stop dead and ice spears through my veins right into my chest. "You left me in that place to die.
You never came to see me. None of you did.
" Her voice takes an edge I've never really heard from her before.
It's deep and bitter and cutting. "You didn't come. "
My throat locks up. "Gran, I—"
She lifts a finger, wagging it at me. The gesture is so familiar that it hurts, but she used to do it when I was little out of fun.
She'd wag her finger when I was teasing.
"Don't make excuses. You went off and lived life, and didn't even bother.
I wrote to you. I sent you cards, letters, and pictures. "
My chest burns. Guilt and confusion war inside me, because those parts don't make sense.
I did see her. Not often. I hated the place, hated to see what she'd become.
She wasn't my Gran anymore. Just an empty woman who kind of looked like her.
"I didn't get any cards," I say, though.
"If I did, I would have replied, you know that. "
We did that too. She always wrote to me when I moved out.
She sent me cards and silly little things.
Sent me pictures. Always signed them, 'your turn.
' So I wrote back to her, and sent her descriptions of my days and pictures of where I was.
And then her letters slowed, and stopped and got lost. She couldn't read mine anymore, my mother said.
Stop sending the letters Alice. You're upsetting your grandmother.
And I never wanted to do that so I stopped.
"It's not real." Hook's voice cuts through the air beside me.
The heat of him at my back is sudden and solid and grounding.
I jolt, my breath catching. His gaze is locked on my grandmother too—but not with softness, not with sympathy.
With cold calculation. "This place feeds on what we fear, what hurts us, what we regret. It's not real, Alice. She isn't real."
And before we can even let those words sink in, another voice joins us. "It is real."
Cold goes through me as I turn and I feel Hook stiffen beside me. At the top of the steps we came down, stands a boy. Small. Younger. Features so much like Hook's. I'd have to be an idiot not to know who he is.
"You left, too. Didn't you, James? You left me to die."
I feel Hook tense, his entire body going rigid. The change in him is instantly visceral. I want to reach for him too and he lets me, kind of. His breath is sharp, the grip on the sword iron-like.
"You're not real either." His voice is a growl, low and dangerous. "Come on."
He grabs my wrist before I can argue with him, before I can even think and drags me down more. His grip is tight enough to leave a bruise, but I welcome it. It helps me focus and helps me to feel.
"Alice. Don't leave again. You left me in that place. Alice. I miss you."
I glance back. I can't help it. Her face—the only version of her I ever let myself remember—is twisted with sorrow. With disappointment. And it hurts. God, it hurts. Like someone's reached into my chest and squeezed.
"You're not real," I say, but my voice wavers. Breaks.
"James. James, please don't go."
Hook doesn't look back.
I feel the moment he lets go of my wrist and clenches his fist instead. The loss of contact leaves a hollow feeling inside me. Then—she appears.
Not Sam. Not the boy.
A woman.
Tall. Sharp-featured. The same dark hair, the same eyes, the same set of his jaw. She's beautiful in a harsh way, like cut glass.
I know who she is before he even reacts.
Hook stops dead.
His mother.
His breath catches. His top lip twitches. For a moment, I see something raw and vulnerable flash across his face before he locks it down. "You can fuck off, too."
"Alice." A new voice. My father's. My stomach drops, nausea rising. The sound of his voice—so familiar, so wrong—makes me want to curl in on myself. Not because he's dead, and not because I did anything wrong, but I don't see him as much as I should either.
Hook curses under his breath, grabbing me again. His touch is gentler this time. "Don't look at them."
I don't. We break into a run and that feeling again is there, the one that tells me where to go, because Hook takes a turn and it's wrong.
"No," I say, pulling at him. "This way."
Behind us, the voices rise. My Gran, my dad, my mother. They're all there now. A chorus of guilt and regret. For Hook—his brother and his mother. I feel a deep sharp sadness at that, that they're the only ones there. Ghosts, but they cut so deep.
We go on. A glass door. I glance into it—not meaning to—but she's there. A figure in the centre of the room, kneeling. Chains wrapped around her wrists, giving her just enough room to move. Her red hair falls in tangles around her face, but I'd know her anywhere.
I freeze.
"Sophia," I say, her name catching in my throat as I stop.
Hook yanks me back, his hand sliding down to tangle with mine. The contact sends sparks up my arm, inappropriate and electric. "Not real, remember?"
But something in me knows different. This isn't like the others. This is... by the way Hook doesn't pull me back, and his grip tightens on my hand, I think he knows it too.
She’s real.