Chapter Four #2
Then he releases my arm and continues down the hallway like nothing happened. I watch him go, heart pounding, trying to remember what I was doing before my entire world narrowed down to golden eyes and warm fingers.
Right. Investigating.
Focus, Bailey.
THE CHAPEL IN DAYLIGHT is different from my memory of it. Less ominous, more beautiful. Afternoon sun pours through the stained glass windows, casting patterns of color across the stone floor. Ruby and sapphire and emerald, shifting slowly as the light moves.
I stand in the spot where I woke up, trying to see what I saw that day. The woman in black. Abigail. Rain-colored eyes wild with terror, mascara running down her cheeks. He's gone insane—you should hide too.
She disappeared through a wall that shouldn't have had a door.
And I never told.
I walk toward the back corner, toward the wall that looked solid but wasn't. In daylight, I can see it: a seam in the stone that's almost invisible unless you know where to look. I press my hand against the cool surface, push...
And the wall gives way, swinging inward to reveal a narrow passage beyond.
No light inside. Just darkness.
I glance back at my guards. The younger one takes a step forward.
"Just looking," I call out. "I'm not going far."
I slip into the darkness before he can change his mind.
The passage is cold, narrow, the walls rough stone. I use my phone as a flashlight, the pale beam cutting through the dark.
Twenty feet in, my light catches something.
A stone in the wall, slightly askew. Like someone moved it recently and didn't quite put it back the same way.
My heart beats faster.
I reach out, wiggle the stone. It shifts. Comes loose.
Behind it is a small hollow. And inside that hollow, tucked away like a secret someone was desperate to keep...
A journal.
Small, leather-bound. The cover is soft under my fingers, worn smooth by handling.
I open the front cover.
This journal belongs to Abigail Briones.
My hands begin to shake.
I TAKE THE JOURNAL back to my room because I need light and privacy to understand what I've found.
I curl up on the bed and open to the first page.
The early entries are almost entirely about her father. What he expects. What he wants. How to please him. She writes about him the way someone writes about an impossible exam—always studying, never passing.
But as I turn the pages, someone else appears. She never names him. Just "he" and "him." A man who watches her. Who knows things he shouldn't. Who corners her in hallways and smiles like he's already won.
The final entry is barely legible, the handwriting wild and slanting.
I know what he is now. I know what Father did. I'm not a bride—I'm a transaction. But I'm done hiding. I'm going to confront him tonight, and I'm going to—
The entry ends.
Mid-sentence. Mid-word.
Like someone stopped her.
I stare at the blank space where her words should continue, and the blood in my veins has gone to ice. My hands are shaking so badly the journal trembles in my grip.
Abigail didn't run from the wedding.
She ran from him—whoever he is.
And her father knew. Her father was part of it.
So what stopped her from finishing that sentence?
Footsteps in the hallway. Heavy. Deliberate. Coming closer.
I shove the journal under my pillow, heart hammering. The door opens before I can arrange my face into anything resembling calm.
Devyn.
Of course it's Devyn. Who else would walk into my room without knocking, like privacy is a concept that simply doesn't apply to him?
He closes the door behind him. Takes two steps inside. Stops.
His golden eyes sweep over me. My position on the bed. My too-still posture. The way my hand is resting just a little too casually near the pillow.
He sees everything. He always sees everything.
"You went to the chapel."
He moves closer as he speaks. I should stand up, should put myself on more equal footing, but I don't trust my legs right now.
He stops at the edge of the bed. Looking down at me.
"And you found the passage," he says.
I could tell him. I could pull out the journal and hand it over. But until I understand what I'm dealing with, I don't know who to trust.
“What else did you find?”
"Nothing," I say. "Just a dark hallway. I didn't go far."
Devyn doesn't move. Doesn't blink.
He knows I'm lying.
I can see it in his face. And I know he knows. And this terrible awareness stretches between us.
But he doesn't push.
Instead, he reaches out.
His fingers catch my chin, tilting my face up toward him. It's the same gesture he's used before. But this time his thumb traces along the line of my jaw, slow and deliberate, and I stop breathing entirely.
"You're keeping secrets," he says, and his voice has dropped to something low and soft. "From me."
His eyes drop to my mouth.
Fourth time.
I'm still counting.
My pulse is doing something completely unreasonable. My skin is burning everywhere he's touching me, and everywhere he isn't.
Stop it, Bailey. Focus.
"Everyone has secrets," I manage. "Even you."
Something changes in his expression. That almost-smile again.
"Yes," he agrees. "Even me."
He holds my gaze for a long moment. Long enough to feel the weight of everything we're not saying. Long enough for me to wonder what would happen if one of us moved, if one of us closed that last impossible distance.
Then he releases my chin.
Steps back.
"Dinner is at seven," he says, his voice cool again. "Don't be late."
And then he's gone.
I sit there, not moving, barely breathing, my hand pressed against the pillow that hides Abigail's journal.
He knows I found something. He knows I'm hiding it. And he let me keep it anyway.
I pull the journal out and clutch it to my chest.
I'm not a bride. I'm a transaction.
Abigail's warning was never finished.
But somehow, some way, I'm going to find out what stopped her.