Epilogue
ROT
Nolan
I USE THE EDGE OF the metal cuff around my wrist to carve a line into the floor.
If I don’t keep track of the days, I will eventually lose them to the slow, relentless grind of captivity.
I need to get back to Harper. The bone in the garden, the voice of the raven—she must be a pawn in a game she doesn’t even know she’s playing.
But to what end? And by whose plan, and why? I still haven’t seen my captor’s face.
I promised I would keep her safe. That I’d claw my way into hell to find her. And now, I can’t move more than four feet from the iron pillar I’m chained to.
I’m helpless. Desperate. Utterly powerless.
Is this how my victims felt when I caught them and bound them to chairs before I tortured them and took their lives?
I blow out a long breath and stare down at the notches I’ve cut into the wood.
It’s been six days since I woke up chained to the floor of a cabin by my wrists and ankles.
I was left with nothing more than bottles of water and enough military ready-to-eat meals to last over a week, if I rationed them well.
I can just reach an old toilet that’s nothing more than a seat on a wooden box that drops to a pit of sawdust and lime.
No one has come, no matter how long or loud I’ve screamed.
I’ve heard nothing but water lapping against a shore and the calls of birds and insects.
I’ve tried everything to free myself, of course.
I’ve scratched at the floor until my fingers bled.
I’ve tugged at the shackles until they left black bruises.
I’ve tested every link in the chains, every weld. But there’s no way to free myself.
How could this have gone so fucking wrong? What could I have missed?
I think back on these questions endlessly.
But the thing that keeps me going in my solitude isn’t my desire to answer them or free myself from this cage.
It’s Harper. I spend hours reliving our conversations.
Things we said to each other in the dark.
The softness of her skin. The sound of her laugh.
When I close my eyes at night, I imagine she’s next to me.
That I can feel the beat of her heart against my palm.
Six days I’ve been without her. And I’m still staring down at the carved line, wondering if I’ll ever see her again, when I hear something outside.
I hold my breath. There’s a distant rumble of an engine. A crunch across gravel. It grows closer, until it stops just outside the cabin. I strain to see through the cracks between planks that board up the window, but I don’t catch a glimpse of the vehicle as it turns off.
“Hey! Hey! Help me!” I call. “I’m here! Someone help me!”
A car door creaks and then closes. I resume my pleading, rattling my chains as I call out, but no one answers.
I realize when there’s no response that this is not a rescue. This must be my captor.
“Let me fucking go!” I yell, straining against my shackles.
Heavy footfalls land on the steps. Slow and deliberate. Menacing. A lock is released. It sounds like a metal brace is lifted. And then the door swings open, light flooding the room.
My captor lifts the brim of his hat in a greeting with one hand, the other gripped around a case of bottles balanced on his shoulder.
“Yates,” I hiss.
“Sometimes,” he says. He grins, dropping the water bottles on the floor with a reverberant thud.
He flips open the blade of a knife and slices the plastic, then pulls a bottle free and tosses it in my direction.
It bounces and rolls toward me, but my eyes are still caught on Yates’s smirk.
I hear it hit the wall behind me where it will be out of my reach. “Other times, I’m known as La Plume.”
Another water bottle rumbles across the floor, and this one I stop before it can roll away.
This seems to please Yates, judging by the spark in his eyes.
And it’s that little light that ignites all my memories of him.
All the times he made little quips, or threw me off my axis, or said something unexpected.
Those moments when the smile never reached his eyes.
The ones when it did. I’d always felt something was off, but I chalked it up to my wariness of law enforcement.
Maybe I was distracted by my drive to protect Harper.
Maybe I was misled by my own preconceptions.
Maybe it’s a combination of fatal errors.
But I severely underestimated those little pings of instinct, and that was my ultimate mistake. One that might cost me everything.
“Where’s Harper?” I ask.
Yates chuckles and pulls another water bottle free to send across the floor. “Dead at the bottom of the sea.”
The world spins around me, darkness creeping through my vision. I stumble a step forward and drop to one knee as my blood surges, drowning out the sounds around me. I barely notice as the bottle rolls past to the corner of the room. “No . . . ”
“Autumn, on the other hand, is alive and well,” Yates says. Devious amusement claims his features. It dissolves into a fake little frown. “Arthur Lancaster, however . . . well, I’m afraid you did not have mercy on his soul.”
My head tilts. I feel like I’m adrift with no light in the dark to guide me. “You killed Arthur . . . ?”
“No. You killed Arthur.” Yates tosses another bottle, this time striking me in the shoulder. He tsks and shakes his head. “You should probably start catching these if you want to see her again.”
Tears sting in my eyes. But they’re not just the despair for Harper’s suffering or frustration at my helplessness. They are the product of rage.
I will fucking tear this man apart. I will make him bleed for her.
“Why?” I grit out, my glare so sharp that it feels like it could slice him if he’d just come a little closer. “Why are you doing this?”
“So that she can transform, of course. And to transform, one must destroy.” Yates throws another bottle at me, and this time I catch it like the tatters of my life depend on it.
“She will become everything she was meant to be. More than what Arthur ever envisioned. More than what she’s dreamed for herself in the dark hours of night. My worthy legacy.”
I shake my head. Tears crest my lashes. Her greatest enemy was there all along. And I led him straight to her. “No,” I whisper.
“You might have fallen in love with Harper Starling,” Yates says as he crouches down to regard me. A slow smile tugs at his lips, his eyes brightening with all his hidden secrets and schemes.
“But Autumn Bower will kill you.”