Chapter 1
Chapter
One
HALLOW
The light in the room with no corners doesn’t have a switch.
It is a constant, humming, predatory white that bleeds into my retinas until I forget what a shadow looks like.
They tell me it’s for my own protection—to prevent “dark thoughts”—but all it does is make the pulsing red behind my eyelids feel like a sanctuary.
I lie here, pinned like a fucking moth to a board, and count the stitches in the mattress.
Four thousand, three hundred, and twenty-two. I know because I’ve traced them with my mind while my body was held down by the weight of the five-point restraints, the leather seasoned by the sweat and the terror of the girls who occupied this bed before me.
It smells of industrial lavender and the cloying, artificial peppermint they use to mask the scent of a soul rotting in place. It’s the smell of a goddamn tomb.
The heavy steel door groans on its hinges, a sound like a dry bone snapping in a quiet room.
Enter Dr. Aris.
He doesn’t walk; he glides, his lab coat crisp and smelling of expensive espresso and a total lack of a conscience.
He carries a clipboard like a shield and a pen like a scalpel.
He sits on the stool that is bolted to the floor—everything in here is bolted down, because they know if I could move it, I’d use the metal to cave in his fucking skull just to see if his brains are as dull and grey as his personality.
“How are we feeling today, Hallow?”
His voice is soft and rehearsed. The kind of tone you use with a wounded animal you’re planning to put down. He doesn’t look at me; he looks at my chart, at the numbers that represent the fire in my blood that he’s so desperate to extinguish.
“Better than your wife, I hope,” I rasp, the sound jagged and tasting like copper.
“How is the old bitch? Still sleeping with the tennis coach, or has she moved on to someone who can actually get it up? I imagine being married to a man who spends his days drugging girls in cages is a real fucking aphrodisiac.”
Aris doesn’t flinch, but the skin around his eyes tightens. A win. A small, bloody win.
“The projection of your own instability onto others is a textbook defence, Hallow,” he says, his pen scratching against the paper. Patient remains combative. Fixated on external anatomy. Increase dosage.
“Textbook?” I let out a sharp, barking laugh that turns into a cough.
“Is that what you call this? You’re not a doctor, Aris.
You’re a fucking glorified zookeeper. Look at me.
Look at the straps. Does this feel like ‘healing’ to you, or does it just make you feel like a big, powerful man to have a woman you’re terrified of pinned to a bed? ”
He stands, moving closer until he’s hovering over me. The smell of his espresso is suffocating. He reaches out, using his pen to tilt my chin up, the cold plastic biting into my skin.
“You think you’re special because you’re broken,” he whispers, his voice dropping the professional mask for a second.
“You think your little ‘myth’ is going to come through that door and save you. But the man you’re obsessed with doesn’t know you exist. You’re a footnote in a file that’s about to be incinerated.
You’re a broken toy, Hallow. And I’m the one who decides when you’re too far gone to keep. ”
I grin at him, my teeth bared, my eyes wide and shimmering with a madness he’ll never understand.
“Oh, I know I’m a toy, Doc,” I purr, the words dripping with venom.
“But the thing about toys is that eventually, someone bigger comes along to play with them. And when he finds out you’ve been scratching the paint on his favourite one?
He’s not going to write a report. He’s going to peel you like a fucking orange just to see how much you scream. ”
Aris’s face goes ashen, his composure cracking like dry earth. He pulls back, his hand shaking just enough for me to see it. He signals to the orderly in the hall—Miller.
“Increase her sedative,” Aris snaps, his voice high and thin. “She’s spiralling. Put her under. I want her silent by the time I do my evening rounds.”
“Silent?” I scream, my voice echoing off the padded walls as Miller steps into the room, his eyes dark with the kind of cruelty that doesn’t need a degree. “You couldn’t shut me up if you cut out my fucking tongue, Aris! I’ll haunt your dreams until you’re the one begging for a padded cell!”
Miller doesn’t hesitate. He moves to the bed, his weight shifting the mattress as he leans over me. He doesn’t just check the straps; he yanks the buckle on my wrist until I hear the skin tear, the leather biting deep into the meat. He leans down, his breath hot and smelling of rot against my ear.
“Keep screaming, bitch,” Miller whispers. “It’ll make it easier to know where to find you when the lights go out.”
He plunges the needle into my thigh before I can even draw another breath.
The world starts to tilt. The humming white light begins to bleed into a hazy, toxic green. I lie there, my limbs turning to lead, my heart slowing down until it’s just a dull, distant thud.
I close my eyes, and even through the fog, I see him. A ghost in a purple suit with a grin that could cut glass. He’s not here. Not yet. But I can taste the smoke. I can feel the vibration of the city dying.
Go ahead, Doc. Put me to sleep.
But when I wake up? I’m going to make sure you never sleep again.
The toxic green haze doesn’t just blur the edges of the room; it dissolves them.
The ceiling starts to breathe, the white tiles heaving like the chest of a dying animal. I can hear the chemicals singing in my veins, a high-pitched, discordant screech that sounds like nails dragging across a chalkboard.
My tongue feels like a fat, dead slug in my mouth, heavy with the taste of copper and the bitter, oily residue of the sedative.
Sleep, little monster, the shadows whisper.
“Fuck… you,” I slur, the words tripping over my teeth and falling onto the floor like broken glass.
I’m not falling asleep. I’m falling inward.
In the dark behind my eyelids, the asylum disappears.
The straps are no longer leather; they are cold, skeletal fingers holding me down in a bed of ash.
I’m standing in the middle of a city that’s melting, the skyscrapers dripping like hot wax into the gutters.
Everything is burning in shades of neon violet and acid green, a beautiful, catastrophic sunset that smells of ozone and expensive cologne.
And there, in the centre of the wreckage, sits a throne made of charred playing cards.
I can’t see his face yet—not clearly. He’s a glitch in my vision, a silhouette of sharp angles and chaotic energy. He’s holding a knife, the blade catching the light of a thousand fires, and he’s whistling. A low, haunting tune that vibrates in my teeth.
Whirr. Click. Whirr. Click.
The sound of the facility’s ventilation system transforms into his laughter. It’s a jagged, beautiful sound that makes my skin itch with a desperate, starving kind of Need.
“Is that you?” I ask the darkness. My voice doesn’t sound like mine anymore. It sounds like a choir of sirens. “Are you the one they’re so afraid of? The one who’s going to turn this world into a punchline?”
The figure on the throne tilts his head.
He doesn’t answer, but the fire grows hotter.
I feel a phantom hand slide across my throat—not rough like Miller’s, but possessive.
A claim. A promise that when he finally finds me, he’s going to break every bone in my body just so he can be the one to put me back together.
“Devotion”, the fire whispers. “Madness”, I scream back.
Suddenly, the dream fractures.
A sharp, stinging pain lances through my arm.
I’m back in the room, the white light stabbing at my eyes like a thousand needles.
Miller is still there. He hasn’t left. He’s leaning over me again, his face a distorted mask of sweat and greed.
He thinks I’m under. He thinks the “firebrand” has been extinguished.
He’s wrong. The drugs didn’t put out the fire; they just turned it into a goddamn furnace.
“You’re so pretty when you’re quiet,” Miller mutters, his hand sliding under the edge of my hospital gown, his fingers cold and clammy against my skin. “Aris thinks you’re a patient. I think you’re a waste of good meat.”
I want to bite him. I want to rip his throat out with my teeth and swallow the sound of his pulse. But my muscles are water. I can only watch through the haze, my eyes wide and dilated, as he looms over me like a vulture circling a corpse.
“Go on,” I whisper, the words barely a breath. “Touch me, you pathetic fucking maggot. Touch me and see what happens when the ghost finally comes home.”
He pauses, his eyes narrowing. “What did you say?”
“He’s coming,” I giggle, the sound bubbling up from my chest, raw and psychotic. “I can hear him. He’s walking through the fire, Miller. He’s got a card with your name on it, and he’s going to use it to scrape the skin off your fucking face.”
Miller sneers, his hand tightening on my thigh until I know there will be another bruise to match the rest. “No one’s coming, Hallow. You’re just another crazy bitch in a room full of them.”
He leans in closer, his face inches from mine, and for a second, the drug haze shifts. The red emergency light in the hallway flickers, and for one glorious, heartbeat of a second, I see it.
A shadow behind the glass of my door.
Not Miller’s shadow. Not Aris’s.
A shadow that moves like a predator. A shadow that doesn’t belong in a place this clean.
“Wrong,” I purr, the madness finally snapping the last of my restraint. “He’s already here.”
The shadow doesn’t move. It just bleeds into the edges of the door, a thick, ink-black stain on the pristine white glass. It’s him. It has to be him. My mind is screaming his name—a name I’ve only ever heard whispered like a curse—but the name feels like a prayer in my mouth.
Jex.