Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
KAY
The hallway twists again and narrows. I don’t bother tracking where we are—every wall looks like the last, and all of them pulse like the building itself has a heartbeat I can’t hear.
I just feel it in my teeth. Caziel stops in front of an arched stone door.
No guard. No handle. Just faint markings curled like smoke around the frame.
“This will be your room,” he says. “Wait here. Someone will come for you soon.”
“Great,” I say. “And when they do, will I be blindfolded, questioned, or gently escorted to my next holding cell?” He doesn’t react. “I’m kidding,” I shrug. “Mostly.”
I’m not.
“You speak of imprisonment often.”
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s a whole thing where I’m from.
” He watches me. No judgment in his face—just quiet calculation.
Like he’s trying to understand a dialect he hasn’t spoken in years.
I sigh. “It happens a lot. People get arrested just for being in the wrong place. Or looking like they don’t belong.
Or pissing off someone with more power.”
He goes still. Not the silent, poised stillness he always carries, but tight. Frozen. Like I’ve said something obscene.
“You cage your own people. For being out of place?”
I shrug, but it feels forced. “Sometimes. Sometimes worse.”
“That is not justice,” he says. Flatly. Quietly. Not a debate, an accusation.
“No,” I agree. “But it’s not about justice, or even safety. It is about control.”
He says nothing for a long moment. The air between us cools with disappointment. Not in me. In the idea.
“I thought your world would be better than the stories,” he murmurs.
I frown. “What stories?”
He looks up, eyes catching the soft glow of the nearest wall sconce. “The ones that made us your monsters.”
I stare at him.
“You think your myths of demons and devils came from nowhere?” he asks. “You gave us wings. Pitchforks. Fire. Names we never chose. You made us your cautionary tales.”
I blink. “You’re saying demons—like the ones in books, in religion—those came from you?”
“From whispers,” he says. “From doorways never meant to open. From Daemari who crossed over by accident or desperation. Your world took pieces of them and built nightmares.” My throat tightens. “But we do not imprison our people for looking strange,” he says. “We do not punish difference.”
I want to argue. Say my world’s not always like that.
That some places are trying. That some people are good.
But my chest is full of memories I have never been brave enough to name.
Memories from the time after losing my parents when it became clear that I was a burden to the very system meant to protect me. So, I say nothing.
He gestures toward the door. “You will stay here for now. Not for control or punishment. For safety. Yours and ours.”
My heart kicks in my chest. Safety is the excuse in my world too.
“Safety from what?” I ask, trying to sound casual. “Getting lost in the big scary palace?”
He nods. “If you wandered, and we had to track you by magical means, it could—”
“End with me dead?” I nod like I understand as my stomach clenches and flips. Or worse. I could find the guards again. Will they have a key to my cell?
“—Taint your assessment and Influence the result.” He scowls. “I told you we don’t mean you harm.”
I ignore him.
“Taint the result…Because I’d be radiating mischief?”
“Because you’d be touched by intent,” he says. “Even our own. The flame will not be able to parse it out meaning it could confuse or conflict with the real reason you are here.”
I stare at the door. It opens before I touch it.
“I don’t like being contained,” I murmur.
“You are not contained.”
I glance at him. “Guest. Prisoner. Test subject. Same hallway, different name.”
“You are free to explore,” he says. “But it’s not encouraged.”
“I’m sure it feels that way from your side.”
He doesn’t flinch.
I step one foot inside the room—lavish from just this first angle. Warm light. Deep color. No bars. But my skin still prickles like something unseen is closing behind me. He turns to leave.
“Wait.” He pauses and I lick my lips. “The stories. The ones we told. About demons. About… you. Do you hate us for that?”
His eyes meet mine. Unmoving. Unblinking.
“No,” he says. “But I do wonder what kind of world needs that many monsters.”
And then—quiet as a shadow—he’s gone. The door seals behind me without a sound.
Of course it does. No click. No lock. Just finality.
The room has decided I’m in and doesn’t need to try very hard to keep me here.
I freeze. That soundless closure shouldn’t bother me as much as it does, but it feels so quiet it might as well be mocking me.
Like a hand placed gently but firmly on the back of my neck. What if Caziel is wrong?
No need to lock the door, little human. We know you won’t leave.
My chest tightens. I spin on my heel and face the door, except…it’s not there.
The wall is. The space is still framed by rune-marked stone, but the seams are gone. The arch has closed into smooth, uninterrupted rock.
My breath spikes. “Nope.”
I take two quick steps forward and press my palm to the stone. It’s warm. Solid. Completely unresponsive. I try knocking. Then pressing harder. Then, okay, kinda slapping it.
“Open,” I whisper. “Just…open, please.”
Nothing.
Something inside me flickers, sharp and cold. Not quite fear. Not quite rage. More like being cornered. Like walking down a hallway and realizing too late there’s no exit.
“Nope,” I say again, louder now. “I didn’t agree to this.”
I step back, curl my fists, and will myself not to spiral.
You’re not a prisoner. You’re not in danger. This is just a fancy panic room with mood lighting.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
You’re fine. You want out, but you’re okay.
I open them and the door is back. Not just back, open.
Swinging gently, just wide enough to show the hallway beyond.
It wasn’t locked. Was it listening? The thought makes my stomach turn.
I step toward it, testing. I’m half convinced it’ll slam shut again, but it doesn’t.
I step into the hallway. Stumble a little.
The shift from velvet air to cool stone is abrupt.
The corridor is empty. No one’s watching.
No alarms. No flickering sigils or sudden bursts of magic.
Just a long stretch of hall, torchlit and still.
I glance behind me. The door is still open.
Still there. It looks exactly like it did before.
Which means either I imagined the whole thing or something is reading me.
And responding. I stand there for a long moment, breathing like I’m waiting for the air to give me permission.
Then, slowly, I step back inside. This time, the door closes with a sound.
Just a whisper of stone over stone.
“Thank you,” I say, feeling ridiculous talking to a door, but this time the outline remains, and I can finally pull a full breath into my lungs.
I walk farther into the room, slower now.
Watching everything. The space is beautiful.
Of course it is. Amber light spills across soft red fabrics.
The bed is huge, the linens lush. A carved basin steams gently in the corner, and on the table by the window there is a tray of food that was not there a second ago.
I’m starving. My stomach is performing some growling percussive solo as it consumes itself, but I don’t touch anything.
I don’t trust anything. My mother would crawl her way out of the grave and beat me over the head with a book of Greek myths if I did.
She didn’t read me the stories at bedtime only for me to take a bite without thinking.
That’s what got Persephone trapped in the underworld.
Or, my brain reminds me, what bought her freedom with the shadow daddy of the underworld.
For some reason, I doubt trapping myself in this place—this realm—will come with my own prince of hell.
Caziel certainly isn’t volunteering, which is good.
He’s a hallucination after all. Not that I’m thinking of him for even a moment.
It’s Stockholm syndrome or some version of it that has my chest heating at the thought of him.
It’s adrenaline coalescing into a spark of heat that wings up my limbs.
So far he’s just a nice guy in hell. Not the love of my life.
Not some fated mate. Just a regular man.
There are clothes in the wardrobe that look like they’d fit me perfectly.
Things that walk the line between fantasy costume and comfort wear.
Soft. Beautiful. Intentional. Everything in this room has been chosen to make me feel calm.
Which means none of it is for me. I cross to the bed and sit on the edge, back straight, hands in my lap like I’m trying not to disturb a ritual. The mattress shifts gently beneath me.
I reach into my pocket and pull out the obsidian shard.
The edge is duller now, chipped from where I dug it out of my boot earlier.
But it’s still mine. I slide it under the pillow.
Just in case. Then I lie back. Eyes open.
Hands folded over my stomach. I think about the way the door vanished the moment I felt like a prisoner. How it returned the second I asked.
This room isn’t a cell. It’s something worse. It’s a place that wants me to believe I’m free
I lie still for a long time. Not because I’m tired even though I am.
Bone-deep. Soul-deep. Whatever. I’m afraid if I move, the room will try to soothe me again.
Offer me another warm towel. Or a bath drawn with floating petals.
Or whatever it thinks human women like when they’re unraveling.
And I am. Unraveling. Not dramatically. Not loud.
Not even visibly. But underneath the quiet, my brain is buzzing like a dying lightbulb.
Flashes of thought. Static. All the things I’ve avoided thinking about because there were too many eyes on me.
Now there are none. So of course, the first thing that pops into my head is George.
My cat. My fluffy, clingy, chaos-goblin of a cat who thinks laundry is a nesting opportunity and cardboard boxes are a divine right.I picture him sprawled across the top of my dresser, blinking slowly like I’m the one being weird.
If he’s alive.
Stop that.
He’s fine. I told my coworker to check on him while I was away. Left a whole list of instructions. Labeled the food. Hid the treats so he wouldn’t bully anyone into second dinners.
Still. What if I never go back? What if this is it?
I reach down and curl my fingers under the pillow until they find the shard of obsidian.
It’s smooth on one side, jagged on the other.
Still warm from my body. Still mine. The only thing I have from before.
That’s what scares me the most. Not the guards.
Not the whispers. Not even Caziel’s unreadable, steady gaze.
It’s how fast my old life is sliding out of focus. Like a dream I forgot to write down.
I close my eyes and try to picture my apartment.
The chipped tile in the kitchen. The books on my nightstand.
My raincoat still damp from that morning walk to the clinic.
The creased family photo from my eighth birthday at a theme park.
It’s not that my life was wonderful, or anything like that, but it was mine.
It was familiar. It was something I’d honed and built and worked for, even if that something was a seedy landlord who still won’t fix the bathroom lights, and too-many hours at a thankless job.
None of that feels real. Here feels real. Too real.
Real like stone. Real like fire. Real like consequence.
I roll onto my side and stare at the door.
It doesn’t shimmer. Doesn’t flicker. Just waits.
Everything in this room waits. And I don’t know who I’ll be when they decide to come back for me.
I don’t know what they want me to be. I curl in tighter, wrists bent under my chin, knees pulled up.
My voice is too small to say the words out loud, but I think them anyway:
I don’t want to be alone.