CHAPTER 2 — THE FIRST NIGHT
Memory came back like seawater in the lungs.
The first time they brought me into The Spring House, I still believed in mistakes.
A prank. A kidnapping that would end. A door that would open onto the right century.
Then Madam Crowe’s hand closed around my jaw.
Her fingers were cold, rough as untreated wood. She tilted my face toward the lamplight the way a butcher turns meat.
Her eyes were cloudy and calculating.
“Look at that,” she said, voice like grit. “An expensive one.”
Beside me, another girl fought the rope around her wrists. Her sobs came sharp and frantic.
“I’m not—” the girl gasped. “I’m not one of you. I was drugged. I have a family—”
Madam Crowe hit her without looking.
The sound was clean and ugly.
The girl’s mouth split at the corner. A bright thread of blood appeared.
“Family,” Madam Crowe said, tasting the word like something sour. “You walked through my doors. That’s your family now.”
She turned her head.
Her gaze landed on me, held me, measured me.
Around us, the room went still. Even the oil flame seemed to hesitate.
“Listen,” she said to all of us, and her voice sharpened. “Behave, and you’ll eat well. Fight, and you’ll learn what pain can do to a body.”
From her sleeve she slid a pair of scissors.
Old metal. Rust freckled along the hinge.
She drew her thumb across one blade as if checking a knife.
“You’ll beg,” she said calmly. “And you won’t die. Not until I’m done.”
That night they packed us into a long room with a row of mattresses on straw.
Too many bodies. Too much damp breath. Mold in the corners.
When the house finally quieted, the silence felt staged—like a theater after the audience has left.
I lay awake listening for the seam in the sound.
The moment the trick would end.
The moment someone would say Cut.
Moonlight leaked through the window.
I rose carefully, toes finding cold stone.
A hand caught my wrist.
Ice-cold fingers. Stronger than they should have been.
I turned.
It was the girl who’d screamed the most earlier.
Up close she looked younger than I’d thought.
And her face—
My blood stalled.
The shape of her brow. The slight tilt of her eyes. The mouth, soft even in fear.
It was wrong.
It was impossible.
It was my sister’s face, pulled from the past and placed here like bait.
“You’re leaving too?” she whispered.
Her voice shook, but her grip didn’t.
“Come with me,” she said. “I know the back ways.”
I should have asked questions.
I didn’t.
Trust wasn’t logic. It was damage.
We moved along the walls, keeping to darkness.
From the front hall came laughter and music, bright and careless, as if suffering were a separate building.
We reached the rear yard.
A wall rose above us, brick slick with moss.
The girl crouched without hesitation, hands braced on the ground.
“Step on my shoulder,” she said. “Go. Fast.”
I climbed.
The brick scraped my palms.
At the top, I paused and looked out.
Part of me still expected floodlights. Trailers. Crew in jeans. A camera rig.
But there was only a street of stone.
Low roofs. Shuttered windows. Lanterns in the distance like fallen stars.
And beyond that—farther than the street had any right to go—a fortress silhouette loomed against the sky.
High walls. Towers. A massive gate.
Not a set dressed for a corner.
A whole world built to lie.
My throat tightened.
I hauled the girl up.
She landed softly beside me and smiled once, grim and quick.
“What year is this?” I asked.
The question came out thin.
She stared at me as if I’d spoken nonsense.
“It’s the third year of the Kingdom,” she said. “Are you ill?”
A kingdom I’d never heard of.
A calendar that didn’t belong to mine.
My head filled with static.
Then footsteps erupted behind us.
Shouts. Running. The sharp burst of torchlight.
“There!” someone bellowed. “Get them!”
Madam Crowe appeared in the yard below, hair loose, face twisted with fury.
Men with clubs and rope poured after her.
We ran.
The stone was slick from mist.
My breath tore at my chest.
We didn’t make it far.
A body slammed into my back.
The ground rose and struck my cheek.
Grit filled my mouth.
Hands yanked my arms behind me. Rope bit into skin.
Beside me, the girl—my sister’s face—kicked and screamed until a boot caught her ribs.
The sound she made afterward wasn’t a scream.
It was air leaving a broken place.