Kiara
Four weeks earlier
I can’t feel my legs. Or my hands.
Panic shoots through me like an injection, violent and sudden, and my eyes snap open as I drag in a breath like I’m still drowning in that river.
A harsh white light explodes behind my eyelids, stabbing straight into my skull. I force them open again, slower this time, and my blurry vision fills with long, pale strands of hair hanging over me.
White hair. Too white. Not natural.
My heart slams against my ribs so fast I’m sure I’m about to pass out again.
This feels like sleep paralysis. That primal, frozen terror of waking up with a demon sitting at the edge of my bed.
Small gasps break from my throat, thin and broken, but none of this feels real. It’s like a nightmare inside another nightmare.
I try to breathe. I already did this once. I already woke up like this.
Kasien. Where is Kasien?
I’m not in his manor. This place smells different.
Sterile and cold, and there’s a metallic taste coating my tongue, as if someone poured iron straight down my throat.
I shut my eyes tightly, give myself a single second, then force them open again.
The world tilts, then settles just enough for shapes to form.
And then I scream, because I’m not alone.
I jerk upward on instinct, but my arms don’t move. They don’t respond at all. Panic spikes again until I see it. They’re still attached to me, but hanging limp above my head. My wrists are cuffed, secured with metal restraints to a chain bolted into the floor.
The blood has drained from my hands, they’re numb, ghost-like.
And beside me, sitting cross-legged on the bed, watching me like a curious child observing something trapped in a jar is—
What the hell?
I’m definitely hallucinating.
“Natalya?” I gasp, my voice shredded raw.
She smiles, but it’s not right, not human.
A crooked, eerie grin that belongs to a porcelain doll that should have stayed behind glass.
I must be hallucinating hard.
Her hair is long and bleached white, almost silver. At the roots, there is a hint of black—the raven color I recognize, the color she shares with her brother. She’s thinner, paler, eyes too wide, too empty. She looks possessed.
This can’t be real. This can’t be her.
She tilts her head and, without warning, reaches up to the chain and loosens it, lowering my arms a few inches.
“Better?” she asks cheerfully, that unsettling smile stretching across her face.
I stare at her. My whole body feels foreign, heavy and drugged, like I’m swimming under layers of cotton. My limbs won’t obey me.
“Nat?” I whisper.
“Yeah!” she squeals, as if we just ran into each other at a café.
What is happening?
Her mascaraed lashes flutter over dark green eyes—Kasien’s eyes, but hollow. Beautiful, but wrong.
“Where are we?” I croak, my throat scraping painfully.
She just blinks at me, a smile slipping into something neutral. Empty.
“Nat, where are we?” I try, coughing, fighting the urge to choke on my own dry tongue. She looks around the room like she’s seeing it for the first time.
“At Lucien’s,” she sings, her hair bouncing around her, like she’s proud of herself.
A chill rips through me so sharply I nearly pass out.
This isn’t Nat. This is someone wearing her face.
I still think I’m having sleep paralysis, just instead of a demon, there is Harley Quinn.
She crawls closer and begins running her fingers through my hair, slow and fascinated, like a child petting something fragile. I try to lean away, but the moment I lift my head, the room spins violently and I collapse back onto the pillow. Pain screams through my skull, ringing, pulsing.
I take in the room. It’s large, clean and modern, but empty. Cold wood floors, dark walls, minimal furniture, deliberately minimal. A high ceiling, narrow windows that let in almost nothing. A place meant to keep sound in.
Nat watches me the whole time, head tilted, blinking slowly, as if studying how I break.
I finally feel the blood returning to my arms. I move my wrists and the chain rattles with the metal frame, a sharp, jarring sound that echoes across the room. I shut my eyes, trying to steady myself through the pain, against the dizziness and the rising terror.
This isn’t a nightmare. This is real. And I’m chained in Lucien’s house with a girl who looks like Natalya but isn’t the Nat I knew. Not even close.
I try to calm down for a moment, taking the situation in, trying to force my mind to decide whether it’s a dream or not, since my head is still a little messy.
Then I force myself to look back at Nat, she plays with her hair, stroking one huge bleached strand, not minding me.
She’s even skinnier than before. She was skinny, given the figure skating she’d done her whole life, but now she looks almost sick-skinny.
“Nat,” I whisper, but she’s so focused on her hair that she’s not giving me any attention.
“Nat!” I try to speak louder but my tongue is scraping my upper palate in my mouth, sticking to it.
She finally looks at me, with that eerie smile, looking like a broken doll.
“Where is Kasien?” I try to formulate the words the best I can.
She stares at me, looking confused, her smile gone, her eyes empty, looking right through me.
“Kasien, where is he!” My voice is starting to come back as my mouth finally produces some saliva.
She furrows her eyebrows like I just said something inappropriate.
“Who?”
What the fuck? She lost it. This is not Nat.
“Your brother, Kasien. Where is he!”
Natalya blinks once. Slow.
“Brother?” she echoes softly, like she’s trying to understand a foreign word. Her brows knit together, confusion twisting her face into something almost childlike, but wrong and empty.
“I don’t—” she starts, but the sentence dies somewhere in her throat.
Oh god. Something is really wrong.
I swallow hard. “Okay, Nat. Adrien, then. Adrien. Do you remember Adrien?”
The reaction is instant. Her spine goes rigid. Her pupils blow wide. Her hands freeze mid-air, fingers curled into her hair like claws, like she’s about to rip the hair out.
“No.” The word is tiny, but sharp. “No.”
“Nat, he’s alive, he’s—”
Fuck, I hope he is. The memory just jumps in my head. He was shot, he was bleeding out.
“NO.” The scream rips out of her so violently I flinch back against the headboard.
It’s not fear, or anger, but it’s primal. Like a survival instinct firing off inside her skull. I freeze, breath caught in my throat.
“Natalya,” I whisper, “what’s wrong? What did they—”
“STOP!” Her hands fly to her ears, palms pressed hard against her head, shaking.
She starts pacing around the room, small at first, then faster. Her breath stutters, catches, breaks. It looks like she’s trying to push the name out of her mind physically, like it hurts to think it. My own panic spikes.
“Nat, please. I’m not trying to hurt you, I just—”
She lets out a high, raw shriek. She screams.
It doesn’t even sound human. Her whole body trembles, shaking so hard the metal cuffs on my wrists rattle with the movement of the mattress. Tears streak down her face, but she doesn’t seem to notice. She keeps shaking her head, over and over, as if she can shake the memory out of existence.
“I didn’t say it,” she sobs. Her voice breaks like splintering glass. “I didn’t say it, I didn’t say it, I didn’t say it.”
My chest clamps painfully.
“Nat, stop, it’s okay, it’s okay, no one’s mad, no one’s—”
She screams again.
High, sharp, a raw scream, the kind that makes glass shatter.
My blood turns to ice.
She stops, she’s out of breath and looks like she’s grounding herself back into reality. Her eyes snap to mine, wild, unfocused, terrified, but then I hear footsteps, slow and heavy, coming down the hall.
Nat’s mouth snaps shut.
Instant obedience, instant stillness. Like someone pulled the strings attached to her spine tight. Her breathing evens out in one impossible second. Her tears stop, her face smooths, blank and lifeless. She sits on the bed beside me, eyes fixed on the door.
“He’s here,” she whispers but not scared, more worshipful. Then that scary smile appears on her face once more.
My heart stops when I hear the lock unlatching, the handle turns and Lucien steps inside.
The whole room startles and folds inward with his presence and Natalya smiles like her favorite crush just stepped in.
His straight blond hair is styled with a bit of hair product.
His face looks like it was carved from stone, sharp features, blue eyes so light it’s almost mesmerizing.
Coldness is pouring out from him, together with something really dark lingering around him.
He’s wearing some basic T-shirt and pants, entirely different from the ball I met him at. Suddenly too casual.
He walks toward us, my breath stuck in my chest, not moving.
“Angel, bring some water for Kiara, okay?” he mumbles like he just rolled out of bed.
Natalya nods and jumps up from the bed, leaving the room, leaving me here alone, with this blonde smug face.
I finally gulp and force my lungs to work, when my body automatically tries to pull away from him.
He sits down on the bed and rests his elbows on his knees, staring at me, looking pretty bored and tired.
“How are you feeling? You metabolized the drug quite quickly.” His voice is cold, not that deep, but somehow terrifying.
I frown at him as I’m trying to calm the hyperventilating. Then I realize I’m wearing the torn dress, I can feel them being still damp from the river. The grey sheet under my legs has drops of blood on it. Probably because I cut my feet and knees on the sharp river rocks, when they took me.
I remember the last sight of Kasien trying to get up, Adrien motionless beside him. My eyes burn and tears instantly start to slide down my face, pooling on my lips.
“Don’t cry, you’re dehydrated,” he says calmly.
“Where is Kasien.” My voice breaks at the end and the tears trailing over my lips get into my mouth, leaving a salty taste on my tongue.
Lucien presses his lips together and exhales.
“I’m actually not sure, but I hope he’s going to make it. I need him and Adrien to find you. I hope it won’t take them long for your own sake,” he breathes out a tiny laugh.
They are alive. They must be.
“Why am I here, Lucien? Why didn’t you kill me?” I whisper, the tears melting on my lips as I talk.
He inhales as if he’s bored, then drops his head to one palm, resting it there and looking at me lazily.
He clicks his tongue, “I need your guys to do me a favor.”
“What favor?” I barely whisper, the sobs in my chest making it impossible to talk. My heart takes up painful speed and I can’t stop the sobs shaking with my chest.
He’s going to kill them. Whatever this is, I feel like I’m just a fucking bait. They are going to die and it’s all my fault.
I can’t stop low whimpers from escaping my mouth as I’m falling down in a hole full of despair and void.
They are going to die because of me.
“Just, you know. Do their thing,” he says, like I’m supposed to get it. I try to hold in the panic and think.
What is he trying to say?
“I couldn’t care less about killing you, Kiara. My father ordered your hit, not me,” he explains.
My brows frown so hard it physically hurts my forehead.
Natalya finally comes back with a glass and a big jug of water. She settles it on the table next to me and moves the chain of my handcuffs so I can reach the glass.
He stands up and cups her cheek possessively but tenderly at the same time.
“Don’t stay here long, okay?” he whispers to her and she just smiles and nods.
I stare at them and my insides turn into a couple of painful knots.
Natalya.
What has he done to her?
He leaves the room, calm and unbothered. Natalya gets back on the bed beside me and pours me another glass of water, then she sinks her fingers into my hair and gently pushes me to drink it. I gulp it and instantly feel the cold current running down my throat and cooling my stomach.
I study her for a second, thinking about what I can say to not trigger whatever happened to her just a moment ago.
“Nat,” I whisper again, softer this time.
She looks up from the glass, eyes blinking slow, almost peaceful now. She reaches out and wipes a stray tear from my cheek with her thumb, like a sister comforting a sister.
Except her smile doesn’t reach her eyes, they stay empty.
“Are you okay?” she asks brightly.
My chest tightens. “Not really. I—I don’t know what’s happening. Can you tell me?”
She looks at me apologetically, but still empty, like she doesn’t know what’s happening either.
“Nat, do you remember how you got here?” I ask her quietly.
Her eyes start to flicker around my face, like she’s trying to remember.
“Yeah,” she freezes her gaze on the water for a second, then lifts her eyes back to me. “Lucien saved me.”
“Saved you from what?”
I feel physically sick.
This is sick.
I feel like I want to vomit and cry and then vomit again.
Her eyes flicker frantically around me, like she’s trying to remember but it’s physically impossible for her.
She lets out a silent giggle.
“I forget stuff all the time, I’m sorry.” She shakes her head and laughs at herself.
“Nat, are you scared?”
“No,” she answers immediately and firmly. “I don’t get scared anymore. Lucien taught me how to use knives. I’m really good with knives.” She smiles proudly.
Oh my God.
“What do you do with knives, Nat?” I ask softly, since I can’t form the words properly with the ache in my chest.
“Usually just train, throw them.” She shrugs.
Usually.
Ugh. I feel the vomit rise in my stomach. I squeeze my eyes shut and press it back down.
“Nat,” I shouldn’t do this, but I still do. “Tell me what you remember about Adrien.”
And there it goes. The sharp glitch in her face. The freeze.
“Nat, I think you miss him, right?”
She moves so fast I barely see it. She shoots up from the bed, snatches the glass from the nightstand and hurls it at the wall with such force it explodes on impact. Water and shards spray across the room.
I flinch, instinctively turning my head, metal biting into my wrists as the chain jerks. Before I can look back, the scream hits.
High, piercing, animal. It rips out of her like something tearing loose from her chest. Then it cuts off mid-sound as she bolts for the door, yanking it open and disappearing into the hallway. Her cries echo for a second, then muffle as the door slams shut behind her.
And just like that, I’m alone again.
My heart hammers against my ribs, my breath rough and shallow, metal cuffs digging into my skin every time I move.
This is the longest nightmare I’ve ever had. And I’m wide awake for every second of it.