Total pages in book: 46
Estimated words: 42637 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 213(@200wpm)___ 171(@250wpm)___ 142(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 42637 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 213(@200wpm)___ 171(@250wpm)___ 142(@300wpm)
Even in silence, it pressed down heavily enough to make my skin prickle.
I had spent the day barricaded in my room, refusing to leave after what I’d seen in the undercroft. The animal. The blood. Ivan’s hands slick to the wrist, his face unmasked at last. Terror and curiosity still wrestled in my chest.
I should have been exhausted. Instead, sleep eluded me. I tossed and turned under the weight of the castle’s oppressiveness, staring at the fire until its crackle turned to static in my head. When I couldn’t bear it anymore, I rose.
I didn’t go far, just to the heavy chair by the window, wrapping myself tighter in a blanket. My bare feet were curled under me, the cold stone floor enough to cause my whole body to shake from the chill.
Moonlight slanted in through the window, the light pale and bruised. The blanket didn’t help. The coldness of the castle went to its very bones. I brought the blanket to my nose and inhaled. I couldn’t deny the fabric held Ivan’s scent.
My fingers drifted along the edge of the chair. Restless. Frustrated. It had been days, but I didn’t know how many. I couldn’t tell. Time blurred here, hours bleeding into one another until even light and dark felt the same.
I hadn’t spoken to my family. No one knew if I was alive. I pictured both my grandparents’ faces, my mother’s anxious texts, the way panic would hollow them out. They’d have called the police by now. They’d be frantic.
But I knew they’d never find me. Not here. This place wasn’t just a home; it was a fortress built to keep the world out.
To keep me in.
I wanted to scream, wanted to hurl something until glass shattered and stone cracked. I missed them. God, I missed my family. A soft sound broke the air, and I stiffened. My heart kicked once, hard.
“You’re thinking of your family.”
His voice came from the doorway, low and steady, like he’d been standing there for hours, waiting. I turned, breath sharp. Ivan stood half in shadow, half in firelight, the contrast making him seem unreal.
A man, yes, but more… always more. His hair had fallen loose across his forehead, and his shirt hung unbuttoned at the throat, revealing a line of pale skin I hated myself for noticing.
“You want your family,” he whispered, not a question.
“Stay out of my head,” I snapped, though the words trembled.
“I don’t need to read your mind.” He pushed off the doorframe and stepped into the room, his presence filling it without effort. “It’s written all over your face like a book.”
He clasped his hands behind his back as he advanced closer, measured and patient. I held my ground even as my pulse betrayed me.
“The way it beats at the base of your throat,” he went on. “The look in your eyes. The way your body carries grief… it’s too heavy to hide.”
I wrapped my arms around myself, keeping the blanket snug around my body like a shield. “I just want them to know I’m alive. That I haven’t disappeared.” My voice cracked. “Do you have any idea what that would do to them? To my mother?”
Something flickered across his expression. Pity maybe, but it looked wrong on him. In fact, his expression was almost one of anger. Not directed at me but for me. Like the idea of me being upset unsettled him more than he’d ever admit.
“I know,” he said finally, and the simplicity of it startled me. “I know what it’s like to lose everything and be left with only silence. I won’t have you suffer the same wound. Not when I can spare you.”
My breath caught. “What are you saying?”
He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a phone. Not sleek or modern like the one that had vanished from my bag but old and sturdy. A flip phone with no internet, no GPS.
I took it before I realized what I was doing. It felt substantial, solid in a way that made my stomach twist. My fingers curled around it, trembling.
“I will allow you to speak with them,” he said at last, his voice low enough to vibrate against the stone. “A brief call. Tell them you’re safe. That you’re away. Nothing more.”
I stared at the phone as if it were an artifact dredged from the earth. “You’d trust me with that?”
A faint, humorless smile curved his mouth. “You could beg into that machine until your throat bled, Clara, but no one would reach you here. I give you this not because you can betray me but because I don’t want you to fear me. I want you to know you’re not a prisoner.”
His words should have chilled me. Instead, heat spread through me. Anger and relief tangled into something else entirely. The phone was warm in my palm, and felt impossibly heavy for its size. My thumb hovered over the buttons, useless. What would I say? That I was safe? That I was alive? That I was a prisoner in a story no one would believe?