Page 39 of Where the Dark Things Bloom

He never knew.

He thought I left him chasing something better.

But I didn’t.

Leaving him was the worst mistake of my life. I thought I was saving myself. All I did was dig a deeper grave.

The blade trembled in my hand as I etched a new word:ALIVE.

My jaw clenched, breath catching, pain flaring. My skin burned. My soul screamed.

And still, I needed to feel it.

Because if I didn’t, I might have let myself die. For him. For the girl I used to be. Maybe for both.

Tears blurred my vision as the razor slipped from my hand and hit the tiled floor with a soft, final clink. The tub was full now. I stepped in.

The water scorched my open skin. I bit down a scream, then let it out anyway. A full, broken scream. Loud enough for him to hear. Loud enough to shatter walls. But he didn’t come.

He wouldn’t come.

He wouldn’t care.

I sank beneath the surface, my scream muffled by water. It filled my lungs, drowning the last of the fire in me. And even then, I didn’t fight. I didn’t care. If I couldn’t liveforhim, orwithhim, I didn’t want to live at all.

I was already broken.

This was just the proof.

There are no princes on white horses. No saviors galloping in to pull you from the wreckage. No magical rescue at the end of the road.

That’s not life.

That’s fiction.

And we? We weren’t just in different chapters. We were in different books.

ELEVEN

LENORE

Afterthebath,Icrawled back into bed. Sleep tugged at me. Blood from my cuts seeped into the linens, the sting still fresh, but I didn’t mind. I needed that pain. It grounded me to something real. Even if it was hell, at least it wasn’t the numbness of that endless dream. I was trapped inside my own mind, spinning in circles. No control, no escape. Just the echo of a game I kept playing with myself, and I was done.

Still, I hoped.

Hoped Dorian would show up.

Hoped he’d forgive me for leaving.

Hoped he’d love me enough to heal what was broken in both of us.

Was that too much to ask? Why was I begging for love? Forhislove? Why couldn’t I justbeloved?

My eyes drifted shut, my mind pulling me backward in the past. To the night before I lefthimin that house.

It was two days after my eighteenth birthday. Just one day before I ran from Gloomsbury Manor. After Dad beat him, I thought I’d never see Dorian again. But he came back. Forme.

I was curled on a dusty blanket in the attic when I heard the door creak open. Slow footsteps. The sound of someone dragging themselves across the floor. I turned my head, and there he was.

---