Page 150 of Bound By Crimson
Something in her spine screamed to walk away. To go back inside. To not let herself breathe in the next plume of smoke.
But her feet didn’t move.
She sat back down. Slowly.
The smoke came again. She held it in the way she held in everything else—tight and tucked behind her ribs. But when the next drag came, sharp and deliberate, it caught the back of her throat and tore its way up like punishment.
Mrs. Thornwick exhaled with pleasure.
“Better,” she said, sipping her tea. “This is what peace looks like, dear.”
Lyric looked down at her lap and realized she’d been digging her nails into the cushion. She eased her hands open. Her fingers tingled.
Only one more day, she thought.
Just survive one more day.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Folded Napkins and Forked Tongues
She had stopped making tally marks after Day 7.
There didn’t seem to be a point anymore.
Kai had said one week. Seven days. But this morning, when the maids opened her curtains like always, the light felt different. Harsher. Like it was mocking her.
It was Day 8.
Lyric sat on the edge of her bed, staring at the phone in her hand. It felt like a weight.
She’d already walked out to the garden three times that morning. She stood by the back wall, waiting. Hoping. But nothing had come through.
The first time, it had rung through to voicemail. The second hadn’t even rung. The third gave her nothing but silence—then that mechanical voice:
The person you are trying to reach is unavailable. Please try again later.
She didn’t know what stung more: the silence, or the sterile cheer of the voicemail.
She placed the phone down and stood, wincing slightly at the pressure in her lower back. Her body was swollen. Heavy. The baby had dropped lower in her belly, making everythingfeel like she was walking through water. She shuffled to the window and looked out toward the horizon.
No car.
No movement.
Just an empty long drive lined with trees that eventually led to large, locked gates.
She told herself he was just busy. Tied up. Maybe traffic. Maybe bad reception.
She told herself that again while she got dressed.
She also told herself that, while she walked into the breakfast room and saw Mrs. Thornwick already seated at the long table, sipping tea from a china cup rimmed in gold.
The morning light caught the thin scar on her cheek—a twisted souvenir from her teacup performance.
“Good morning,” Mrs. Thornwick said, her voice laced with sugar.
Lyric nodded quietly and took the seat at the far end of the table. Her phone sat in her pocket. She resisted the urge to check it again. Besides, she likely had no service.
