Page 170 of Buried in Blood
I toss the phone onto the bed, pacing. The walls are too close. The air too stale. I can smell bleach and blood and her perfumeall at once.My temple pulses. My hands twitch.
She was supposed to becleansed.
Ibrandedher.
Inamedher.
Iruinedher.
And now?
She walks through my city like it’s hers.
Like she wasn’t reborn in my fire.
I look toward the mirror on the opposite wall.
But the reflection that stares back isn’t mine anymore.
It’s a thing made of wire and smoke, eyes black with betrayal.
“I’ll make her clean again,” I whisper to it. “Even if I have to carve the filth out with my bare hands.”
And when I do—when I put my hands around her throat and see that flicker of fear bloom like a flower—
I’ll know I’ve won.
48
Harmony
Grand Junction is colder than I thought.
I guess days of captivity will do that to you. Days of fighting for your life. You really forget about the weather.
The sun sets earlier here—tucking itself behind the mountains like it’s hiding from something. I get it. I’ve been hiding too.
The motel I found is barely that, to call it a motel is generous of me… Just a cracked neon sign that flickers “VACANCY,” a hollowed-out lobby that reeks of smoke, and a room with no deadbolt and a Bible missing its first hundred pages. But it’s cheap. Quiet. Forgotten.
Just like me.
I spend my mornings scavenging. My nights curled under the thin motel blanket with the burner phone clutched in my hand like a rosary. I don’t sleep much. When I do, it’s a carousel of bad memories and worse fantasies—Damien finding me, holding me down, smiling while everything burns.
I eat stale gas station sandwiches and drink dollar coffee with powdered creamer. I wash my hair in the sink. My reflection is thinner, sharper. I’m starting to look like someone who belongs to no one.
Which should feel like freedom.
But all it feels like is an ache.
I miss them.
Not just Evelyn and Astra. Not just Dante and Lucien. I miss who I used to be when I was with them—before the branding, before the lies, before the gunshot and the escape and the trail of blood I left behind.
The phone buzzes around midnight.
I bolt upright in bed, reaching for the knife first—then the phone.
ASTRA:
