Page 26 of Breaking Isolde
I give it another count of ten before bolting for the gate. My legs are jelly, my lungs ache, but I’m smiling now. Not because I got away with it. Because I finally know. All of it.
My hands shake so bad I almost drop the phone. I pull up the camera roll and flip through the pictures. Every page is there: Casey’s name, the rules, the dress code, the cold and clinical aftermath. My thumb hovers over the “share” button. I could send them to every parent, every donor, every Board member. I could take the whole system down in a single upload.
But I don’t.
First, I have to get revenge.
I pull my jacket tighter around myself and head for Archer House. The night air is colder than ever, and I’m grinning like a wolf.
The adrenaline shakes only last a couple of minutes, but the sweat is cold for the rest of the walk. By the time I get to Archer House, my teeth hurt from clenching. The lights in the quad are low, and I use the darkness like a cloak. No one in the windows. No smokers. No security.
Good.
I unlock the door and step inside. It’s quiet, not even the sound of snoring fills the space. It’s a relief as I head upstairs to my room.
I move quiet, sock-footed. Don’t want to wake Charlie or Lucy. I’m not in the mood to see pity or fear or that look they give me when they think I’m not looking—the one that says “your sister was a mess and now so are you.”
Fuck that. I’m not a mess. I’m a solution waiting for the right time.
In my room, I throw the folders and my phone onto the desk. I switch on my lamp, and sit. My knees bounce. My skin crawls, not from guilt but from the static electricity of knowing too much and not being able to tell anyone.
First step: data triage. I grab my binder and my pen. I open the photos on my phone and swipe through them, one by one, until the story starts to make sense.
The second page of the “Night Hunt—2024” file is a roster. I zoom in, crop the image, enhance the text in Photoshop until thecheck marks and cross-outs are clear enough to read. I screen-grab every name, every note, every bloodstain and tear. I print them on the color printer hidden in the back of my closet. The paper jams twice, but I fix it with a punch to the casing and a curse loud enough to make the pipes rattle.
I tape the first set to the wall above my desk. Then the next. I make a grid, three columns wide, with arrows and lines and post-its scrawled with everything I can’t let myself forget.
At the top of the grid is “Greenwood, Casey.” Next to it: “Failed acquisition.” The phrase makes my stomach flip every time I see it, but I refuse to look away. I tape Casey’s school photo above the grid.
Below that, the rest of the names: the other girls whose names are crossed out with the word “released” beside them, the Feral Boys, the Board. I connect them with red yarn, because that’s what they do in crime shows and also because I like the way it looks—a web, a trap, an inevitability. I use thumbtacks to anchor the lines, digging them deep into the drywall until the knuckles of my hand bleed a little.
The ritual pages go next. I spread them out on the bed and take photos, then print those too. “White dress, flower crown, the Crown of Succession.” I tape the fragments in a circle around Casey’s face, like a fucking saint halo.
I keep working. The lamp makes everything shadowed and sick, but it helps. It focuses me. My fingers stop shaking. My jaw unclenches.
Hours pass, or maybe just minutes. I don’t care. I’m done when the wall is full, and my hands are dry, and the air smells like hot paper and toner. I step back and look at what I’ve built.
The pattern is obvious now. The Night Hunt isn’t a secret. It’s a requirement. The Board needs it. They need to keep the bloodlines strong, the system closed, the power in the hands of people who would do anything to keep it. The girls are cattle. The boys are wolves. The rest of us are collateral.
Casey was prey. Never meant to die and yet did, all the same. Hunted, caught, and killed for the entertainment of the same people who now pretend it was a tragedy. Rhett was her Hunter. He was supposed to bring her in, to mark her, to claim her. Instead, he fucked up. And the only reason I’m here is because I’m supposed to be his second chance.
The real question is…
Did he mean to kill her or was it truly an accident?
I grab the sharpie from my desk and draw a line through Rhett’s name on the wall, right over his printed student ID photo. I press so hard the tip squeaks against the gloss. I drag the marker until my hand cramps.
I sit on the bed, breathing through my nose, staring at the wall. It looks like a crime scene.
Itisa crime scene.
I talk to Casey’s photo, not out loud but in my head. The words are easy. They always are, when no one else can hear.
You weren’t suicidal.
You weren’t weak.
They did this to you. They’re doing it again. And this time, they picked the wrong prey.
