Chapter 52 AURORA

“Do you believe me now?” I watched Dane take in the bleak reality of my childhood bedroom. Bare and cold, it made the parts of me that remembered the past want to break down, run away. But I couldn’t do that now. I had a mission. And I would never allow myself to be weak in front of Dane.

His jaw set. “Even the Reeds couldn’t raise a child like this.”

I walked over to him and faced him. “Walk over to the bed. There’s a loose brick on the wall three up and two over from where the bed touches the corner. If you move it, you’ll find a little space where I kept my treasures.”

I tried to remember what I’d had stored back there on the night they poisoned me, killed my wolf, and set me up as bait for Dane. “A few quartz crystals, an acorn, maybe a few coins will be in there.”

Dane gave me an unreadable look, then stalked past me to the corner I’d indicated. There was a grinding sound as he pulled out the brick.

I watched him, staying far back in the door so he couldn’t accuse me of planting anything.

His back went rigid. When he pulled away, he had a few small things in his hand. He opened his palm.

Three quartz crystals, an acorn, and a few coins sat in his hand.

“Proof enough?” I asked coolly.

Dane closed his fist around the treasures and squeezed. He shoved them into his pocket and whispered, “Fuck.”

I don’t know how I was expecting him to react, but that surprised me. He sounded…regretful?

Even if I proved to him I’d never been a liar, I didn’t actually expect him to ever feel bad about what he’d done, how he’d treated me. That just wasn’t Dane.

But when he looked up at me, there was definitely regret on his face. “Aurora—”

There was a rumble, almost too low to hear. Clouds of dust shook loose from the ceiling and drifted toward the ground.

Dane’s brows drew together, and he strode toward me. “We need to leave.”

I turned to do exactly as he’d said and walk out the door.

But when I tried…I couldn’t. The door was closed. Locked.

The fear I’d been fighting off since we got into this house started to rise up in a drowning tide.

This was the place I’d been trapped. This was the place I’d been abused. This was the place where I’d been convinced, more than once, I would never see the sun again.

“Dane!” But when I spun back to him, he was gone.

The room was no longer empty, either. No longer dusty and disused. There were blankets on the cot. A few books were stacked on the rickety table. The tiny dresser in one corner wasn’t broken, but whole, with a lamp on top. It was the only light in the room.

It looked exactly like it had the last time I’d been here. The night they gave me to Dane.

“No!”

I turned toward the door and beat my fists against it. But it was solid. Locked.

Then shadows started seeping through it. I stumbled back. All of my growth and strength in the last few years were forgotten as the shadow formed into Esther and Waylon Reed.

The shadows looked exactly like them, but colorless and gray. The shadow of Esther grinned at me. “Tonight’s the night. Are you ready?”

“I…” I started to answer, but a voice cut me off.

“I’m ready,” whispered another voice.

There was another shadow in this room. On the bed. One that looked just like me and spoke in my voice.

“You remember what to do?” Esther asked. She was excited. I could tell from the way she stepped eagerly toward the student version of myself and rubbed her hands in front of her. “It’s going to be very, very pleased. But you must always remember who you serve.”

The shadow me bowed my head, as if in reverent prayer, and whispered, “I do.”

The shadow of Esther stepped forward once more. She held up a vial in her hand. Even as a shadow, the liquid in that vial swirled silvery. “And what will you do, girl?”

The shadow me looked up. She was younger than I was now, and she wore a simple dress. She smirked. There was no mistaking it. The woman making that face was absolutely, positively, one hundred percent evil. “I get him to leave his post. I seduce him. I bring him and Blue Ridge down.”

“And will you? No matter how long it takes?” Esther asked.

The shadow me put a hand over her heart. “No matter how long it takes. No matter if it kills us both. I will destroy Dane Montague. I swear it on the Nameless.”