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Except, he’s still here, standing in the doorway–his tie loose, sweat slicking his temples. “You crazy motherfucking bitch! What are you doing?” he screams, voice rising over the roar of the fire.

“Ending it all.” My hands shake, but not from fear. From fury. My fingernails are torn, knuckles bloodied. The knife from the bar still clutched in my fingers.

“I kept you alive when no one else wanted you,” he coughs. “I gave you a bed, a roof over your head, meals, your stupid, pointless, dance lessons…everything.”

“You gave me nothing!” I stalk toward him, barefoot on the warm wood, dress hanging in ribbons around my ankles. “You put a curse on me. One where I live in one circle of hell after the other. It’s over. All of it.”

The air tastes like the end of times and when I get close enough, he reaches for me. I swipe out, slicing the blade down his hand. He jerks back with a yelp. “You’re insane. Just like your mother. Just like every other woman in this family.”

“No,” I whisper, my voice hollow, echoing in the way madness does. “Youmade me what I am.”

He lunges. I twist, stumble, and slam into the grandfather clock, sending it to the floor with a crash. He grabs my wrist, but I bite him–hard–until he lets go. The blade sinks in again, this time across his chest. A scream–his, not mine–cuts through the firestorm. He falls against the burning shelves, face twisted in disbelief.

“You don’t get to walk away from this,” I tell him. “Not for what you did to me, or them.”

Not for the children he claims don’t exist. Or the arrangement to have me sold off to a monster. Not after what he did to my body. My mind. My soul.

He tries to crawl toward me. The fire eats the carpet between us. I back away, dragging myself toward the doorway, breath coming in ragged sobs. The walls are closing in on both of us, and all I want is to be alone. I want peace. A quiet mind.

I’m low on the ground, crawling away from the library when I see him.

At first, I think I’m hallucinating–smoke and memory blurring together. But then he sniffs, whines, nose to the ground. He finds me. His wet nose touches my cheek. A lick, followedby a warm sound, a real one, rumbles in his throat. He nuzzles closer.

I press my face into his fur. “Ares,” I whisper. My voice is barely there. “Go.Los.”

He whines again. Impatient. Angry. Then he’s gone, paws skidding on ash-slick floors.

My eyes flutter shut. Alone. Finally.

I lay there, wondering if any of this is real. If I’m back in the Hunt, or maybe by the river. I see something. Someone. Dark long hair, bright eyes, high voice. “Run! Tell them I’m here!”

Hands grab at me. Hard and strong. I fight against them, kicking and lashing out. But this time, I don’t run. I can’t.

Blinking up, I see the mask, feel the heat, sense the fury.

Damon.

“Stop,” I beg. “Just leave. Leave me.”

But he doesn’t. He picks me up like I weigh nothing. I feel everything. The pain, the shame, the fucking loss of it all.

“Sorry, doll baby,” he growls against my temple, his voice choked. “Death isn’t coming for you today.”

And just like that, he carries me out of my funeral pyre.

Alive.

But not the same.

I remember this bed.

The exact slope of it under my spine. The itchy, paper-thin blanket that does nothing to fight off the sterile chill of the room. The crooked hook of the IV stand looming beside me like some metal skeleton, clear fluid dripping in a steady beat. I know the lights flickering overhead–too bright, glaring twenty-four seven, washing the color out of the world.

The smell hits next. Antiseptic laced with vinegar. Bleach and blood. Disinfectant and dread. I know this. My body remembers before my mind does, like everything about this place is trying to convince me that I’ve gone back to the day after the river.

Everything from the too-sweet voice of a nurse telling me it was a miracle I was found at all. I can almost hear it. The low beep of monitors. The whisper of technicians behind the curtain. The sting in my skin, the ache in my lungs. The boys had found me by the riverbed and pushed on my chest until they came alive again. My lungs were full of silt, wrists raw, my neck bleeding from the dug out tracker. Back then I'd slipped under so far I didn’t know what was real anymore.

It’s the pain that anchors me to the present.