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I stepped into the center of the circle. The wooden floor creaked under me. My breath fogged the inside of my mask. Ezekiel handed me the book.

“You’re ready now,” he said.

“For what?” I asked, my voice dry.

“To wear the mask not as a stranger… but as the Chosen.”

My hands shook as I opened the black book.

Inside werenames.

Some I recognized.

Some werecrossed out.

And at the bottom of the list:

Lenore.

Mother.

Me.

I was chosen? For what? I didn’t need faith or religion, all I wanted Lenore. And even if I had to play to be chosen one, I was ready to do anything to protect her.

TEN

LENORE

PRESENT DAY

IwishIcouldtell you it was innocent at first.

That it started with late-night talks through the wall, quiet enough that the house couldn’t hear, soft enough that we could pretend it didn’t mean anything.

But that would be a lie.

Because from the very first glance, we knew.

We knew what it was, what it wasn’t allowed to be. That no matter how carefully we avoided touching, something had already started burning the moment our lives were forced under the same roof.

You were the boy who sat across from me at dinner, calling our mother“Mom”like it didn’t shatter something inside me everytime. You wore the role like a mask—so convincing, so cold—while your eyes said things that never made it into words.

We weren’t raised together. We weren’trelated.But that didn’t matter. Not when you looked at me like I was yours in a world that forbid it. Not when every hallway conversation felt like a sin, and every accidental brush of skin left me breathless with guilt I couldn’t drown.

You ruined me slowly.

You made me want things I wasn’t supposed to want. And I let you—God, I let you. I carved out a place for you in the parts of me that should have stayed untouched.

But you warned me, didn’t you?

“I’m not your happy ending. I’m your reason to break.”

And I broke. Over and over again, for a love that could never be real and a boy who wore my heart like a loaded gun.

Now, we are in silence at the family house, pretending there wasn’t once a night you begged me to run away with you. Pretending you don’t still haunt the spaces between my ribs.

They call us family.