Page 86 of Bound By Crimson

Chapter Eighty-Six

Time Is Running Out

She was almost at her door when she paused.

Her eyes drifted down the hallway.

To his. Malachai’s room.

She didn’t mean to walk there.

But her feet moved before her mind could stop them.

She hovered outside for a moment, listening.

No voices. No movement.

Only silence.

She twisted the knob slowly and pushed the door open a crack.

Dark.

She stepped closer.

Empty.

The bed was untouched.

Like no one had slept in it for days.

Her stomach knotted.

Where was he?

Why did it feel worse that he wasn’t there?

After everything, it still hurt. She still needed closure. And she hated that.

She backed out of the room, closed the door as gently as she’d opened it, and returned to her own .

But her thoughts wouldn’t settle.

She lay on her bed, eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling she hated more with every passing night.

She rolled to her side. Curled in tighter.

How old was Noah now?

Three months? Maybe four.

Long enough that she should know.

Long enough that she didn’t.

She didn’t remember the days.

Only the moments that broke her.

Grayson would be gone soon.

He’d said it on one of their first nights—

“Just here for a month. Helping a buddy.”

That month was almost over.

It had to be.

She couldn’t be sure anymore.

Time had become slippery—lost in shadows and silence.

And he didn’t know who she was.

Didn’t know what she’d gone through.

Didn’t know what she might ask him to do.

But if she waited any longer…

She’d still be here.

Still hiding.

Still trapped.

And Noah—

Noah would grow up behind the same walls she was still trying to escape—walls that housed monsters with twisted minds, that would turn him into one of them.

And Lyric would die before she ever let that happen.