Page 33 of Breaking Isolde

He stands and paces, like a caged animal. “She was at the riverbed, by the cliffs. She said she wanted to talk, but I could tell she was panicked. Her hands were shaking. I should have known then.”

He stops, looks at me, and for a moment there’s something human in his eyes. “She ran. She was faster than I thought. I chased her. She slipped on the moss.”

The silence is brutal.

“I tried to catch her,” he says, voice raw for the first time. “But she fell too fast. Hit her head on a rock, died on impact. I did CPR, I tried so hard, the Hunt stopped and I carried her back, but she was already gone.”

I want to believe he’s lying. I want to believe he’s making it up just to fuck with me. But he’s got a far away look in his eyes. Like he’s remembering.

I don’t look away. “You’re not sorry.”

He laughs, ugly and wrecked. “Would it help if I was?”

“No,” I say, standing. “Nothing helps.”

We’re so close now I can see the tiny flecks of gold in his irises. For a moment, I just see a scared little boy.

“You’re just going to keep doing this,” I say. “To me, to every other girl the Board throws at you.”

He leans in, lips just above my ear. “Only to you, if you let me.”

I step back, fists clenched at my sides. “I’m not my sister.”

He grins. “No. You’re better.”

I want to hit him, but I want him to hit me more. Instead, I push past, heading for the door. His hand catches my arm, just above the bruise, and for a second he holds me there, neither of us moving.

“Issy,” he says, and the way he says it is different, almost gentle. “Please… I didn’t kill her.”

I rip my arm free and keep going. The cold outside feels like freedom.

I walk for an hour after leaving the greenhouse, long enough for the sweat to dry and the bruises to settle into new colors. My brain keeps replaying the last five minutes with Rhett—his voice, the way it cracked on my sister’s name, the way he made her death sound like an accident he was sentenced to relive.

The version of me that used to cry in the shower would probably want to believe him. But that girl is dead, floating just beneath the skin, and I’m not sure I’ll ever see her again.

At the front steps of Archer House, I stop. I’m not ready to go back to my room. The air is sour with the memory of last night—his mouth on my mouth, his hands holding me down, the heat and hate and perfect, wretched need that left me hollowed out and shaking.

Instead, I drift. I do a lap of the quad. Watch the window in the Administration Building where the Board keeps their secrets in file cabinets.

I think about the way their names look when I scrawl them in red sharpie, the way the thumbtacks go in and out of the drywall, the way the yarn stretches taut as veins.

I wonder if Rhett is following me now. I wonder if he ever really stops.

I end up back at the greenhouse. Maybe I’m hoping for round two. Maybe I just want to see if he’s as good at lying as he is at hunting. I don’t expect him to be inside, but when I open the door, he’s still there.

He’s sitting on the stone bench, one leg up, elbows on his knees, staring at a clump of dead fern like he can resurrect it with willpower alone. He doesn’t look up as I come in, but I know he knows I’m there.

I close the door behind me, hard. “I don’t believe you.”

He keeps his eyes on the fern. “Well, it’s the truth.”

“I’ll tell the cops.”

This gets his attention. He turns, stands, and faces me across the gulf of broken glass and dying plants. He looks older thanyesterday, like the story of my sister took something out of him that he can’t get back.

“Go ahead” he says.

Fucker is right, no one will believe me. Maybe if I switch tactics…