Page 127 of Creeping Lily

For a moment—just a heartbeat—his face changes. His eyes falter, like my words cracked something beneath the surface. But it’s gone in an instant, replaced by the same cold mask of indifference. He turns his gaze away like my question is a weight he refuses to carry.

“You happened, Lily. You happened.”

The words fall like dust between us, and I’m left staring at him, confused, searching for meaning he won’t give me. Before I can press him, another shadow steps forward.

Tom Walker.

His presence is like a wall closing in—imposing, suffocating. “Enough of this,” he snaps, his voice sharp and unyielding. “Wehave bigger matters at hand. Bentley, focus. We need to think about the next steps.”

Bentley nods, but he doesn’t look at me again. Not once. He turns slightly, and the two of them start talking in hushed voices, their words meant to exclude me entirely.

“Wait!” My voice cracks with rage. I step to the bars, my fingers curling tight around cold metal. “Are you just going to leave me down here?”

Tom glances back over his shoulder, his mouth curling into a reptilian smile. “Well,” he says, voice slick as oil, “you did opt for the rats.”

Then they’re gone—slipping into the hallway, their footsteps a fading echo in the hollow dark.

I know their plan. They want to break me. Grind me down until I’m begging to play by their rules. To them, I’m as insignificant as the vermin that will eventually find me if I stay down here long enough.

The cold presses in from the stone walls, but it’s nothing compared to the deeper chill—the kind that comes from knowing there’s no one coming for me. Linc—Titan—is gone. No one else knows where I am.

The room feels smaller, the silence heavier, every shadow stretching longer.

This is my world now: me… and the rats.

I thinkabout him as I sit curled in the corner of this dead, airless room, knees drawn to my chest, chin pressed into bone. My mind won’t let go of him—Lincoln, Titan. The names are knotted together now, impossible to pull apart. Lincoln was Titan. Titan was Lincoln. My protector. My stalker. My… what, exactly?

Was. That word hangs around my neck like a weight.

He’s gone. Again. This time, for good. I press my forehead into my knees, shaking my head as if I can throw the truth off me. Why come back just to die? Why show up at my door if he knew it would end like this? Why not give me the chance to understand—where he’d been, why he’d turned himself into a masked vigilante, what it had all meant?

Now I have to mourn him twice. And twice is too many for one heart to bear.

The thought slices through me and I let it. Lincoln always wanted to fight for the underdog, to stand between the helpless and the monsters no one else would face. He hated the establishment, hated everything it stood for. Maybe that’s what led him here—to hunting predators like Larry Shine and worse. Maybe this was his way of giving the world something it had never given him: a second chance.

I want to hate him for it—for the choices, the lies, the walls he built—but I can’t. I understand him, even when I wish I didn’t. Maybe if I’d lived a life like his, stared into the same abyss, I’d even cheer him on. But I’m not him. I never was.

Bethany used to say I wore rose-colored glasses, that I refused to see the world for what it really was. Maybe she was right. I thought I’d seen enough to understand it, to navigate it, but I was wrong. The world is darker than I imagined—darker than I wanted to believe—and now those shadows are crawling closer, hungry, ready to pull me under.

Bethany. Justin. My friends—they’ll notice I’m gone. They’ll worry. Maybe they’ll come looking. The thought twists my stomach into knots. What if they walk straight into this nightmare? What if my silence drags them down with me?

My head lifts, pulse pounding, as one name shoves all the others aside. Bentley Walker. Lincoln’s brother. The man who believes I’m the only loose end to his evil past. Does he reallythink killing me will erase it all? That no one else knows? That I’d keep my mouth shut forever?

He’s willing to gamble his entire future on that one thing—on my silence.

Maybe I didn’t tell anyone.

Maybe I did.

And for the first time, I realize that’s my most dangerous weapon. My silence isn’t just a shield—it’s a blade.

The question now is simple.

Do I use it?

Or do I let the shadows win?

The shadows think they’ve already won.