Page 172 of On Edge

I nod and collapse into her arms, and that’s when the sobs finally come, great heaving gasps that wrack my whole body.

I can barely speak. “I need you to tell me I’m not crazy.”

“You’re not crazy.” Her arms are tight around me.

“Whatever he said, whatever that bastard did, you’re not crazy.”

“But I’m going mad, Laine.” The words tear out of me, and I shove the letter at her. “Read it, please. Tell me I’m seeing things. Tell me this isn’t me.”

She takes it with one hand, still holding me with the other. Her eyes scan the words. Her brow deepens, but she doesn’t react the way I hoped. I thought she’d rip it up, say it was ludicrous. But she doesn’t.

Sage...” Her voice is soothing, calm, a voice of reason. “Let’s get you inside. I’ll put the kettle on.”

I’m shaking so hard my teeth chatter. “It’s mine. The letter is mine. Which means Nell isn’t dead.“ I can’t say the rest of it.

“Oh, Sage.” She pulls me into a hug, the one I needed but didn’t know to ask for, then walks me towards her door. “Jaxon, get her bags.”

I’ve only ever seen Jaxon from afar, and honestly, I don’t really see him now. He’s tall, that’s all I could tell you, and then he’s striding past us, towards the helicopter, jumping to do whatever Laine asks of him.

“Come inside. Let’s figure this out together.”

But there’s nothing to figure out.

The truth is right there in black and white, in handwriting I can’t deny, and penned in citrus ink like the invisible letters I would hide in books when I was a kid.

I’m not Sage mourning her sister. I’m Sage, who pretended to be Nell, and then forgot she wasn’t real.

And Troy knew.

He’s read this letter, so he knows who I really am. And yet, he sent me away anyway, because even knowing the truth, knowing I was Nell once…

I’m still not enough.

39

TROY

Work. Hunt. Sleep. Repeat.

I try to return to normal, to the things I was obsessed with before Sage arrived and turned everything upside down. But nothing feels right anymore. Not even slitting warm throats, feeling the blood release, like a pressure valve, and then watching the light flicker and die in their eyes.

Mundel observes me with something too close to disgust; he hates that I’m like this, but fuck him. I’m his employer; if he doesn’t like it, he knows where the door is. Kathy makes annoying comments about how empty the house is now, how barren the kitchen is, and gives me that look…the one that says I’ve disappointed her. I can’t tell Kathy where to go, so I avoid her. It’s not like we had a thrilling conversation before all this.

I did the right thing, letting her go.

Allowing the songbird to fly from her cage, before I could destroy her completely, was a mercy. My darkness would have swallowed her whole.

And as soon as I found the letter in Darrow’s things, I knew what it was: a letter from Nell. Extracting myself from Sage, I lefther sleeping under the bed and found a flame to heat the paper, making the words burn into the page. I knew then who she was and that she had lied to me. She’d been lying to me for weeks, all the while looking me in the eyes and pretending she wasn’t who I thought she was. After disappearing without a word, after letting me think she was dead or worse, she came back and pretended not to know me.

I trusted her, was starting to, anyway. All that push and pull between us felt real, but it was just a game to her. It always has been. That I trusted her; I believed her innocence. But it was all a lie.

She was Nell all along.

That’s why I couldn’t stand at the altar with her and go through with the deal she manipulated me into for her father. All I could see was red, taste was bitterness. If I had gone through with it, I would have kept my monster in check just enough to see it through, and when everyone had left, I would have tied her up pretty with her own garters and slit her throat while I made her sing for me.

That’s why I left.

I would have fucking killed her.