Chapter 1 

Nia

She wanted to die.

Nia pulled the threadbare motel covers tightly around herself, but the weight of him still pressed into the mattress beside her. He had just bought his time with her body, fumbling and rough. His sour cologne clung to the sheets. 

The memory of minutes earlier haunted her mind. Every touch was seared into her skin. She could still feel his rough hands on her, skin burning where he had gripped her too hard. The soft whir of the ever-watching camera as it struggled to focus in the dimly lit room was a cruel reminder that this… this… was all too necessary to keep them alive. Exhaustion and shame warred inside her. The coarse fabric scratched against her as she burrowed deeper, desperate for any scrap of comfort. 

For a moment, the soft pressure of the blankets almost felt like the faded quilts her mother used to tuck around her. The memory of her mother’s gentle hands and sweet voice humming off-key lullabies rose up and caught in her throat. She could almost see the soft kitchen light spilling down the hallway in the middle of the night. She tried to hold onto it, to stay in that warmth, but it slipped away, drowned by the ache in her chest and the stench soaked into every surface. If the earth chose this moment to open up and swallow her whole, she would not fight it.

The mattress groaned as he stood. She could hear his clothes rustling in the dimly lit room. Nia squeezed her eyes shut. What she would give to simply disappear, to sink into the sheets and vanish from this hellscape. The air shifted as he moved. The reek of his cologne hung heavy in the air, choking her. He muttered something, but Nia ignored him.

If she could melt into the blankets and build walls out of silence and fabric, she would. She still remembered what it felt like to be safe, to be loved. She still dreamed of the bone-crushing hugs her father gave her when he came home from the shop. His radiant smiles and deep laughter. But now? Now the world was this bed. These stained walls. The choke of stale cologne in her lungs. There was no one left to hold her together.

His voice ripped through the door before it was fully open.

“You useless bitch!”

Callum violently shook a fistful of bills in the air, the same ones her client must have pressed into his hand just moments ago. His face twisted with rage, eyes burning. Once, he had been the boy who carried her piggyback through the snow, promising to always protect her. Somehow that protection had been warped, corrupted into this.

“I—I," she stammered, struggling to find the words to shield herself from his onslaught. 

“You, you,” he mocked menacingly. “You what? Tried?!” he roared, slamming the money down on the table. A vase of wilted peonies toppled and shattered on the floor, slicing through the room. “You’re useless. After everything I’ve done for you, this is how you repay me?”

Nia’s voice hitched in her throat, tears burning in her eyes, threatening to spill. She remembered the winter after their parents died, when they had to huddle together for warmth. They swore they’d never let each other go hungry again. They rummaged through trash cans for scraps to survive. No one wanted them. All they had was each other.

“Nothing to say for yourself?! You pathetic whore!” The shadows deepening behind him, “Worthless bitch!”

His words landed like blows. She recoiled, pressing herself back against the headboard, wishing it would split open and swallow her whole. In her eyes, Callum was still a kid. Sixteen and terrified. Clutching her hand in the dark after the funeral and swearing that he would take care of her. She had believed him. Maybe he had believed it, too, before the hunger and cold winters changed him.

Now, as he turned away, his shadow stretched long and jagged across the floor, flickering with a life of its own. For a moment, she thought she heard laughter, low and cold at the edge of her hearing. It curled all around him, darkening his words. The sense of being watched felt too sharp, as if something unseen peered into the room. The shadow wavered, shifting oddly.

The lamp on the nightstand flickered unexpectedly, accompanied by a faint buzzing crackle that made the hairs on Nia’s arms stand up. The light flared, warping Callum's shadow into something no human shape could deign to cast. It slithered, twisting into clawed points that rippled where nothing should have moved. Then the lamp guttered, and darkness reclaimed the room. The hush that followed felt unnaturally heavy, as if the world were waiting.

Time seemed to slow for a moment. The air became thick with the sharp tang of ozone. The stench of the cologne twisted, turning almost metallic, as if electricity burned through the air. A pressure began to build in her skull, just behind her eyes, as every hair along the back of her neck prickled in warning. Deep down, she understood that this was no ordinary fear; beneath the misery, something else was here, something ancient. Waiting. Watching.

“Get out of my sight!” His words ripping her back to herself. He seized a chair and hurled it across the room; it smashed against the wall and splintered into pieces. “I said, get out!” Nia scrambled to her feet, clinging to the blanket as she fled.

The balcony door slammed open. Rain hit her like a wall of ice. She stumbled outside, the blanket tightly wrapped around her, now heavy and soaked through. Her bare feet felt raw on the concrete as she plowed ahead, stopping only when she reached the iron railing. She stood there for a long moment, breaths coming in sharp, rattling gasps.

His words echoed in her mind. Pathetic. Whore. Worthless.

Below the world stretched out into darkness before her. Wind whipped at her hair, rain washing everything in silver as it needled her skin. Cars hissed along the city streets, their lights streaks of red and gold in the distance. She stared out over the city, lights smeared by rain and tears, and tried to remember the last time she had known hope. Maybe it was years ago, when she and her brother still believed things could get better before their lives were twisted and corrupted by the desperate need to survive. For a moment, letting go felt like the only way out.

Her eyes closed. The iron groaned under the weight of her as she leaned further over the railing. Just a little more, and it would all be over.

***