Page 57 of A Touch of Madness

Lara moves through the city like a specter, lost between past and present, between what she was and what she is becoming. We have followed her every step, mapped her routine, memorized each erratic habit—every moment of stillness that stretches too long, every pause before a reflection, every whisper she breathes to no one at all.

She is unraveling, though I suspect she does not fully understand it yet.

But I do.

I have seen this before, the slow descent of a creature who no longer recognizes its own face, who stares into the abyss of its existence and finds only emptiness staring back.

And I have no desire to pity her.

I do this for Sylvie.

Only for Sylvie.

Dorian shifts beside me, his sharp golden eyes gleaming in the moonlight. The four of us: Dorian, Rebecca, Nicole, and myself, had gathered at The Crimson Veil tonight before setting out for this final night of tracking, our meeting filled with the weight of unsaid things. The war with Solstice is over—for now—but the battle for Lara has just begun.

My old friend has been just as restless as we all have, not to mention the exhaustion that has seeped into our souls.

Lara does not travel with others, nor does she return with them. She keeps her distance from those still loyal to Solstice, although I have no idea as to why. They have not sought her out. And why would they? The Society is in ruin, its leaders taken to the edge of the world where they will rot, where Viago and Kristoff will extract what little use remains in them.

No one is coming to save her.

And tonight, she will not save herself. Her life as she knows it rests on Sylvie.

Lara emerges from the safehouse just as she has the nights before, her movements eerily consistent. The same time, the same route, the same unsettling sense that she is walking toward something unseen.

Her face is blank, unreadable beneath the dim light of the flickering streetlamps. But something in the way she moves betrays the fractures forming beneath the surface. She is not well.

She never sleeps.

None of us have seen her eat the way she should, only enough to sustain, never enough to satisfy.

She is wasting away, burning herself from the inside out.

"She’s right on time," Dorian murmurs, his voice carrying the quiet amusement of a man who finds pleasure in a hunt well-played.

Nicole and Rebecca linger a few streets down, waiting.

"We should move," Dorian continues, shifting his stance beside me, ever eager, ever impatient.

I tilt my head slightly, observing the way Lara hesitates for only the briefest of moments before continuing down her usual path. She does not sense us, not yet, but there is something there—a wariness, perhaps. A small, sharp instinct buried too deep beneath her exhaustion to fully surface.

For being Sylvie’s twin, at this moment, she looks so different from her. Yes, same hair, same bone structure, same coloring. But her cheekbones are sunken in, her clothes hand loosely from her body…even her eyes seem wrong.

I exhale slowly.

"Not yet," I murmur. "A few more blocks."

And so we wait.

Until, that is, we strike.

We follow her as we have every night before, careful, measured, always just out of reach. The city is silent, wrapped in the hush of an hour too late for mortals to roam, too dangerous for those who do not understand the creatures that lurk beneath its surface.

She does not know she is being hunted—until it is too late.

She steps beneath the glow of a dying streetlamp, her figure limned in the sickly yellow light, and I know this is the moment.

I do not need to signal the others—we’re all in the know on how this needs to go down. I slow my car from a roll to a stop and Dorian moves first. He swiftly exits the car.

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