Page 122 of Mystic's Sunrise

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

THE SECOND DAYwas worse,not because anything happened, but because nothing did. The stillness wasn’t a comfort. It wasn’t peace. It was its own brand of punishment, heavy and airless, the kind that didn’t scream but instead settled deep into your bones and made itself at home.

I hadn’t moved much. The motel room had become a cage I chose, even though the lock turned from the inside. The curtains were drawn so tight that not even a whisper of sunlight could find its way through. I couldn’t risk it—not even a sliver. The thought of someone spotting the shift of light, seeing movement,recognizing the outline of a woman too afraid to stand tall, was enough to keep me pinned in shadow.

Sometime after dawn, when the world outside was quiet and still stretching itself awake, I crept out in an oversized jacket too big for my frame. I made it only as far as the vending machine near the office. The crackers I bought tasted like dust. I tried one, maybe two, but they turned to paste in my mouth, too thick to swallow alongside the regret already lodged in my throat. The water was warm, but I drank it anyway.

The hours didn’t pass here. They didn’t tick by or melt away—they dragged, slow and aching, like rusted chains dragging across a concrete floor. Every creak in the walls, every muffled voice from another room, every slammed car door outside sent a jolt through my system. My breath would hitch, my body still, heart beating so loud it drowned out everything else. But then the moment would pass, and silence would return, cruel and absolute.

No voices I recognized. No knock at the door. No gruff command from Mystic telling me to eat, to rest, to fight. No Lucy’s soft concern. No Brenda with her firm kindness and unyielding maternal edge. Just me, the silence, and the truth I hadn’t wanted to face.

By the time darkness fell again, it didn’t feel like hiding anymore. It felt like being forgotten. Like the world had moved on without me. Like maybe I’d never really mattered in the first place.

I tried to write a note. Something. Anything to explain—to make sense of what I’d done. I found the paper in the bedside drawer and held the pen with shaking fingers, staring at the blank page for what felt like hours. But nothing came. Not the words. Not the courage. Just the weight in my chest tightening until it became too much. I snapped the pen clean in half,watched the ink spill onto the cheap laminate table like a wound, and turned away from it.

Eventually, I ended up on the floor in the corner, curled against the wall like I was waiting for something I couldn’t name. Arms wrapped around my knees. Back flat against cold plaster. There was comfort in it. Safety. No one behind me. No one beside me. Just the quiet. Just the dark.

I hadn’t truly been alone since I was sixteen. First came the men who pulled me from everything I knew. Then came Drago—his voice, his rules, his control. His hands never bruised me, but they suffocated me all the same. And then Mystic. Always near, always watching me with eyes that seemed to see too much and yet never pushed too far. He never demanded. But his presence alone had become a strange kind of tether.

Even when I didn’t speak to him. Even when I couldn’t. He was there.

And now he wasn’t.

My voice cracked as it left me, barely more than a breath. “Maybe I wasn’t meant for peace.”

The night outside was thick, pressing in against the thin motel walls, wrapping everything in a kind of hush that felt soaked in sorrow. I pushed myself up and moved toward the window, just enough to pull the curtain back with two fingers and peer through the gap. The parking lot was mostly empty. One flickering streetlight bathed the cars in a dull yellow glow.

Two doors down, a man stepped out. He didn’t look dangerous. Didn’t look kind, either. Just tired. He lit a cigarette, inhaled, and stood there like the world couldn’t touch him. Like he belonged to no one and owed nothing to anyone. He didn’t check his surroundings. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t care who watched.

I stared longer than I should’ve, my breath fogging the glass.

How must that feel? To move without fear. To breathe without permission. To exist without someone’s eyes always tracking you, even when they said they weren’t.

Maybe if I stayed quiet long enough—if I stayed hidden, nameless—maybe one day I’d feel that way too.

I crawled back into bed, slow and careful, the blanket pulled up to my chin like it could shield me from the weight of everything I didn’t want to feel. My fingers brushed against the worn book tucked beneath the pillow—A Walk With Me.It was the one piece of myself I’d clung to. The one thing that never asked for more than I could give. A reminder of what hope used to look like, back when I was still someone else.

I let myself believe for a moment. Maybe they wouldn’t find me. Maybe tomorrow I’d catch a bus, go somewhere no one knew my name, start over. I didn’t have a plan. No ID. No papers. No idea how to exist in a country that felt too loud, too fast, too unfamiliar.

But the thought of vanishing… it brought me something close to peace. Fragile. Thin. But enough.

Still, as my eyes began to drift shut, a voice deep inside whispered the same words it had whispered since the moment I left—words I couldn’t outrun no matter how far I went.

You made a mistake.

Maybe I had. Maybe I hadn’t. But I knew one thing for certain—if I called Lucy, I’d ask her not to tell. Not yet. Just long enough to breathe. Just long enough to figure out how not to drown.

That hope settled around me like a threadbare sheet, barely enough to keep the cold out. But I wrapped myself in it anyway.

And sleep took me in pieces. Uneasy. Restless. Like my body knew what my mind refused to admit.

I wasn’t free.

I was just lost.

***

THE BED DIPPEDbehind me,just slightly, just enough to shift the air around me and pull the blanket in a fraction tighter. But that subtle weight, that unmistakable shift, was all it took to send a cold wave of dread crashing down my spine.

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