Page 191 of Sage Haven
Pain bloomed in sharp, searing waves as I tried to shift, sending lightning through my limbs. My arms were wrenched behind me, tied so tightly they’d gone numb—empty sacks of flesh hanging useless behind the chair. I couldn’t feel my fingers at all. It was as if they’d been cut away, leaving phantom echoes in their place.
I sucked in a breath, but even that was agony. My ribs screamed in protest, a hollow cracking sound echoing in my chest. My head pounded with a steady, brutal rhythm, each throb like a hammer crashing into my skull. The light above me was blinding—brutal. Cold fluorescents stabbed at my retinas with ruthless precision, boring holes straight through my eyes and into my brain.
I squinted. Blinked. Failed to focus.
Where am I?
Panic bloomed like fire in my chest. My stomach churned, bile burning up the back of my throat. The sharp metallic sting of it mingledwith the heavy weight of fear, thick on my tongue. I swallowed it down because I had no choice.
There was nowhere for it to go.
I tried to move again—willed my legs to shift, to do something—but they felt leaden. Disconnected. Like I wasn’t even inside them anymore. The ropes dug deeper into my wrists with each tiny motion, tearing into flesh that was already raw and pulsing. I could feel warm blood slicking beneath the cords. It made no difference. I wasn’t going anywhere.
The chair beneath me was metal. Cold. Ice-cold. Its chill seeped into my skin, deeper, until I could feel it leeching through muscle, finding the hollow of my bones. It was a kind of cold that didn't just exist on the outside—it made itself inside you. It hollowed you out. It waited for you to die.
I was drowning.
Not in water but in this.
In helplessness.
In terror.
And then I heard them.
Footsteps.
Measured. Deliberate.
Echoing in a room I couldn’t see, couldn’t map out.
I didn’t need to see it to know.
Concrete walls. No windows. No escape.
The footsteps stopped.
A door groaned open on unoiled hinges.
And then it slammed shut, so violently it sent a physical jolt through me. Pain spiked down my spine, my pulse roaring in my ears as nausea swelled again.
A shadow broke across the floor in front of me.
The door handle turned.
I couldn’t breathe.
And then…there he was, my nightmare.
Klay.
My heart didn’t even bother to speed up.
It simply skipped beats, sputtering out like it was going to give in.
He stepped through the doorway with a grin that carved its way into my flesh. Slow. Leisurely. His hands tucked into his pockets like we were meeting by accident on the street. His gaze settled on me with a heatless familiarity that turned my stomach to glass. And then he smiled wider.
Like he’d won.
