“I will destroy you, Lenore,” I said to the mirror.
“I will be the last thing you see. The last thing you taste.”
I walked to her bed and lay down. Pressed my face into her pillow.
“But you will be the end of me.”
I sat up. My voice cracked.
“You were the end of everything I ever wanted to be. You crushed me.”
“You left me. And all I can hear in my head is your voice, repeating the same words —I promise. I promise. I promise.”
“What did youfucking promise, huh? You’re not here. You’re not even near.”
“You’ll be sorry. Sorry, you shattered my heart. Sorry, you broke me apart. Sorry you left.”
I took a long breath.
“You’ll be sorry I came back. And you’ll be sorry I said—“
“I promise.”
“I fucking promise you that.”
The voices in my head surged again, louder now. Closer.
They’re here.
TWENTY TWO
DORIAN
TWO YEARS LATER
PRESENT DAY
Sprinklers hissed in the garden, misting over the roses. They bloomed again, fragile and blood-bright. Inside the house, only the sound of silence remained. There were no creaking floorboards when the door opened. No echo of steps. Only the steady clicking of an old clock ticking away the hours. Its hands moved slowly, not yet pointing to ten.
But if you walked further, through the hallway and into that room, the silence changed. The room where everything once breathed still pulsed with something unseen.
There was a table. And on the table sat a dollhouse.
Now the room had eighteen dolls. Each one was different. Different hair. Different eyes. Eyes that shifted in slow, haunting turns. They never stopped watching. Never stopped staring. All of them faced the dollhouse.
Inside that miniature house, tucked into a bed carved from walnut, a little man slept. And outside, in the dark, someone was watching.
He stood at the edge of the garden, staring up at her window. Staring at the light. Waiting for it to go out. He wore black jeans, a black hoodie, and a cap pulled low. A broken man. Waiting for the moment when everything would quietly shut down, so he could sneak inside and see her for the first time in two years.
He took a step. Then another. Soundless.
I, Dorian Thorn, am back in Gloomsbury Manor.
I opened the front door. The floors had been swept and mopped. The air still held the sharp, fresh scent of cleaner. She had wiped the place down, as if trying to erase it. I walked up the stairs. Her bedroom door was open.
She lay there in her old white dress. Still. Her face had not changed.
She was still beautiful. And I did not know why I ever thought she would be different.
