I keep my breathing even, slow. With my eyes blindfolded, all I have left is sound, and I listen.
The wind whispers against my skin, cold and sharp, slicing through the thin fabric of my third torn shirt. They had been kind this time: after showering I got clothes.
The wind howls through unseen spaces, long, mournful, stretching into the unknown. Not the kind of wind that moves through a city’s heartbeat, weaving between traffic and voices. This wind is empty.
No honking cars. No distant murmur of conversation. No life.
Only the eerie rustle of trees—tall ones, the kind whosebranches groan as they sway. Leaves, dry and brittle, skitter across a surface that isn’t pavement. Dirt, maybe. Gravel. Something loose beneath my feet.
A creaking sound drifts in next. A sign, perhaps, or an old structure shifting in the wind. Metal, rusted and weary, complaining against the push of the air.
Somewhere in the distance, something flutters, a cloth? A tarp? It snaps against itself, the sound sharp before it settles again.
But there’s nothing else. No voices. No distant hum of engines. No city life pulsing in the background.
Wherever I am, it’s isolated. Removed.
“Feels nice, doesn’t it?” His voice is smooth, almost conversational. “A breath of something different, something close to being alive.”
My fingers twitch against my restraints. The fresh air, the openness, it is a reward, in its own cruel way. A taste of something I can’t have. A reminder of life, something I’m not in the possession of.
I drink in as much of it as I can, filling my lungs with the sharp bite of the wind, the scent of damp earth and rustling leaves. It’s not just air. It’s life. Something I can feel but not touch.
And then, like everything else, he takes it away.
“Take him back.”
The guards tighten their grip, dragging me away from the fleeting taste of freedom. The wind fades. The air thickens once more.
And the darkness remains.
I let the dark take me. Let it sink into my bones. Let it fill me.
Chapter 35
Closer to the
Devil’s Threshold
Isabella
When we pull out of the city, the sky is a dull shade of blue, the early morning light barely making a dent in the dense clouds. New York fades behind us, replaced by long stretches of empty highway and the occasional roadside diner, all of it swallowed in the quiet hum of the road.
Sawyer drives, one hand on the wheel, the other nursing a gas station coffee that he’s already complained about twice. Ada’s in the back, stretched out across the seat, her feet propped up on the middle console as she scrolls through her phone. And me? I’m in the passenger seat, picking apart a peanut butter and pickle sandwich like it holds the answers to life’s mysteries.
“You’re disgusting,” Sawyer says, side-eyeing my food choice as he switches lanes.
I take another bite, meeting his look with a deadpan stare. “And yet, I thrive.”
Ada glances up from her phone, sees what I’m eating, and visibly recoils. “Jesus Christ, Isabella. You couldn’t just eat normal road trip food?”
I shrug, licking a bit of peanut butter off my thumb. “Salty and sweet. It works.”
“It absolutely does not work.” Sawyer’s expression is puredisgust. “And I’m never trusting you with snacks again.”
“You let me pack them.” I grin, holding up a Ziploc bag of more unholy combinations. “That’s on you.”
Sawyer mutters something under his breath about needing better judgment, but he lets it go, turning his focus back to the road.
