Chapter 2

Celeste's POV

The iron bell clangs three times.

Its sound is a blade, and it cuts straight into my bones.

That cold dread settles in-the same dread that coils in my spine whenever the "Guests" come.

Seven days. Seven sunsets left.

Seven days until my two-year mark in Angel Reform Academy-by the rules, I should "graduate." They should let me walk free.

I whisper the number into the soapy water as I scrub Lyra's bloodstained uniform, knuckles raw, movements mechanical. Dirt is my shield; the scars lacing my arms, ribs, and jaw are the only reason I've stayed unchosen this long. "Undesirable," they call me. A word that, until now, has kept me alive. But Guests don't care about undesirable. Guests like breaking things.

The common room hushes. Boots echo down the hall-heavy, polished, not Enforcers'. Every girl folds into herself, shoulders trembling. 

We know what Guests are: Alphas powerful enough to buy this whole place, faces hidden behind porcelain masks, scents erased with the warden's potions. Names unknown. Their deeds infamous-rape, carve, destroy. The unlucky ones? Their organs sold, their bones fed to dogs.

He steps in. Too tall for the low ceiling, black cloak dragging like a shadow. His mask is curved into a wide, menacing smile. No scent, nothing but that faint tang of potion, a reminder that he is untraceable. 

The air thickens. Even Lyra-always smug, always preening-goes pale. She'd been shining her uniform, hoarding soap like treasure. Now she shrinks back, suddenly small.

I press my face into the washboard, praying: Please, Moon Goddess, let him pick anyone but me. Just give me seven more days.

Then Lyra's voice slices the silence. Shrill. Desperate. A knife aimed straight at me.

"Sir! Over here! Don't pick us-pick her!"

I freeze.

Her finger stabs the air, pointing me out like prey. Her eyes gleam with malice-payback for the bread I refused, for every time I didn't bow.

"She's Celeste," Lyra spits. "Frost Pack's old Alpha's daughter. Pretended to be the real one for eighteen years, but she's just fake. And untouched. Never been used. You want an Alpha's little princess? She's fresh. She's a prize."

The room goes still.

My blood ices.

The other girls stare-some horrified, some relieved. No one speaks. No one ever does.

The masked man tilts his head, slow as a predator. His gaze locks onto me, piercing through porcelain, and I feel it-cold, hungry, final. He steps past Lyra, who flinches as if he might change his mind, and stops in front of me. A gloved hand closes around my arm. Not crushing, but absolute. He hauls me up, and my shoulder slams against his chest. Cedar. Iron. That's all I can smell above the rot.

"Please," I choke, voice trembling. "She's lying. I'm not-"

One word cuts me off.

"Her."

Lyra exhales in triumph. The girls sag with relief. Enforcers seize me, their grips rough, dragging me through corridors I know too well-the cages, the silver bars that still shimmer with the memory of my own confinement. I thrash, I scream, I beg:

"Seven days! Just seven more days! Let me go!"

No one listens.

The room they shove me into isn't a cell. There's a bed, clean sheets, a table-but my eyes find the wall. Chains. Whips. Silver-plated blades. Waiting.

The Enforcers leave. The door locks. Just me and him.

He moves slowly, savoring. Fingers brush steel and leather before wrapping around a whip-dark leather tipped with silver, made to shred both flesh and memory. He tests the weight, and I back into the wall, knees shaking. Tears spill hot down my cheeks.

"Please," I whisper. "I'll do anything. Clean, cook, obey. Just… not that."

The whip cracks. White-hot fire lashes across my shoulder. My scream is raw, unrecognizable. It falls again. Again. Each strike strips me smaller until I curl into myself, the world narrowed to pain and leather and the grotesque smile of his mask. Blood fills my mouth, iron and shame.

"I'm sorry," I gasp between blows. "Sorry I was born. Sorry I'm not-"

The words break apart. I slump, barely conscious. His shadow looms.

Then the door explodes open.

Kane. My only friend.

He is breathless, his uniform torn, his jaw raw with anger; he has been the only kindness carved out of this place-the one who slipped me bread, who bound my wounds, who whispered that maybe one day the world would not be only teeth and rules. 

He throws himself at the masked man, the ferocity of someone with nothing left to lose: "Get away from her! Leave her alone!"

For a heartbeat he connects. The masked man's fist finds Kane's jaw and Kane collapses, rises, and collapses again, blood blooming at his mouth as he shouts that she is not a thing. 

The masked man laughs-a sound like a blade drawn across bone-and with a snap of his fingers the room floods with Enforcers. "Looks like we have better toy," he said.

They pin Kane, crush his arms behind him, and he rakes the air with a look that is both apology and plea: "Celeste! I'm sorry! I couldn't stop him!"

The masked man nods, and the Enforcers seize me, drag me toward the door. I claw for Kane, I scream his name until my throat is raw: "Kane! No! Take me instead! Please-" 

The door slams. I am hurled to the stone. From the corridor comes the whip's cadence, and then an animal scream-Kane's-ripping and hollow and human all at once, a sound that drills through the marrow of me.

It does not stop for a long time.

When it finally ebbs, the hall is a vacuum of silence so complete I can hear my own heartbeat as if it were someone else's. 

Seven days. Seven sunsets I count like beads, and each one feels thinner than the last, a fragile promise I am not sure I still believe in, because Kane's scream has braided itself into my bones and the memory of the masked man's smile has lodged behind my ribs; still, even as the pain burns and my back hums with heat, a new thought carves through the fog-if by some impossible mercy I stagger out of here alive, if I can step beyond these stone walls and breathe air that does not taste of leather and silver, then I will not walk away a quiet ghost carrying only scars and shame.