Chapter Nine– Silk Walls, Steel Bars

Isla Pov

The sheets felt like silk.

That was the first betrayal of the morning.

Because my body still ached like I’d slept on the sidewalk.

I opened my eyes to walls that didn’t belong to me. Pale gray, no chipped paint.

A long window stretched across the far side of the room, filtered light spilling through gauzy curtains. There was a dressing table I’d never sit at, a closet full of clothes that weren’t mine, and a silence so thick it hummed.

I wasn’t used to silence.

I was used to doors slamming and voices shouting. To the blare of a broken TV and the clink of my father’s empty bottles. To my stepmother’s sharp voice calling for cigarettes or for me to “get off my ass and work for once.”

This silence? It didn’t feel peaceful.

It felt watched.

I sat up slowly, muscles stiff, heart heavier.

North wing. That's what he said.

His wing.

I had no idea what that meant except that someone else carried my file now someone more dangerous than the ones before.

Grayson Voss hadn’t spoken to me