**Chapter Seven**

**Sam's POV**

I read it again.

And again.

My eyes kept going back to the same words, like maybe I hadn't read them right the first time, like they might change if I just kept staring long enough. They didn't. They sat there on the page exactly the same way each time, black ink spelling out the end of a life I was still, technically, living.

My vision started to blur. Small drops kept landing on the paper, smudging the ink under my fingers, but I kept reading anyway, kept forcing my eyes back over the same headline until the letters barely made sense as words anymore. I grabbed the paper and squeezed it until my fingers ached, like if I focused hard enough on that one small pain, I wouldn't have to feel the much larger one sitting in my chest.

I threw the paper down.

Then I picked it back up again.

I don't know why. I really don't. It was like my hand refused to leave it alone, like my body had decided to keep moving without waiting for permission from the rest of me. I stared at it for another moment, and then I started tearing it. First it was small pieces, just trying to get rid of the words, like I could erase them one torn edge at a time. It wasn't enough. It didn't feel like anywhere close to enough.

So I tore harder.

Faster.

Rougher.

Everything inside me had gotten too big for my body to hold, and I needed somewhere to put it, so I put it into the paper, into the sound of it ripping apart between my hands. The sound filled the room, sharp and constant, and I didn't stop even when my fingers started to sting from the effort. The sting was better than what was sitting underneath it.

"Miss Samantha…"

The maid came closer anyway, even though I hadn't answered. I felt her presence in the room before I properly saw her, some shift in the air that told me I wasn't alone with the wreckage of newspaper scattered across my lap anymore.

She touched my shoulder, lightly, testing.

Something in me reacted before I'd even had the chance to think about it. I pushed her hand away, hard enough to put distance between us, just enough space that nothing could reach me for one more second.

"Don't," I think I said. Or maybe I didn't say it properly at all, maybe it just came out as a sound with the shape of a word.

She didn't leave. She came closer again instead, and this time she held onto me, and that was when it finally broke loose, all of it, everything I'd been holding together by nothing but sheer stubbornness since I'd first unfolded that paper.

"I'm not Samantha…"

"They buried me…"

"They took my child from me…"

That one broke something all the way through. My voice didn't hold together after that. It just came apart completely, and I left it, because I didn't have anything left to keep it stitched shut with. I was crying now, but not the kind of crying that stays quiet and contained. It was everything at once, like my body had simply ran out of room to keep any of it in anymore.

"They took my child…" I kept saying it, over and over, even though I'd lost count of how many times the words had already left me.

My body was still shaking when I finally stopped fighting her hold on me. I didn't even notice the exact moment I stopped. I stayed there afterward, shaking, crying into her shoulder without any way left to stop myself.

"I'll be back to get you ready, Miss Sam," the maid said eventually, before stepping out and leaving me alone with what was left of the room.

I fell apart completely after the door closed. I pressed both hands to my face and cried until my throat burned raw and my chest felt scraped hollow, until there were no more tears left to cry and only silence remained where all that noise had been. Hours passed, and the room stayed exactly as still as it had been, but nothing about the inside of me felt still at all.

Later, I tried to leave. I opened the bedroom door without really thinking about what I'd find on the other side of it. Two armed guards stood there, perfectly still, like they'd been standing there specifically waiting for me to try exactly this.

One of them looked at me and said, "You are not allowed to step out."

Anger shot through me then, hot and fast, because grief needed somewhere else to go once it had exhausted itself.

"Am I a prisoner?"

"Those are the orders. Please, go back inside."

I turned and walked back into the room, every step heavier than the one before it, my whole body feeling like it belonged to someone else now, someone I hadn't agreed to become.

What was this place? Who were these people? Why wouldn't anyone let me leave?

I sank onto the edge of the bed and stared at nothing until the door opened again.

The maid came back, but this time she wasn't alone. Two other women followed her into the room.

"It's time for your bath, Miss Sam." she said softly.

They moved like they'd done this before, guiding me into the water, washing me carefully, like I'd somehow lost the ability to manage even that much on my own. They didn't ask permission for any of it. They simply worked, quiet and efficient, like this was the most ordinary thing in the world.

One of them washed every inch of me like I had no say in the matter — water running over my skin, hands moving without a trace of anything personal in them, like I was simply something that needed cleaning and arranging, not a person at all.

The water was still clinging to my skin when they helped me out of the bath and dried me slowly. Then came the fabric, layers I hadn't chosen, arranged around me. A hairpin slid into place at the end, and I stood there and let it happen.

I waited until the house settled into the kind of silence that isn't really silence at all, just the sound of people moving around without paying attention to you anymore. They'd said he would be back tonight. That thought kept circling in my head, not like comfort, but like a deadline I refused to still be here for.

So I moved.

I crossed the room slowly, watching more than acting, like some part of me was still waiting for permission I'd already decided I didn't need.

The vase wasn't planned. My hand just caught it, and I let it fall. The sound was immediate, far too loud for a mansion that quiet.

For a second, everything outside my door reacted at once.

Footsteps.

Voices.

Closer.

I ran and made it into the bathroom, shutting the door behind me and pressing my back flat against it, trying to slow my breathing before it gave me away entirely. My heart was pounding hard enough that I swore I could feel it in my teeth.

I heard the bedroom door open, they moved through the room quickly, calling to each other in low voices, already expecting something had gone wrong. One of them went straight for the balcony.

"Search the estate… she used the balcony."

They'd seen the curtains. I'd tied them together earlier and dropped them over the railing, just enough to make it look like I'd gone down that way instead of the way I actually planned to go.

"Downstairs. Now."

Footsteps left the room in a rush, and I stood there afterward without moving right away, not entirely sure what I was still waiting for except that I didn't trust the silence yet, not fully. When I finally stepped out, the room was empty, the door left open exactly the way I'd expected it would be. I stepped out and ran for the elevator down the hall instead of the stairs.

When the doors opened. Sound hit me first — voices, movement, the soft clink of dishes, people working like nothing anywhere else in the house had gone wrong at all.

The kitchen.

Two maids passed in front of me, talking about checking the upstairs rooms. I froze instantly and stepped into the shadow beside the doorway, staying close to the wall, keeping out of the open, and slipped past the kitchen without either of them noticing. The corridor beyond it was empty. That was when I ran, barefoot, my legs weak and unsteady beneath me, fear the only thing still pushing them forward.

I stopped thinking entirely at that point. I just moved.

Cold air hit me the second I made it outside.

The estate stretched out in every direction, surrounded by water, endless and restless under the dark sky, no road in sight, no town, nothing that connected this place to anywhere else in the world.

I stood there a second too long.

Not because I didn't understand what I was looking at.

Because I did, completely, all at once.

There was nowhere to go.

I'd escaped the room. I hadn't escaped this place.

"You'll die before you reach the mainland."

The voice was deep, unmistakable, coming from somewhere behind me, low and calm, the kind of voice that never needed to raise itself to make a person stop moving.

I turned slowly.