Chapter 4

They gave the nurse a few hurried instructions and left the room together.

The ward fell silent again, dead and still.

I lay there, and that faint warmth their tears and promises had pressed into me tore at something inside my chest, pulling in opposite directions.

They had stood by and done nothing while those rich kids tortured me a second time. Yet now they rushed out to find medicine for me, willing to spare no expense.

What was I supposed to believe? The way Mom had looked at my wounds and cried? The way Dad had sworn with red-rimmed eyes that he would make them pay? Or the post?

Blood ties. A family that had searched for 20 years to bring me home. Could even that be a lie?

Charlotte's betrayal had driven a knife straight through my heart. If ten years of I love you from her had all been a performance, then who was left to trust?

Yet I was like a drowning man who had spotted a piece of driftwood, ready to claw at it with everything I had, even if the wood was rotting, even if it was covered in splinters that tore my hands open and left them bleeding.

I had to hold on, because without it, I had nothing left at all.

The phone by my pillow buzzed again. The post had been updated.

[Ha. Here is some good news. My parents feel bad for me. They said that sickly nobody brings nothing but bad energy to the house and ruined the whole holiday. So to make me truly happy, they have decided to stage a big accidental death show.

[They are taking me to Valterre for a private New Year's celebration, just the three of us, one happy family.]

Every word landed exactly where it would hurt the most, right in the part of me that had only just dared to hope again because of that Ostevive.

So that was why they rushed out. It was never about bidding on some miracle cure for me. They were arranging their own deaths and their new beginning, planning how to erase me from their world completely.

Tears spilled without a sound, and every scattered fragment of memory snapped into place at once.

The glass of wine on New Year's Eve, handed to me by Charlotte with a smile and a toast to the holiday. What I had tipped back was not hope. It was a ticket straight into the fire.

That night of torture, broadcast for the entire internet to watch, had never been an accident. My screams were nothing more than a holiday gift to entertain Cedric.

I had walked through 20 years of cold and emptiness to find what I thought was home, only to discover that the cold had never stopped. It had been creeping in the whole time, freezing every nerve that still ached for warmth, inch by slow inch.

I stared at the phone screen until my eyes burned dry and raw, yet not a single tear came. The last flicker of longing for family that had survived inside me drowned under those words on the screen, leaving nothing behind except the choking taste of ash.

Then an unfamiliar number called in.

"Is this Mr. Carrick Selwyn?"

"This is the Highway Patrol, Accident Investigation Unit. Your parents, Mr. Warren Selwyn and Mrs. Patricia Ashworth, were involved in a serious car accident on their way to the Belvedere district. Despite emergency efforts, they have passed away.

"We are very sorry for your loss. Please come to Mercy General Hospital as soon as you are able."

I let out a quiet laugh.

"Is that so?

"Then just go ahead and cremate them."