Ch: 13 ​A Cage Without a Lock.

​I sat in the velvet chair, rigid, listening to the sound of my own blood dripping onto the polished stone floor.

​The silence of the room was a living, breathing thing. It was a cold, heavy presence that pressed in on me from all sides. Back at the Hawthorne estate, I could always hear something—the wind in the trees, the distant shouts from the training grounds, the clatter of the kitchens.

​Here? Nothing. An absolute, dead, tomb-like stillness.

​I must have sat there for half an hour, my world reduced to the throb in my back and the echo of the closing door. I was just starting to wonder if the girl, Wendy, was even coming back, if this was some new, cold torture to just let me sit here and bleed, when the door opened again.

​It wasn't just Wendy.

​She scurried in first, her eyes wide and fixed on the floor, carrying a stack of white towels. Behind her was an older man, tall and thin, with a severe face and wire-rimmed glasses. He wore a dark, formal suit, not a physician's coat, a