There was no answer that a man determined not to believe me would hear, and I was too tired, and too cold, and too heartbroken, to spend what strength I had left throwing it against a locked door.

I only looked at him, this man I had ruined my own life to save, who was looking at me as though I were something scraped off his marble floor, and I thought: he does not know.

After everything, he still does not know a single true thing about what happened to me.

And for the first time I let myself feel the full weight of what my sacrifice had actually bought — which was not gratitude, and not safety, but five years of being hated by the very person I had given my freedom to protect.

Chapter 9 — The Fever

That night Mason’s fever climbed.