She Turned On the Lights

She had lived inside the machine and knew it was a machine.

But I had needed to see it, the exposed gears of it, three people who called each other family clawing at each other on a ballroom floor, to fully believe that the warmth I’d been shown across all those months had never contained a single true thing.

Chapter 29 — Page Eighteen, Again

Percival turned to me as the cuffs closed on his wrists.

“Sunniva — tell me you didn’t do this.”

“I gave you every chance to be the man you pretended to be,” I said.