Chapter 14 · The Death They Erased

The door slams shut and I'm on my knees with blood running down my wrist. Elias is on the floor next to me, breathing like he just surfaced from drowning. His skin's gone gray where the chains were. Not bruised. Gray, like stone halfway through forgetting it used to be human.

I don't help him up. I'm too busy trying to stop shaking.

My sister knew my name. The real one, the one Mom used before she decided Mara sounded better on a landlord's lease. Nobody alive knows that name. Nobody except the dead.

"Get up," I say. My voice comes out flat.

Elias pushes himself to sitting. He's still got that wrong-angle look, like something bent him and didn't bend him back all the way. His eyes find mine and there's something in them I don't want to name.

"Mara—"

"No." I stand. My palm's still bleeding. I don't care. "You're going to tell me what happened. The real version. Not the one you've been feeding me in pieces."

He stands too, slower. The apartment's too small for this.