Chapter 50

The bread was soft. Floppy. Still warm from wherever it came from. It tasted faintly sweet, like someone had added a little too much sugar, and somehow, that made it perfect. I didn't even realize I'd finished the whole thing until I looked down at the empty cloth in my lap.

I'd devoured it.

Like I hadn't eaten in years.

Like my body knew it was safe before my mind could believe it.

Afterward, I stood slowly. The quiet hum of the morning buzzed through the walls—crickets giving way to birds, pots clinking somewhere in the kitchen. I moved like someone trying not to be seen, even though there was no one watching. I slipped into the bathroom with Elsa trailing behind me, her tiny hops echoing on the tiles. She always followed me like that, like she knew I couldn't stand being alone for too long.

"I guess you need a bath too," I murmured.

She tilted her head like she agreed.

I ran the water into a bowl, dipping my fingers into it, feeling the chill sting my skin awake. I stripped out of Grandma's borrowed dress, letting it fall to the floor in a soft thud. The cold air kissed my bare skin and that's when I saw it.

The necklace.

That damned necklace.

Still locked around my throat like a collar I'd learned to ignore.

I froze.

The metal lay flat against my skin, delicate and deceptively beautiful—like him. It glinted faintly in the light from the cracked bathroom window. I reached up, fingers trembling, tracing the small pendant at its center.

I had stopped thinking about it. That was the truth. After all the running, after all the hiding, I'd grown used to its weight—like it belonged to me now.

But it didn't.

It belonged to him.

Adrik had fastened it around my neck himself. A "gift," he called it. His voice echoed in my head like smoke through a locked room: "So you don't forget who you belong to."

I sucked in a breath, my vision tunneling.

It wasn't just a necklace.

Of course it wasn't.

This was Adrik. He never gave anything without reason. He never touched anything without leaving a mark. My fingers dug under the chain, trying to find a clasp, anything—but there was none. I remembered now. It locked in place. It was designed not to come off.

A chill ran down my spine like ice water.

He could be tracking me.

He probably was.

The sudden rush of realization hit me like a wave—violent, cold, suffocating. I gasped, stumbling back against the wall. He knew where I was. He had always known. Every second I thought I was hiding, I was really being watched.

Elsa nudged my foot gently, unaware of the war breaking out in my chest.

I slid down the wall, hand still on the necklace, heart racing. My skin burned where it touched me. I wanted to rip it off, claw it until it snapped, until my throat bled—but it wouldn't budge. The metal might as well have been forged from chains.

My breath came in short, ragged bursts.

I had brought him here.

To Grandma.

To everything that felt like a fragile beginning.

Tears burned at the edges of my eyes but I refused to let them fall.

No.

Not yet.

I had to think.

I had to be smarter than him. Smarter than this collar. Smarter than the monster I once called husband.

The water was cold, but I welcomed it.

It shocked my skin, stole my breath for a moment, and washed the heat off my back like a small mercy. I scrubbed in silence, watching the brownish water swirl down the drain, as if I could scrub the fear too. Scrub Adrik off my skin. Scrub the memory of his voice out of my ears.

Elsa stayed close, resting on a small cloth near the wall. She watched me with her soft, quiet eyes, as if she knew I was coming undone piece by piece and didn't want to blink in case I shattered completely.

When I finished, I dressed slowly. Not with care, but with caution. I picked one of Grandma's loose blouses and soft wrappers, the kind that didn't cling, the kind you could disappear in. My body still felt foreign. Like it belonged to someone else—someone weaker, someone watched.

I stepped into the hallway and paused, listening.

Nothing.

No voices, no clinking dishes, no humming from Grandma. The air inside the house was still, as if it were holding its breath.

For a second, panic spiked—irrational and sharp.

But then I caught it.

A voice—soft and low—from outside the back window. A laugh. Earth being moved. The kind of sound you only hear when someone's digging gently, talking over bent knees and soil.

I walked to the back door and opened it quietly.

And there they were.

Grandma and Eli.

Both crouched in the small patch of garden just behind the house. The sun sat gently on their backs, not hot yet, just golden. Grandma wore one of her old head wraps and her stained wrapper, the hem tucked into her waist. Eli had taken off his slippers and was barefoot in the soil, hands dark with dirt, laughing at something she said.

They looked like a picture in a book that didn't belong to me.

I stood at the doorway and watched.

They hadn't seen me yet. Grandma was pointing at a spot in the ground where Eli had dug too close to the stem. He listened, nodded, adjusted. They worked in tandem, quiet and natural, like this was just another morning. Like the world hadn't fallen apart. Like there were no monsters in it.

I tightened my grip on the doorframe, half wanting to step back inside, half wanting to sink into the ground and disappear altogether.

It looked peaceful.

And peace, to me, had always felt like a lie.

Grandma looked up then and saw me. She smiled immediately, wide and real, like she'd been waiting.

"You're awake," she called. "Come see what we're doing, baby."

Eli looked too. He didn't speak, didn't wave, just offered a quiet nod. His eyes didn't scan me like a threat or a prize. He looked and looked away. That was it.

The sun spilled down on their hands as they worked, pressing seeds into soft earth like promises they actually believed would grow.

"Come, baby," Grandma said again, her voice easy like a song. "The sun is sweet this morning. It'll help warm your bones."

I hovered in the doorway, unsure. The light looked too bright, too open. The earth too soft beneath their feet, like something that might sink under me. But Grandma was already patting the patch of ground beside her, the same way she'd pat the seat beside her as a child when she told me stories.

I stepped out slowly, each movement careful like I was afraid the air might shatter around me.

I didn't sit. I stood nearby, just within reach, arms folded across my chest, watching Elsa hop gently toward a corner of the garden and nibble on a patch of weed. She looked so content. Like none of this was strange. Like nothing was wrong.

"You slept a little better last night, I think," Grandma said, eyes on the seed in her palm as she pressed it gently into the soil.

I didn't answer.

She didn't seem to mind.

"Eli came early," she added, glancing up at me with that soft smile that always felt like home. "Said the rains might come later this week, and he didn't want the seedlings drowning in hard earth."

Eli didn't speak. He just continued digging beside her, his arms moving steadily, his breaths calm and even. There was something almost meditative in the way he worked, as if the earth listened to him.

"I used to love planting when I was younger," Grandma continued. "Your grandfather used to say I had a stubborn hand—whatever I put in the ground refused to die."

I looked at her then. Just for a second.

She glanced back at me, the corner of her mouth twitching like she'd seen it.

"I think you got that from me," she said.

My throat tightened.

Not because of what she said. But because she said it like she meant it. Like I was still something capable of blooming.

I knelt slowly—hesitant—but near enough to touch the soil. I didn't reach for anything. I just sat there beside her in silence.

And she didn't push.

She planted her next seed, brushing dirt gently over the hole, and kept talking—softly, rhythmically, like she was telling the earth a story it needed to hear.

"This ground's been tired for a while," she said. "But if you give it patience, and a bit of kindness, it surprises you. Sometimes, things grow where you thought everything had withered."