Chapter 22 - Quinn

Chapter 22 - Quinn
Whoever leads me back to Kieran’s room doesn’t speak.

They don’t shove or drag me, but they don’t walk slowly either. It’s a steady pace. Fast enough to keep me from lingering but slow enough to make me feel like I’m still under control. A reminder, maybe, that I don’t get to wander in this place. That even when I’m not shackled or shouted at, I’m still being managed.

The door creaks open when we reach the end of the corridor, and I expect the room to look exactly as it did before—dim, cold, stripped bare except for a bed and a chair and the heavy presence of its owner. But something’s changed. Something quiet, subtle, and unnerving.

The closet door is open, and it’s full.

Full in a way that makes my breath hitch in my throat and my heart beat double-time in my chest, because this is what traps feel like when they smile at you. Soft fabrics in muted tones hang neatly in rows. 

Dresses, pants, jeans, oversized knits, even a leather jacket that looks so perfectly broken-in that I’d think it was mine if I didn’t know better. Every piece of clothing looks like it belongs in my life, not his. My size, my style, and my scent, somehow, faint on the collar of one of the sweaters. And that terrifies me more than the chains did.

Because I know he’s planning for me to stay. Not just planning, but preparing.

The soldier—guard? servant?—who walked me here doesn’t say a word. He gives a shallow nod and pulls the door shut behind him. The lock clicks a second later, but I don’t run to check. There’s no point. I’m not locked in a cage, I’m trapped in a fantasy. And those are always harder to escape.

I strip slowly, not because I’m shy, but because I’m afraid of what I’ll feel. Because I’m starting to understand that this isn’t a nightmare I’ll wake up from. The shirt I’ve been wearing still smells like him, and when I tug it over my head, a rush of cold air hits my skin and makes me shiver. 

The bathroom is beautiful, which feels almost cruel. Marble counters, a glass shower, folded towels — as if I’m in a five-star prison built with every luxury designed to distract me from the fact that it’s still a cell. 

I turn the water on too hot, and let it burn the skin of my shoulders until they go pink. I press my palms flat to the tiles and breathe through it, hoping the steam will fog up more than just the mirror. Hoping maybe it’ll fog up my thoughts too, but it doesn’t.

I scrub slowly, mechanically, washing off the scent of cold stone and war room and fear, only to replace it with something else—Kieran’s scent is in the shampoo. His cologne on the clean towel. There’s no part of this room he hasn’t marked, and now I know why it felt so intimate.

Because I am being marked.

When I finally step out and wrap the towel around myself, I stare at my reflection for too long. My hair’s damp and messy, my eyes shadowed with too many nights of bad sleep, and yet… I still look like me. I still feel like me. 

That should be comforting, but it’s not. It just makes everything worse, because if I’m still me, then that means everything else is real too. I’m not dreaming, I’m not hallucinating, I’m not spiraling into madness.

I’m here in the world I created, and I don’t know why.

I pick the softest clothes from the closet, just to give myself the illusion of choice. A pair of worn jeans, a cropped black sweater, and socks so fluffy they feel like clouds. I dress quickly, needing the distraction, but every movement feels rehearsed. 

Then I sit on the edge of the bed afterward and stare at the dark wood of the floorboards, hands folded in my lap like I’m waiting for someone to walk in and tell me what the hell is happening.

But no one comes.

The silence presses in thick around me, and the questions start to eat through the calm I’ve been trying to fake. Not just how I got here, but why now. What triggered it? What did I do? What did I write that tore the veil and dumped me into the middle of the chaos I thought I’d only imagined?

And if this is my world, why the hell doesn’t it feel like mine anymore?

I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood and force myself to think. To remember. To dissect what I know. 

There was a time—early on, before the Crown fell and Kieran rose—when I wrote a side character that never made it past the second draft. 

She was dangerous, half-mad, born from moonlight and folklore, a witch older than her body and hungrier than anyone suspected. I remember liking her too much, even though she scared me. I remember deleting her because I didn’t trust myself with her power. Her name had been… something strange. Thistle? No, Thisbe. That was it.

Thisbe, the witch of the Hollow Vale.

She was supposed to know things no one else did. See things others refused to believe. A gatekeeper between realms. A soul who remembered every version of the world layered on top of this one like paper on paper until it blurred into something unrecognizable.

And if she still exists here, if she somehow survived the edits, the changes, the bleed of plot lines, maybe she could help.

Maybe she knows how I got here. Maybe she can tell me how to go back.

The thought is dangerous, but I keep turning it over in my mind because it’s the first real hope I’ve had since I woke up chained to a man who shouldn’t know I exist. 

What if I can’t go back?

What if I’m stuck in a world that’s no longer following the rules?

What if they remember more than I do?

I glance toward the door, half-expecting it to open again. But it doesn’t.

So I sit there, breathing slowly, heartbeat loud in my ears, trying to figure out where the seams are. Trying to figure out if I’m the only one who wants out—or if there’s something darker holding this world together, and I’m the thread that should’ve never been pulled.

Because whatever’s changed… I’m pretty sure Kieran knows.

And he’s not telling me, but maybe Thisbe will.