Maya POV
The lock clicked. I didn’t move.
I stood there for a long moment, my hand still on the brass knob, staring at the wood grain of the door. The silence pressed in from all sides, thick and heavy, like the room was holding its breath. Waiting.
Then my legs gave out.
I slid down the door, the wood scraping against my back through the thin fabric of my dress. My knees hit the floor hard, and I didn’t bother to catch myself. I just sat there, arms wrapped around my legs, forehead pressed to my knees, trying to remember how to breathe.
My left hand throbbed.
I looked at it. The bandage was soaked through—a dark, wet bloom of red spreading across the white gauze, dripping down my wrist, pooling in the lines of my palm. I watched it for a moment, the way it moved, the way it caught the dim light.
Then I pressed my thumb into the wound.
Hard.
Pain exploded up my arm, sharp and hot and immediate. It was like being stabbed again. My vision went white at the edges. A sound escaped my throat—half gasp, half whimper—and I clamped my teeth together to keep it from becoming more.
I didn’t stop pressing.
I needed it. I needed something real, something sharp, something I could feel in my body that wasn’t him.
Caleb’s face kept flashing behind my eyes. The way his grip had tightened on my waist. The way he had yanked me against him, his mouth bruising mine, his hands rough and hungry. The way he had looked at me when I told him I’d been with someone else—that darkness in his eyes, that heavy, possessive weight that made my stomach turn.
I had seen Caleb angry before. I had seen him cold, petty, cruel. But I had never seen him like that. Like he had suddenly remembered he could take whatever he wanted, and no one in this house would stop him.
And the worst part?
For half a second, my body had softened.
Even while my brain was screaming at me to fight, even while fear was crawling up my throat, some weak, pathetic part of me had leaned into him. Just for a moment. Just long enough for the shame to slam into me the second I pushed him off.
I pressed my thumb deeper into the wound.
The pain was blinding. I welcomed it.
But it didn’t help.
The fever was back too. That strange, crawling heat I had felt ever since I woke up—a sickness that had nothing to do with blood loss. It coiled low in my stomach, spread up my neck, made my skin feel too tight and my head too light. I leaned forward, pressing my forehead to my knees again, trying to breathe through it.
Why won’t it stop?
I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I didn’t know why I couldn’t get my body to obey. I was so tired of feeling weak. So tired of being a passenger in my own skin.
A knock on the door made me flinch so hard my teeth clicked together.
I didn’t answer.
"Maya."
Lucas.
Of course it was him.
I held my breath, hoping he would think I was asleep. But I knew he wouldn’t. He was too stubborn for that. Too observant.
Another knock, softer but deliberate. "I know you’re in there."
I let out a shaky breath and forced myself to my feet. My legs were unsteady, the floor tilting slightly beneath me. I unlocked the door and opened it just a crack.
He was standing in the hallway. Hands in his pockets. Posture relaxed, almost lazy. But his eyes weren’t. They moved over me quickly, cataloging everything—the wrinkled dress, the fresh blood, the flush of heat on my face.
"What happened?" he asked.
"Nothing."
He didn’t blink.
I sighed, letting my forehead rest against the edge of the door. "It was just an argument with Caleb. That’s all. Nothing serious."
Lucas was quiet for a second. His jaw tightened, just barely. Then he gave a small nod, like he was filing the lie away for later.
"That’s not the only reason I came," he said.
I waited.
"You’ve been pale since you woke up. You’re still moving like everything hurts. I wanted to see if you were actually getting better or just pretending."
The bluntness of it caught me off guard. No one else in this house spoke to me like that. Everyone else tiptoed around me, either treating me like a fragile doll or a ticking bomb.
"I’m managing," I muttered.
"That’s not an answer."
I looked down at his boots. "I’m still tired. My hand hurts. And I keep getting these waves of heat. Like my blood is boiling. But it’s passing. Slowly."
Lucas watched me for a long moment. No pity. No softness. Just that same quiet, focused attention he’d been giving me ever since I woke up.
"Don’t push yourself," he said. "Not until you’re stronger."
I nodded.
He started to turn, then paused.
"The bonfire is in three days. Father expects you there."
I blinked. "Already?"
"Yes." He glanced back at me. "But if you’re not well, you don’t have to come. You lost a lot of blood. You’ll need time."
Something in his voice shifted—a thread of concern buried beneath the flat delivery. I looked up, but his face was unchanged.
"I’ll be fine," I said.
Lucas held my gaze for another second. "Be careful until then."
He turned and walked away down the hall. His footsteps were silent against the runner rug.
I closed the door. Locked it. Leaned my forehead against the wood.
Three days.
I stumbled back to the bed, collapsing onto the edge of the mattress. My hand was still bleeding. The fever was still burning under my skin. And no matter how hard I tried to focus on Caleb’s anger, I couldn’t stop replaying the way Lucas had looked at me—quiet, solid, and somehow harder to ignore than everything else.
Something in this house was shifting. I could feel it in the silences, in the way people looked at me now, in the way Caleb had held me like he was ready to break me.
I didn’t know what was coming.
But I knew I wasn’t ready for it.