Page 177 of Once Upon a Fable

I blinked again, the visions fading, leaving only a familiar room curtained with secrets.

Movement came next, the urge to sit up sending shockwaves of pain, bruises, and bone-deep agony through every part of me.

Christ.

I sat upright slowly, swaying as my nervous system assessed why my body hurt so much. I scanned the splint bracing my arm, the blackened bruises along my legs, the bandage around my shin, the countless scrapes and cuts on my chest.

What the hell happened to me?

My heart suddenly raced, remembering things my mind refused to share. Panic hissed in my blood. Something about this room. This house. This place.

Raising my good arm, I ran fingers through my long hair, finding itcombed and tended instead of the usual knotty mess. Come to think of it, my body was clean—despite the obvious trauma it’d been through.

Who had looked after me?

There’s no one here.

My mind unlocked that fact as certainty. Eleven years. Just me.

Unfortunately, with that memory came a cascade of sickness and images.

I choked and buckled over my knees, tumbling into chaos.

The fractures inside me were widening, sucking giant pieces of me, erasing all my valuable parts, my worthy, positive, and honorable parts, leaving me with gaping holes of excrement.

I needed my family.

I needed their light to keep me from the dark.

I didn’t care that it was late afternoon. I didn’t worry that it’d been weeks since I’d said goodbye and had no clue how to find them.

I couldn’t stay in this place for another moment.

I’d done what I needed. I’d memorized the files Storymaker had on us. I’d burned them to ash so no one could follow, and I’d buried the guests who would never hurt another person.

I’d waited as long as I could to see if anyone would arrive. If any of Storymaker’s contacts would investigate why Fables had gone so quiet.

But no one had ventured here in over a month.

I’d been patient. I’d been wise.

But now? Now, I was being eaten alive by this monstrous house, and I had to go.

Packing a bag with some food and water, I stepped out of Fables for the last time.

And, in some serendipitous, ironic, cruel-as-fuck timing, three men smiled from the front garden.

A man with a groomed white beard and expensive suit glittered in the sunlight, flanked by two fierce guards, their hands resting on the holsters of their guns.

“Well, well.” The man tipped his head. “And just who the fuck do we have here?”

Stop.

I rocked with my fingers digging into my skull.

Just stop.

I didn’t want to see this. Didn’t want to remem—