Page 115 of Reverie

“I guess,” I mumble. Luna sits up more in her chair, giving her husband a side eye.

“Was there anything in particular that made that visit and Misha stand out to you?”

I rub the side of my head. There was so much happening during the visit. This one was important—Father was brokering some type of deal with some of the most powerful people on the planet. At least, that’s how he described it.

I often saw Misha with the president of Russia. On the second evening, I saw the president on that damned veranda, and blood covered Misha from nearly head to toe.

The sight scared me so much, I hid in my room for much of the remaining visit, not even bothering to get food to sustain me—besides the potato chips I’d brought in earlier—for three days.

“It stuck out because that was the first time I shot up,” I say. My mother lets out a strange sound, and when I slide my eyes to her, she presses a fist to her mouth, screwing her eyes shut tight.

“Don’t worry,” I say with a bite. “I’m clean now.”

She takes a trembling inhale, opening her eyes.

“That’s not what I’m upset about,” she says. A punch of guilt hits me in my chest.

“To be fair,Ididn’t shoot myself up. Someone else did, and I lost a lot of time when they did it too. It scared the shit out of me.”

I try to keep my eyes focused on Luna, not letting them twitch as I recall the hypervigilance I experienced. This was around the time that Father’s friend and partner-in-depravity, Alistair, was there.

And he loved to watch me. Always watching me.

Alistair died on Isla Cara, and it was the best day of my life up to that point.

I turn my head away to face the wall, clearing my mind of the memories.

“Do you know what you took?”

“Ketamine,” I say. Just saying it, my body remembers how I floated above myself as people moved around me. Laughter morphed and the walls moved.

It’s not a memory, though. Because when I try to recall the moments leading up to the injection, administered by one of Father’s women for the night, all I get are flashes.

Misha hums, and the room falls quiet.

“Do you remember the underground?” Luna asks. When she mentions it, a sharp recollection comes.

Dark and damp, I’m under the mansion at Isla Cara.

It’s cold down here, and I shiver even though the air is thick. It’s a contradiction.

At the end of the tunnel are lights. I follow them, and at the center of the raised dais is a young girl. She wears a thin, short dress as she kneels before my father. Around us are several other men, their faces hidden in the shadows as they sit in neat, theater-style rows.

I hide my body along the wall, trying to sink into the damp stone. The girl looks up at my father, fear plain on her face.

But when he says something, stroking her cheek, she smiles. And then Father slits her throat.

I bite back the scream, and right as I turn to run, there’s a voice in the darkness.

“Will she survive?” the dark, mechanical voice intones.

“Yes, just watch,” Father says with pride. “You’ll be very pleased.”

I sit up straight in my seat in the war room.

“I remember something. Maybe.”

“We need to explore every avenue, Hunter,” Luna says. I really take a moment to look at her.