He appeared in the bedroom without sound, without warning.
Phei stood there for a moment—silent and unmoving like he'd been carved from shadow and glacial fury. The dim light filtering through the heavy curtains painted his face in cold slashes of silver and black.
His eyes from the moment he arrived were all on a figure and never left.
Roxanne.
She was curled beneath the covers like a shattered, discarded rag doll trying to dissolve into nothingness itself. The blanket was yanked over her head and body in a desperate, trembling cocoon, as if the flimsiest silk could somehow shield her from the monster that owned this house of endless torment.
She looked so painfully, heartbreakingly small under the useless shields of the covers.
So utterly broken.
Her entire frame convulsed with tiny, uncontrollable tremors forged in the fires of years of soul-crushing conditioning that had taught her that vanishing was the only prayer left for surviving another night in this living hell.
