CHAPTER 28: THE CROW’S MASTER

I stared at the shadowed figure, his words etched on my mind.

You might want some help with your little dilemma.

My breath caught.

"How did you know that?" My voice trembled, sharper than I intended.

The storm growled outside, wind rattling the windows as if the night itself conspired to keep me off balance.

Could it be him? The one sending the crow?

Someone powerful, helping me from afar. The idea felt surreal, impossible.

Unbelievable.

But if it was true, what was in it for him? No one gave aid without expecting something in return. Not in this world. Certainly not for someone like me.

He couldn’t be helping me out of kindness. Not simply because he pitied a trapped girl.

No, if he truly was aiding me, it must mean something else. Perhaps he was an enemy of Finn. That thought lodged in my chest like a spark. An enemy of Finn’s would have reason enough.

"Because I have eyes and ears," he replied with subtle pride in his voice. "I know everything I choose to know."

A shiver ran down my spine.

"Are you the master of the crow?"

I didn’t care anymore if this was a dream or not. I didn’t care if it was dangerous to ask. I needed to know.

I hoped it wasn’t a dream. I hoped, for once, that someone was truly out there, intent on helping me. If this was real, if he could reach me in this way, then maybe, just maybe, I could turn it into something that would save me. Save us.

If it cost neither my life nor my mother’s, I would take the bargain.

The man didn’t move, didn’t turn. But the silence between us seemed to bend, and I knew his attention was fixed on me.

"What if I am?"

My pulse raced. My breath came shallow.

"Then... why?" I asked, my voice cracking. "Why are you helping me?"

"Because I don’t like to see a poor soul being bullied."

A bitter laugh nearly escaped me. I swallowed it back, though it burned my throat. The air around him was too heavy, too ominous, for laughter.

Still, I wanted to scoff. That was his reason? No one in this world lifted a hand for someone else without purpose.

My shoulders slumped, my resolve fracturing. The desperation in me was louder than pride.

"Then save me," I whispered, my words raw and cracked.

I didn’t care if I sounded pathetic. It didn’t matter anymore. Every second I spent in Finn’s manor was like walking toward a cliff’s edge.

Every breath felt like balancing on a thin sheet of ice above freezing waters, knowing it would break eventually.

"Please... save me."

For the first time, he shifted. A ripple in the shadows. And though I could not see his face, I swore I felt the faint curve of a smile brushing against the air between us.

"Desperate to live," he murmured.

The way he said it made my skin prickle, as if he savored the admission.

And though his face was hidden, I would have sworn he was smiling.

"I like this," he continued, his voice soft but edged. "You are no longer hopeless. Not like you were in your first days in that hellhole."

It unsettled me, the way he spoke of my first days in the manor with such certainty, as if he had stood in the shadows and watched me stumble through every moment of despair.

The nights I lay awake convinced there would never be a way out, the mornings I carried myself like a hollow shell, silent and resigned, he spoke as though he knew every bit of it.

The thought left me feeling stripped bare. Too vulnerable.

And yet, I did not cower.

I couldn’t. Not when there was so much at stake. My freedom. My mother’s life. If this man was the key to escaping Finn’s grasp, then I would reach for him, even if he proved to be the devil himself.

I steadied my breath and forced my voice not to waver. "Will you help me escape? Tell me how."

Thunder echoed as if the storm outside had leaned closer to listen.

"First," he said, his tone calm, "you must do as I say."

I waited, my body rigid, for whatever he was about to say.

"Take the pill the crow delivered to you."

My brows drew together. "The pill? What would that do?"

"You will understand once it is inside you." His voice had shifted, softer now, the cadence smooth as velvet.

It was the kind of voice that might coax a frightened animal closer, low and coaxing, with a dangerous sweetness beneath. The sound of it settled into my bones like a purr, unsettling in ways I could not name.

Then, almost too smoothly, he added, "Do not fear. It isn’t poison."

It was like he had plucked the doubt straight from my chest before I could give it form.

I thought of the crow. How it had knocked away food laced with poison days ago. If the bird he owned had already protected me once, then perhaps what he said was true.

And even if it wasn’t, what choice did I have but to cling to the thread of hope he dangled before me?

"How will I escape after that?" I pressed, my voice unsteady despite my effort to keep it calm.

But the answer never came.

The world shifted.

The light drained from the windows, the storm outside snuffed into silence, and the room around me dissolved into shadow.

The walls, the floor, the familiar lines of my old home... all of it was consumed, leaving me suspended in a darkness so complete I might have gone blind.

My breath caught. My body went still.

And then I felt it.

A presence behind me.

It pressed close, too close, the air stirring faintly at the back of my neck.

My skin prickled, every hair standing on end as though the darkness itself breathed against me.

I turned my head slightly, but the blackness was so dense it gave nothing away.

Still, I knew I wasn’t alone.

"If you truly mean to help me," I whispered, my voice barely carrying, "why won’t you show me your face?"

The silence lingered, thick and suffocating, before it broke with the sound of an amused chuckle.

Low, dark, the sound coiled around my ear and sent my heart into a violent stutter.

When he spoke again, his words brushed against me like poisonous mist, sweet and lethal.

"I doubt," he murmured, "you are ready to face the monster that I am."