The day was here.

Sitting on the bright red bed, I could feel my blood run cold every time I thought about it. Even though the air conditioning was on, nothing seemed to cool my body down, to evaporate the beads of sweat that bloomed on my brow and made my armpits clammy. It was getting difficult to breath.

Shooting to my feet, I pulled at the strap of my flimsy lingerie with shaking fingers, walking to the narrow, solitary window in the room. Through the steel bars outside—the mesh of which I had already loosed with the stolen screwdriver now hidden in the waistband of my panties—I watched the silent night, the freedom of it so close and tangible I could touch it with my fingers.

Since that day all those years ago, when I had been ripped away from all I knew and brought to this godforsaken house, I had felt my feelings die one by one, till I was nothing more than the husk of my formal self, only a body with no soul inside. Now, after an eternity had gone by, I could feel something thumping in my chest, something that might have been a heart.

Bile rose in my throat. I felt sick.

I will never know how long I stood there, dreaming of a past long dead. The creaking of the door made me turn, hair swaying on bare shoulders.

The man standing in my doorway had the beautiful looks of a young girl’s imagination, a face so lovely one could cry. Some might say he looked like a Greek god, but I had always thought of him as a fallen angel, on the wrong side of heaven.

That was before I knew he was not an angel, rather a demon—a devil who gave me a life where I died every day, with every breath I took.

“Zara, darling,” he said, taking a step forward and raising a hand. “Wouldn’t you come down? Everybody would love to see you.”

I leant against the wall, fighting the urge to back away. I couldn’t raise his suspicion. I couldn’t let him think anything was different.

“I can’t,” I said softly, looking down. It felt as if a noose tightened around my throat, a noose of time.

“Darling, why?” There was a note of impatience in his voice, his tender allowance of my antics snapping.
I swallowed, a thick wave of cloistering fear descending over me. Looking at him, I pretended to plead. “Zayn, I can’t. I fe—“

He didn’t let me finish. His face had tightened like a snare, fingers wrapping into fists. With obvious struggle, he controlled himself, closing his eyes and sighing. He rubbed his temples, then said, “I will come back to get you in a half hour. Fix yourself and be ready.”

The door shut with a resounding slam when he left.

I looked at the window again, my hope shattering with every tick of the clock. Sinking down to the ground, I wrapped my arms around my knees, feeling frighteningly insubstantial. No tears came—they never did. The bruise on my right cheek, a recent reward, throbbed in anticipation.

Five minutes later, a stone clattered against the bars on the window.