The school day felt like walking through deep water. Every time a teacher spoke or a student bumped into her, the Echo hummed beneath Dafne's skin, a constant reminder that she wasn't the one holding the wheel of her own life.
The Girl in the MirrorDuring the morning break, Dafne retreated to the girl's bathroom, seeking the cold sanctuary of marble and silence. She leaned over the sink, splashing cool water on her face, trying to wash away the feeling of Raphael's eyes on her.
The door swung open with a violent thud.
Suzan walked in, flanked by two other girls from the "Royal Table." She didn't look bored now; she looked predatory. She walked straight to the sinks, forcing Dafne to stumble back to avoid being hit by the door.
"You know," Suzan said, leaning into the mirror to check her lipstick, "I've been thinking about you, Sterling. About why someone as pathetic as you gets so much attention from Raphael and Leo."
Dafne didn't answer. She looked at the floor, her hands gripping the edge of her sweater.
"It's because you're a blank canvas, isn't it?" Suzan turned, her eyes flashing with a sharp, insecure cruelty. "You're so empty that they can just project whatever they want onto you. You're like a doll. A boring, plastic doll."
Suzan stepped closer, her perfume filling the small space. "Give me your phone."
The Echo didn't care about privacy. It didn't care that Dafne's phone was her only link to her parents or her music. Her hand reached into her pocket, pulled out the device, and placed it in Suzan's open palm.
"Dafne, don't—" Chloe's voice came from the doorway. She had followed them in, her face etched with worry.
Suzan ignored her. She held the phone up, laughing. "See? No spine. No life. Just a machine." She dropped the phone into a sink full of water. "Oops. I guess the doll needs a repair."
Dafne didn't move. She didn't scream. She just watched the screen of her phone flicker and die beneath the water. The lack of her own reaction was the most painful part—she was a prisoner who couldn't even mourn her own losses.
"Let's go, girls," Suzan sneered, brushing past Chloe. "The smell of 'victim' in here is making me nauseous."
The Early ExitThe humiliation was the final straw. Dafne couldn't stay. She walked to the administrative office, her face so pale the secretary didn't even question her when she claimed she was going to be sick.
She walked out of the school gates an hour before lunch. The air in Aurelia was crisp, the streets lined with manicured trees and expensive cars. She just wanted to get home, to crawl into the dark of her room and wait for the day to end.
She was two blocks away from the gated entrance to her neighborhood when she saw it.
A dark blue sedan was parked at the curb. A man was standing by the trunk, looking at a map on his phone. He was older, with thinning hair and a distinctive, slow way of moving that Dafne recognized in the marrow of her bones.
Mr. Henderson.
The man from the old neighborhood. The man who had turned her curse into a weapon. The man her parents promised she would never have to see again.
Dafne stopped. The world went silent, the sound of the wind and the distant traffic replaced by a high-pitched ringing in her ears. Her lungs seized.
She wasn't under a command, but the trauma was a command of its own. It told her to be invisible. It told her that if she moved, he would see her. If he saw her, he would speak. And if he spoke... he would own her again.
She froze. Her eyes went wide, her pupils dilating until the world was just a blur of blue and the shape of that man. She stood in the middle of the sidewalk, a statue of pure, unadulterated terror.
The Witness"Dafne?"
A soft voice came from behind her. Chloe had followed her out of school, worried about the way Dafne had looked after the bathroom incident. She had been trailing her at a distance, unsure of how to help.
Chloe walked up beside her, but Dafne didn't turn. She didn't even blink.
"Dafne, what's wrong? You're shaking," Chloe whispered. She looked ahead and saw the man by the car. He looked ordinary—just a stranger lost in a new city. But then she looked back at Dafne.
Dafne looked like she was dying. Her skin was a sickly gray, and her breath was coming in tiny, jagged hitches that didn't seem to reach her lungs.
"Is it him?" Chloe asked, her voice trembling as the pieces of Maya's warnings started to fit together. "Dafne, do you know that man?"
Dafne couldn't speak. She was locked in the past, her body waiting for the first word to fall from Henderson's lips like a guillotine.
Chloe looked at the man, then back at the girl who was shattering in front of her. She realized then that Dafne wasn't just "shy" or "odd." She was a girl living in a waking nightmare, and the monster from her dreams had just walked into the light.
"Dafne," Chloe said, her voice filled with a sudden, fierce protectiveness. "Look at me. Don't look at him. Look at me."
The Echo caught the command, and Dafne's head snapped toward Chloe, her eyes searching Chloe's face for a way out of the dark.