I woke up in my own bed.
That should have been comforting. The familiar weight of silk sheets, the view of Elliott Bay through my windows, the soft morning light filtering through curtains I'd picked out myself three years ago.
Instead, it felt like a tomb.
My head was pounding, and my mouth tasted like I'd been chewing on cotton balls. Whatever Dr. Reeves had used to knock me out was still working its way through my system, leaving me groggy and disoriented.
I tried to sit up and immediately regretted it. The room spun like I was on a carnival ride, and nausea hit me so hard I barely made it to the bathroom before throwing up.
When I stumbled back to bed fifteen minutes later, I noticed the changes.
Heavy curtains had been installed over my windows—blackout curtains that blocked most of the natural light. New locks on the door, the kind that required a key from both sides. And there, mounted discretely in the corner near the ceiling, a small black camera with a red LED light that blinked every few seconds.
Marcus wasn't taking any chances this time.
I tested the door handle anyway, already knowing what I'd find. Locked solid. The windows were next—also locked, with what looked like reinforced frames that would take more than a desperate shoulder charge to break through.
My room had become a prison.
The worst part was how normal everything else looked. My photos were still on the nightstand. My clothes were still hanging in the walk-in closet. Even the claw marks on the wall were still there, visible now in a way they hadn't been before my abilities awakened.
It was like Marcus wanted to maintain the illusion that this was still my home, even while he held me captive.
I was examining the new window locks when I heard the soft knock on the door.
"Miss Phoenix?" Emma's voice, muffled by the heavy wood. "I've brought your breakfast."
The sound of keys turning, multiple locks disengaging one by one. Then the door opened just wide enough for Emma to slip inside, carrying a silver tray. She moved quickly, efficiently, like she was afraid of being caught lingering.
"Good morning," she said in her usual calm tone. "I hope you slept well."
I stared at her. Emma looked exactly the same as she had for the past twenty years—steel-gray hair in its perfect chignon, brown eyes that seemed to see everything, conservative dress with a crisp white apron. But something about her felt different now. More alert. More careful.
"Did I sleep well?" I repeated. "Emma, I was drugged unconscious and locked in my room like a psychiatric patient."
She set the tray down on my bedside table without meeting my eyes. "Your father is concerned about your wellbeing. Recent events have been... stressful for everyone."
Father. The word made my stomach clench. "He's not my father. My father was murdered by the man who's keeping me prisoner."
Emma's hands stilled on the tray for just a moment. It was subtle, but I caught it.
"The doctor said you might experience some confusion," she said carefully. "Dragon blood awakening can cause... difficulties with memory and perception."
"Difficulties?" I laughed, but it came out bitter. "Emma, I remember everything now. I remember my real parents. I remember Marcus killing them."
This time Emma's reaction was harder to miss. Her shoulders tensed, and she glanced toward the camera in the corner before looking back at me.
"Perhaps you should eat something," she said, lifting the silver cover from the plate. "You need to keep your strength up."
Scrambled eggs, bacon, fresh fruit, and orange juice. It looked normal, but after twenty years of being unknowingly medicated, I wasn't taking any chances.
"Is it poisoned?" I asked bluntly.
Emma's eyes widened. "Miss Phoenix!"
"Drugged, then. Spiked with whatever Marcus has been using to keep me sedated."
For a long moment, Emma didn't answer. She stood perfectly still, her hands folded in front of her, looking like the picture of a loyal family servant. But her eyes...
Her eyes were calculating.
"The eggs are clean," she said finally. "The juice is not."
The admission hit me like a slap. Emma knew. She knew about the drugs, knew about Marcus's systematic control, and she'd just warned me.
"Why?" I whispered.
Emma glanced at the camera again, then moved to straighten the already-perfect bedsheets. As she worked, she spoke in the same calm, professional tone she always used.
"Your medications have been adjusted to help manage your recent episodes. Dr. Reeves believes a higher dosage will help stabilize your condition."
But while she spoke those words aloud, her hands were doing something else entirely. She was smoothing the sheets in a pattern, her fingers tracing letters against the silk.
D-A-N-G-E-R.
My heart started pounding. Emma was trying to communicate without the camera picking up on it. Whatever she was really trying to say, she couldn't risk Marcus hearing it.
I moved closer to the bed, pretending to examine the breakfast tray. "How much higher?" I asked, playing along with the medical conversation.
Emma's fingers continued their invisible writing as she fluffed the pillows.
T-R-U-S-T M-E.
"Significantly higher," she said aloud. "Dr. Reeves wants to ensure there are no more... incidents."
She finished with the bedding and moved to the dresser, where she began rearranging items that were already perfectly organized. Her back was to the camera now, and she used the opportunity to pull something from her apron pocket.
A piece of paper, folded small and thin.
She tucked it under the corner of my jewelry box, then continued her busywork.
"I'll be back to check on you this afternoon," she said, turning back toward me. "Is there anything else you need?"
"Information," I said. "I need to know what's really going on."
Emma's expression didn't change, but something flickered in her eyes. Understanding, maybe. Or sympathy.
"All the information you need is available through proper medical channels," she said. "Dr. Reeves will be happy to discuss your treatment plan when he visits later."
More visits from Dr. Reeves. More opportunities for Marcus to pump me full of whatever chemicals would keep me compliant.
"When will that be?" I asked.
"This evening. Around eight o'clock."
Emma moved toward the door, then paused. "Miss Phoenix? I know this situation is difficult. But please remember—sometimes the people who care about us most make choices we don't understand. Choices that seem cruel but are meant to protect us."
The words could have been about Marcus, but the way she said them made me think she was talking about something else entirely.
"Emma," I said as she reached for the door handle. "How long have you worked for the Blackthorne family?"
"Twenty years," she said without hesitation. "Since the night you came home."
The night you came home. Not the night Marcus brought me home, or the night I was adopted. The night I came home, like this had always been my home, like I'd just been away somewhere and finally returned.
"Have we... have we met before? Before that night?"
Emma's hand stilled on the door handle. For just a moment, her perfectly composed expression cracked, and I saw something raw underneath. Pain, maybe. Or loss.
"Get some rest," she said quietly. "You'll need your strength for what's coming."
Then she was gone, the locks engaging one by one behind her.
I waited until her footsteps faded down the hallway before retrieving the note from under my jewelry box. My hands were shaking as I unfolded it.
The paper was expensive—heavy stock, cream-colored, the kind used for formal invitations. But the message was written in pencil, in careful block letters that looked like they'd been traced multiple times to avoid leaving impressions.
Warehouse District. Pier 47. Midnight tomorrow.
Come alone.
—A friend of your mother's
I stared at the note for a long time, my mind racing. Emma knew about my real parents. Not just knew—she'd been in contact with someone who claimed to be Elena's friend.
But how? And why now?
I looked up at the camera in the corner, its red light blinking steadily. Whatever Emma was planning, she was doing it under Marcus's nose. That took either incredible courage or incredible stupidity.
Maybe both.
I folded the note and hid it in the binding of one of my old textbooks. Then I settled back against my pillows to think.
Pier 47 was in the warehouse district, about twenty minutes from downtown if you knew the back roads. It was also completely exposed—no buildings nearby, no cover, nowhere to run if this turned out to be a trap.
Which it very well might be. For all I knew, this was Marcus testing my loyalty, seeing if I'd try to escape again. The mysterious "friend of your mother's" could be anyone.
But it could also be legitimate. If Emma was willing to risk Marcus's wrath to get me that note, maybe she knew something that could help me understand what was really going on.
The question was how to get there without Marcus knowing.
I spent the morning studying my room like a prison cell, looking for weaknesses Marcus might have missed. The new window locks were solid, but the frames themselves were still the original installation. If I could generate enough heat to weaken the metal...
The door was a bigger problem. Multiple locks, heavy wood, and probably guards outside. Even if I could melt the locks, the noise would bring Marcus running.
That left the air vents.
I'd never paid much attention to the HVAC system before, but I'd always known the penthouse had excellent climate control. Individual zone controls, custom airflow patterns, the works. Which meant the ductwork had to be extensive.
I dragged a chair over to the wall and climbed up to examine the vent grate near the ceiling. It was held in place by four screws, standard Phillips head. Easy enough to remove if I had a screwdriver.
Which I didn't.
I was still pondering the logistics when I heard footsteps in the hallway again. Different from Emma's quiet tread—heavier, more authoritative.
Marcus.
I jumped down from the chair and pushed it back to its original position, then flopped onto the bed and grabbed a book from my nightstand. When the locks disengaged and the door opened, I was the picture of a cooperative prisoner, quietly reading.
Marcus stepped inside, still wearing the same clothes from last night. His silver hair was disheveled, and there were dark circles under his ice-blue eyes. He looked like he hadn't slept.
Good.
"How are you feeling?" he asked, closing the door behind him.
"Like a prisoner in my own home."
"You jumped out of a forty-second-floor window, Phoenix. You could have been killed."
"But I wasn't." I met his gaze steadily. "Turns out dragon blood comes with some useful survival instincts."
Marcus moved to the window, examining the new locks he'd had installed. "Those instincts are exactly why you need professional help. What you did last night was reckless and dangerous."
"What I did last night was escape from someone who's been systematically poisoning me for twenty years."
"I've been protecting you."
"From what? From who I really am? From the truth about my parents?"
Marcus turned away from the window to face me. In the dim light filtering through the heavy curtains, his features looked haggard.
"From yourself," he said quietly. "From becoming what they were."
"And what were they, Marcus? Really?"
For a moment, I thought he might actually tell me the truth. His expression softened, and I saw something that looked almost like regret in his eyes.
But then his phone buzzed. He glanced at it, and whatever moment we'd been having vanished.
"Dr. Reeves will be here at eight," he said, slipping the phone back into his pocket. "He's prepared a new treatment protocol that should help stabilize your condition."
"New treatment protocol." I kept my voice level, conversational. "What does that involve?"
"Higher dosages of the medications you've been taking. Possibly some additional supplements to help manage the more volatile aspects of your abilities."
"And if I refuse?"
Marcus was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was tired.
"Then we'll have to explore other options."
"Such as?"
"There are facilities, Phoenix. Places that specialize in helping people with... unique challenges. They have resources I don't, methods that might be more effective."
Facilities. He was threatening to institutionalize me.
"I see." I closed my book and set it aside. "So my choices are to submit to being drugged into compliance, or spend the rest of my life in some kind of supernatural psychiatric ward."
"Those aren't the only options."
"What's the third option?"
Marcus moved closer to the bed, and for just a moment, he looked like the man who'd raised me. The one who'd braided my hair and read me bedtime stories and taught me how to tie my shoes.
"Trust me," he said. "Let me help you through this. I know it's difficult to understand now, but everything I've done has been to protect you."
"Protect me from what?"
"From the world that killed your parents. From people who would use your abilities for their own ends. From enemies who see dragon blood as either a weapon or a threat."
"Enemies like who?"
Marcus hesitated, and I saw him weighing how much to tell me.
"Like Viktor Klaus," he said finally.
The name meant nothing to me, but the way Marcus said it—with a mixture of hatred and fear—made my blood run cold.
"Who is Viktor Klaus?"
"Someone you never want to meet." Marcus stood up, signaling that the conversation was over. "Dr. Reeves will explain more about your treatment when he arrives. Try to get some rest."
He headed for the door, then paused with his hand on the handle.
"Phoenix? I need you to understand something. I love you. I've loved you since the night I brought you home. Everything I've done—the medications, the restrictions, all of it—has been because losing you would destroy me."
The words should have been touching. Instead, they made my skin crawl. This wasn't love. It was possession.
"If you loved me," I said quietly, "you'd tell me the truth."
Marcus looked at me for a long moment, his ice-blue eyes unreadable.
"The truth is more dangerous than you know," he said.
Then he left, the locks engaging behind him like a series of small explosions.
I sat in the growing darkness of my curtained room, thinking about everything Marcus had said. Viktor Klaus. Enemies who saw dragon blood as a weapon or threat. Facilities that specialized in people with "unique challenges."
But most of all, I thought about Emma's note.
A friend of your mother's.
Someone out there knew the truth. Someone who might have answers to questions Marcus wouldn't even acknowledge.
I looked up at the camera, its red light still blinking steadily. Marcus might be watching, but he couldn't monitor my thoughts. He couldn't stop me from planning.
Eight o'clock was still hours away. Dr. Reeves would come with his syringes and his chemical restraints, and Marcus would probably watch to make sure I submitted to the injection.
But first, I had to figure out how to get to Pier 47.
I climbed back onto the chair and examined the vent grate more carefully. The screws were standard Phillips head, but they'd been painted over multiple times. I'd need something thin and flat to chip away the paint, then something to turn the screws.
My jewelry box had several hairpins and a nail file. The hairpins could work for chipping paint, and if I could bend one into the right shape...
I was reaching for my jewelry box when I heard something that made me freeze.
Voices. Outside my window.
I moved to the heavy curtains and found a tiny gap where they didn't quite meet. Peering through, I could see down into the courtyard behind the Blackthorne Tower.
There were men down there. Six of them, dressed in dark clothing, moving in coordinated patterns around the building's perimeter. They were too far away to see clearly, but something about the way they moved was familiar.
Predatory. Alert. Like they were hunting.
As I watched, one of them looked up toward my window. Even from forty-two stories up, I could see his eyes reflect the afternoon light.
Just like a wolf's.
Marcus hadn't just locked me in my room. He'd posted werewolf guards outside to make sure I didn't try to escape again.
Which meant Emma's plan—whatever it was—was going to be a lot more complicated than simply climbing out a window.
I let the curtain fall back into place and retreated to my bed, my mind racing.
Pier 47. Midnight tomorrow. A friend of my mother's.
But first, I had to get past six werewolf guards, multiple locked doors, and whatever new chemical restraints Dr. Reeves had prepared for me.
I looked at the camera in the corner, its red light blinking like a mechanical heartbeat.
Marcus thought he had me trapped.
Maybe it was time to show him just how wrong he was.
End of Chapter 4