The walk to the guest house was a march toward a personal gallows, each step echoing against the marble floors like a hammer striking a nail. Miri walked beside me, while my mind spun in a chaotic loop of "what-ifs."
I hated the air I was breathing, knowing that within minutes, it would be tainted by the familiar, suffocating scent of the people who had spent eighteen years systematically breaking me.
Pia was pacing a tight, jagged circle in the back of my consciousness. "Do you smell that? The rot is close, Waverly. They don't belong here. This palace is trying to reject them like a fever, and we're the ones who have to force the medicine down."
When the heavy doors of the guest house finally groaned open, the sight that met me was a punch to the gut. The "High Class" facade we had painstakingly tried to build was nowhere to be found. Aside from Leah, who sat rigidly in a corner dressed in the modest chiffon gown, the rest of them were a disaster.
