Tobias places a hand on my shoulder. “I don’t like fighting with you. We are all brothers in this House. We should be in this together. Us against the sinners. Even when we sin, we do it together.” He points at his wound. “You should never have taken her. More than anyone else, you should know that it’s just not worth it.”
I shrug off his hand. “She is.”
His judgmental gaze feels like daggers in my back. “You’re not thinking clearly. You can’t even let us help.”
“I need to do this on my own,” I say.
“Why? What’s so important about her?”
A pang of guilt festers in my heart, but I lock it away deep inside my chest.
I shake my head and look away, refusing to answer.
“Fine. So be it.” He scoffs. “You want to do it all by yourself? Have at it. But don’t come running to me when you fail. When you lose everything that matters to you. This House. This Family,” he growls, but it sounds more like a cry in pain. “She’ll ruin you.”
“She won’t,” I say, balling my fist. “Not until I’ve ruined her first.”
“Sir!” A guard suddenly comes storming in from the hallway.
“Yes?” I turn around.
The man leans against the doorjamb, one hand resting on his knee as he breathes heavily.
“What is it?” I say. “Spill it.”
“Two girls …” he mutters between breaths. “They’re gone.”
“What?!” I shout, and I march toward him and grab him by the collar. “What do you mean gone?”
“Their doors were opened,” he replies.
Tobias comes forward too. “How?”
“I don’t know,” the guard replies. “I was just taking a leak, and then suddenly, they were opened. I checked. The girls are nowhere to be seen.”
Rage fills me up to the point of boiling over, and I roar out loud and shove the man aside. “Get out of my way.”
I storm outside and run up the stairs, skipping several steps. Even though my back hurts like hell, I ignore the pain in favor of getting there as soon as possible. Soren is right behind me while Tobias limps up the stairs, still in pain from the metal device buried in his thigh for quite some time.
I rush through the hallway and stop in front of Anna’s door. It’s wide open, but there’s no one to be seen. I take a few steps forward and gaze into Amelia’s room through her open door. Drawers are opened wide, and the mirror is smashed, shards of it lying scattered across the floor. She’s gone. Vanished into thin air.
“Oh, no …” Tobias mumbles, his voice strained and weak as though it hurts him to see Anna is gone.
And I know just who the culprit is. Only one person would even try to get away with this insanity.
My hand balls into a fist. “Amelia.”
What the hell did she do?
Chapter 23
Amelia
A few minutes ago
I stare through the keyhole, waiting and waiting until the guy guarding our doors finally leaves. Within seconds, I’ve rushed across the room and grabbed everything I need. I wrap my dress around my fist and punch the mirror until it shatters, and I gather a few of the shards and tuck them into my pocket. Then I grab a few bobby pins from the drawer in the wardrobe, and I shove them into the lock.
It takes a long while, but I’ve been practicing on the lock for quite some time now. Whenever I was alone, I would try to make these pins work because it beat re-reading books over and over. That was Eli’s biggest mistake … thinking I would just sit and wait for him.
Being here on my own might’ve mentally broken me down … but I’ve only gotten more and more cunning because I’ll do anything to escape this predicament.
And I know Anna is just as desperate. She may not think it, she may not even say a word to me, but I know deep down she never wanted any of this.
And if she’s already lost, it’s on me to save her.
That’s what good people do, so that’s what I’m gonna do.
I poke at the lock, hoping, praying it’ll work. I’ve waited so long for this moment, and the guard is finally gone. It has to work. It just has to.
CLICK!
The sound makes me jolt back. I stare at it for only a second. Then a beaming smile pops onto my face.
“Yes!” I whisper to myself.
I rip out the bobby pin and tuck it into my other pocket. Opening the door feels like magic, like I’ve done something no one else ever has, and it feels so damn empowering that I could shout it off the rooftops.
But I have to stay quiet, play it cool, pretend I’m still in my room and that nothing is going on. I don’t want to alert the other guards who are still walking around. One of them saunters up and down the stairs regularly, and I need to stay out of his sight.