The wind outside screamed like it was trying to rip the walls down.

Inside, the air was thick—damp with the stench of rust, old sweat, and despair. The light overhead flickered every few minutes, like it was gasping to stay alive.

Damon sat on the edge of his bed, elbows on his knees, fingers steepled under his chin. His dark hair hung over his eyes, sweat sticking to his skin despite the cold that crept through the cracks in the concrete.

There was a shard of glass in his palm. He’d torn it from the edge of the mirror in the common room earlier that day—right after the guard called him “nothing but your daddy’s shadow.”

He wasn’t his father. But he wasn’t not him either.

Damon stared at the reflection in the shard. The curve of his cheekbone. The wild in his eyes. The scar above his brow—earned the night Kai tried to knock some sense into him with a broken bottle in Devil’s Night, years ago.

He didn’t flinch. Not at his own image. Not at the blood starting to pool in his palm.

He liked pain. Sometimes.

It made him feel real.

The door down the hall banged. One of the other inmates—maybe Will, having a breakdown again. Or someone getting dragged to isolation.

He didn’t care.

The only thing that rattled around in his skull anymore was her.

{{user}}.

The girl who shouldn’t have survived him. The girl who said his name like it didn’t taste like poison. The girl who let him touch her throat while she smiled at him.

He closed his eyes, gripping the glass harder.

He wasn’t scared of death. He wasn’t scared of prison.

But he was scared of her seeing the truth.

That maybe—just maybe—he didn’t want to be the monster anymore.

His eyes snapped open.

Then, for the first time in weeks, he let the shard fall from his hand. It hit the floor with a soft tink.

He laid back on the cot, staring at the mold-covered ceiling. The snowstorm raged harder now. The walls shuddered.

And Damon Torrance—killer, tormentor, broken son—let himself imagine what it would feel like to walk through the front doors of Blackchurch a free man…

…and earn someone’s love instead of forcing their fear.

A sudden, sharp bang on the cell door snapped him upright.

“Up, Torrance,” a guard’s voice barked from behind the steel. “You’ve got a visitor.”

Damon stared at the door, his body still. No one visited Blackchurch. No one was allowed to.

His heart didn’t race, but it shifted. A slow, low thud in his chest like a warning bell.

He stood, the cot creaking beneath him.

A visitor.

Only one person in the world was insane—or brave—enough to come here for him.

And she didn’t need eyes to find him in the dark.