Chapter 209: The Canary Failed To Sing

LOUISE’S POV

I turn my head toward the door.

Beyond it, someone walks past. The footsteps are slow and measured, their rhythm familiar now. A brief pause follows, then the faint sound of a radio crackling.

I wonder what would happen if I called for one of them.

Would he open the door? Would he ask what I needed? Would he stand in the doorway with one hand near his weapon, waiting for me to explain myself?

I could ask for water. I could ask for food. I could ask whether Orion has sent anyone to question me.

I could even ask whether Adrien is here too.

But I don’t.

I remain on the bed, listening until the footsteps fade.

There is a strange comfort in not having to speak. No one can misunderstand me if I give them nothing to misunderstand. No one can twist my words if I keep them to myself.

That is what Alice taught me, in the end.

Not how to be powerful. How to be careful. How to hide the things I wanted before someone else could use them against me.

I wonder whether she knew what she was doing. Whether she understood that every lesson she taught me would eventually become a wall between me and everyone I might have loved.

Or whether she believed she was saving me.

I can imagine her standing in the dressing room, smoothing the shoulders of my dress, telling me to lift my chin and keep my voice steady.

I can imagine the soft pressure of her fingers against my collar, the patient smile she wore whenever she believed I was finally learning.

Perhaps she thought she was giving me the tools to survive. Perhaps she was.

The problem is that survival has never been the same thing as living.

Adrien understood that before I did.

He wanted something beyond merely surviving. He wanted to wake up without listening for footsteps.

He wanted to sit beside a window and drink tea without wondering whether someone would enter the room to demand something from him.

He wanted to be ordinary.

I used to think that was a small ambition. Now I am beginning to understand how much courage it might have required.

I rise from the bed slowly.

My legs feel stiff from sitting in the same position for so long. I take a few steps toward the window and pull the curtain aside just enough to see the city below.

The streets are busy. Cars move between the buildings, their headlights forming pale lines on the dark road. People walk along the pavements carrying shopping bags, talking into phones, hurrying toward places where they are expected to be.

From this height, they look small and distant.

I wonder how many of them are going home.

How many of them will open their front doors, remove their shoes, and complain about the weather? How many will sit at kitchen tables and argue about ordinary things? How many will go to bed without knowing that someone else’s war has already begun moving toward them?

Somewhere in the city, a person is probably boiling water for tea.

The thought comes so unexpectedly that I almost laugh.

A kettle. A cup. A window. Adrien’s dream has followed me into this room.

I press my fingertips against the cold glass.

Beyond the buildings, I cannot see the sea. The hotel stands too far inland, surrounded by streets and lights and the restless movement of a city that never seems to sleep.

But I imagine it anyway.

A dark stretch of water beneath a cloudy sky. Wind moving through the branches of trees. Rain tapping against a roof while someone sits quietly inside a small house.

No guards outside the door. No one waiting to give orders. No one calculating how much damage a single careless sentence might cause.

I close my eyes.

For a moment, I can almost hear the rain. Then the air conditioner hums overhead, and the illusion disappears.

I open my eyes again.

The city is still there. The room is still locked. The pocketknife is still hidden against my ribs.

Nothing has changed.

That is the cruelest part of memory. It can return you to a moment when things might have been different, but it cannot carry you back far enough to change what happened next.

I cannot return to the glass house and warn Adrien about the years ahead. I cannot tell him to protect his dreams more carefully, to keep them hidden from people who would mistake them for weaknesses.

I cannot tell my sixteen-year-old self to listen when he speaks.

I cannot make her understand that a person can spend so long preparing to win that she forgets to ask what winning is supposed to give her.

All I can do is remember.

I release the curtain. The fabric falls into place, covering the window and the city beyond it.

The room grows dimmer.

I return to the bed and sit on the edge, careful not to disturb the smooth white coverlet. My fingers find the seam of my vest, then stop just short of touching the pocketknife.

For once, I do not want to think about what I could use it for. I want to think about the boy who pulled weeds from a dying fern because he believed it might still be saved.

I want to remember the way he looked at me when he asked what I wanted. And I want to remember what I did with the answer.

Nothing. I did nothing.

I listened, laughed at him, and walked away.

At the time, I believed that was all the moment deserved. I believed the future would provide us with other afternoons, other conversations, other opportunities to discover who we might become.

I believed there would be time.

The thought makes my chest feel strangely hollow.

I lift my head, looking at my pale reflection in the dark glass of the window across the room.

My lips curve into a small, bitter ghost of a smile.

"What kind of underwhelming dream is that?" I whisper into the quiet, empty room, my voice flat and thin.