Chapter 3: The Making of a Queen

They forced her to look in the mirror while she shook and babbled, demanding she name who was there.

They starved her for two days, then put a strawberry cupcake and milk in front of her, promising she could eat if she erased me.

They deprived her of sleep, cranked the room from freezing to sweltering and back again.

They weren’t treating her—they were torturing her.

I told Lillian to give up, to cooperate and erase me.

But somehow, the timid girl found the will to curl up in that huge, empty room. Battered and bruised, she hugged herself tight—like she was hugging me. Maybe that way, she wouldn’t feel so cold or scared.

She bit her lips until they bled. That girl who once cried every night after being kidnapped now stubbornly refused to shed a single tear.

She said, “I won’t abandon you, Quinn. I won’t let you disappear. We promised—we’d never be apart.”

“This time, I’ll protect you.”

Finally, on the night she almost died from electric shock, I hypnotized myself to disappear.

Before I left, I told Lillian:

“I’m just leaving for a while, Lillian. Don’t be afraid. Walk forward bravely and with confidence.”

“I’m watching you. If you ever can’t hold on, believe that I’ll come back to you.”

She thought I was lying, her eyes red as she threatened, if I left, I should never return, then cried,

“Quinn, don’t go. Please, I can hold on. It doesn’t hurt at all, really.”

I looked at her with aching heart, and in her pain and desperate tears, I closed my eyes—reluctantly.

A promise must be kept.

Fourteen years later, on her worst day,

I woke up inside her again.

I don’t know how a person can carry that much sorrow.

It was like standing under a pitch-black sky, the ocean and horizon lost in each other, wave after wave of darkness crashing down.

Her heart was drowning, somewhere deep beneath it all.

But I heard her laughter.

At twenty-five, she sat in a lavish living room under a brilliant crystal chandelier, her skin pale as snow.

She’d grown up—stunning now, beautiful in a way that turned heads—and she was smiling.

The man standing in front of her—tall, handsome—looked at her with ice in his eyes, like her beauty didn’t matter.

He looked down at her and said, “Your face makes me sick.”

What a cruel thing to say.