Chapter 1
In the Montgomery household, I was a ghost. I did everything right. I stayed up until three in the morning staring at textbooks, burning my eyes out just to maintain a flawless 4.0 GPA. I collected academic medals like they were meaningless plastic. But to my mother, they were meaningless. She never looked at them. She never looked at me.
My sisters—four flawless, popular girls who ruled the school hallways—treated me like a stain on their perfect reputation.
To them, I was just Diana. The quiet one. The outcast. The mistake.
The only person who ever truly saw me was Dad. He was my anchor, the only warm soul in a house made of ice. But cancer doesn’t care about good people. When it took him, it took the last piece of warmth I had left. After his funeral, I became entirely invisible.
Until the dark took over. I don’t remember falling asleep. I don’t remember a crash, or an illness, or a weapon.
All I remember is a sudden, suffocating weight, and then—Gasp.
My eyes snapped open. Air tore into my lungs, cold and sharp, burning my throat. My heart battered against my ribs like a trapped bird.
I tried to raise my hands to touch my aching head, but my wrists jerked back with a harsh, metallic clang.
Heavy iron chains bit into my skin.
I wasn’t in my bedroom. I was sitting on a freezing, damp stone floor, surrounded by rough-hewn stone walls. The only illumination came from a single, flickering torch mounted on the wall, casting long, distorted shadows across the room. It looked like an underground cell. A dungeon.
Where am I? Who did this? Did my family finally find a way to get rid of me?
Panic clawed at my throat, but before I could scream, a sound echoed from the dark hallway outside the iron bars.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Heavy, deliberate footsteps were approaching.
