Chapter 1 1

The darkness had weight. It pressed against her eyelids, heavy and suffocating.

Her lungs burned. It wasn't the sharp sting of cold air, but a dull, starving ache. She tried to inhale, to pull in a deep breath, but the air was thick. It tasted stale. It smelled like chemicals and dying flowers.

She tried to sit up.

Thud.

Her forehead slammed into something hard. Wood. Solid, unyielding wood.

The pain radiated through her skull, a sharp bolt of lightning that shattered the fog in her brain. She reached up. Her hands didn't find open space. They found satin. Tufted, soft satin lining a ceiling that was three inches from her nose.

Panic didn't creep in. It exploded in her chest.

Her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird. Her throat constricted. She was in a box. A small, rectangular box.

She scrabbled at the sides. Satin. Wood. Satin. Wood.

She was buried.

A scream clawed its way up her throat, but she swallowed it down. It tasted like bile. If she screamed, she would use up the oxygen. She needed to think. She needed to breathe.

Her left hand flailed in the dark and hit something cold.

Not wood. Not satin.

Flesh.

She froze. Her fingers trembled as she traced the shape. A shoulder. A stiff, wool suit jacket. A tie clip. She knew that tie clip. It was silver, simple, cheap.

Cedric.

Her husband. Her fake husband.

She moved her hand up to his neck. His skin was clammy, like refrigerated dough. She pressed her fingers into the hollow of his throat, searching for a pulse.

Nothing.

Wait.

There. A flutter. Faint, erratic, barely there, but it was a beat. He was alive. Barely.

Her mind raced backward, rewinding the tape of the last few hours. The Spencer Memorial Gala. Not a funeral, but a lavish fundraiser in her name. The glittering lights. Hermina, her stepmother, handing her a glass of champagne.

"A toast, Delphine. To new beginnings."

The champagne had tasted wrong. Acrid and bitter. Not like almonds, but like crushed medicine.

A fast-acting neurotoxin? A sedative mixed with a paralytic?

She did this. Hermina. She poisoned them. She put them in a box. She was going to bury them to get the trust fund.

She heard a sound from outside. Muffled, low. A string quartet playing a somber adagio. Not a dirge, but close enough. Voices.

She was at her own memorial service.

If she screamed now, Hermina would hear. She would know the dose wasn't lethal enough. She would finish the job. She would say it was a muscle spasm, a final release of gas. She would inject her with something that would stop her heart for good.

She couldn't be Delphine Spencer, the heiress. She couldn't be sane.

She thought of the year she spent at the clinic. The white walls. The screaming in the night. The way the patients survived by becoming something else.

She bit down on the tip of her tongue. Hard. The metallic taste of blood filled her mouth. The pain grounded her.

She reached for her collar and ripped it open. She clawed at her hair, tangling it, pulling it until her scalp burned. She needed to look like a monster.

She dug her nails into Cedric's upper lip, right into the sensitive skin under his nose.

"Wake up," she hissed.

He didn't move. He was dead weight. A prop.

She was alone.

She pulled her knees up to her chest, cramping in the tight space. She positioned her heels against the lid of the coffin.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

She kicked a rhythm.

The music outside stopped. The murmuring ceased. Silence.

She kicked harder.

THUMP. THUMP.

"My God! Did you hear that?" A woman's voice. High-pitched. Terrified.

"It's just the settling of the wood," Hermina's voice cut through. Smooth. calm. "Please, everyone, the viewing is about to conclude."

Hermina wasn't going to stop.

Delphine coiled her legs tighter. She channeled every ounce of terror, every drop of adrenaline into her thighs.

She screamed. Not a help-me scream. A guttural, animalistic shriek.

And she kicked upward with everything she had.

The wood groaned. The latch snapped.

Light.

It blinded her, searing her retinas. But she didn't blink. She widened her eyes until they felt dry and raw. She forced a laugh from her chest, a broken, jagged sound.

She was ready to put on a show.