The Oath We Give (The Hollow Boys Book 5)

silas

When are you supposed to know the woman you’re marrying isn’t showing up?

How long do you stand at the end of the aisle, waiting until you are sure she’s left you stranded?

Maybe if I didn’t know Coraline, I would’ve waited longer, but the moment I stepped foot in front of the priest ready to marry us, I knew something was wrong. Felt it in my bones, like a premonition of something evil.

“Where the fuck is my wife?”

The girls look at me, worry across their features.

“She was supposed to meet us here to get ready, but she hasn’t been answering her phone. We thought she just had cold feet and was running behind,” Lyra says, dressed in a reddish-orange dress to match the flowers decorating the inside of the chapel.

I rub my jaw, sending my fist through the wall behind me because God damn her.

I knew I shouldn’t have told her about what Stephen had planned, knew I should’ve left her stubborn ass in the dark, but I couldn’t do that to her. Omission is still lying, and she would have never forgiven me for hiding the truth from her, not after all the secrets we shared. Not after I promised she was my secret keeper.

“Her phone just keeps going to voicemail,” Sage mumbles, looking down at her phone like it has the answers.

“Where would she go? Why would she just—”

“Because she doesn’t want us to find her. Because she did something fucking stupid,” I interrupt Lyra, just as the door to the girls’ dressing room burst open.

“She’s not anywhere outside the chapel or at the apartment,” Rook huffs, his pressed suit now wrinkly with distress.

I wish I didn’t know Coraline well.

Wish I didn’t know that she was going to do this, wish I didn’t leave her alone last night. I wanted to be oblivious in this moment, because maybe the unknowing would bring me more peace than knowing. I press my fingers into my eyes, releasing a heavy breath.

“She went to Stephen.” I say the words, even though they taste like poison in my throat. Fear and rage create a toxic acid in my stomach, because she’s stubborn, but I also know she’s scared right now. Scared and without me. Scared and fucking alone when she doesn’t have to be.

There is an overall sense of stress and panic that takes over the room, everyone’s brains scrambling to figure out how to find her.

This is the good thing about knowing Coraline Whittaker.

I’ve known she was a flight risk since the moment I met her, and I knew that when I told her about Stephen and our plan, I’d need insurance on her wings. So while the nipple rings I’d gifted her had been innocent, they were also microchipped.

“Goddammit,” I mutter, staring at her pinpointed location.

“What? Where is she?”

“I’ll give you one fucking guess.”

Coraline

There is no fear in me.

As I look across the room at the man tearing what is left of his office to shreds, I feel nothing. Despite the duct tape digging into the flesh of my wrists, I’m not afraid of him. Stephen Sinclair can lay his hands on me physically, but he can never touch me again. Not like he did in that basement.

Before, I didn’t know who I was. I had no identity or self-worth. Stephen was able to mold my mind, abuse my naivety, and turn me into his perfect little doll. It had been easy for him to break me before, shatter my mind, and make it his playground.

Now? I know who I am, and that person would never, ever belong to Stephen Sinclair. No matter how badly he hurt me physically, he would never have me. Never have the person I am with Silas Hawthorne, who would forever belong to him.

“They took everything. Whatever you’re looking for is fucking long gone,” I say as Stephen throws a drawer from his desk over his shoulder, the clatter of leftover things rumbling against the hardwood floors.

I’d lived beneath this office in Sinclair Manor for two years, and this is the first time I’ve gotten a decent look at it.

We’d made a deal when I called. I come to him willingly, and he leaves Ponderosa Springs. Along with everyone in it.

It was a fair trade. Me for their freedom.

Stephen’s hair hangs past his ears. The strands of limp, stringy hair sway as he snaps his gaze toward me. His lips curl back over his yellowing teeth into a snarl, eyes narrowing.

Prison hadn’t been kind to the previous dean of Hollow Heights. His once blond hair is now dull and speckled with gray, teeth stained yellow from neglect, skin sickly. The well-stitched-together skin suit he once wore is decaying, showing just how much corruption is festering inside. He is oozing misery.

“We need money, baby.” He looks over from his manic searching. “I’ve got to be able to take care of you.”

Bile sits in the back of my throat at the way he speaks to me like a child.

“If you just let me draw money from my account—”

“I do not need your father’s money, Circe. I’m a man. I know how to take care of you.”

My jaw goes taut, molars grinding against one another as he eyes me from across the desk, anger flaring in his gaze.

“I’d be quick, Stephen,” I bite out. “Every second we spend in Ponderosa Springs is another step closer Silas gets. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“You think he’s gonna be your knight in shining armor, Coraline?” he sneers, and his laughter seems to split the air. “You mean nothing to him. You are simply a means to an end for Hawthorne.”

I scoff, rolling my eyes. “And what, Stephen? I mean something to you? I’m your special fucking girl?”

He drops the papers in his hands, stalking over toward the chair he’s tied me to. I hiss as he grabs me by the hair, jerking my head up with a painful grasp, peering down at me like I’m beneath him.

That familiar smell of his wafts in my nose.

“You’re mine, Circe. You loved me once, you can love me again. I would start forgetting all about Silas. It’ll make this much easier for you.”

I never loved him. Not really. My mind did what was necessary to survive the torture. I played dead like an opossum in the road, trying to avoid death from poachers. I adapted and did what I needed to survive.

There was no love in that basement.

Saliva gathers in my mouth before I spit it out at him.

“Go fuck yourself.”

I expected the hand across the face, anticipated the taste of metal in my mouth before it filled my throat. My lip throbs from the smack, aching with familiarity. Stephen’s abuse is like walking into your childhood home—you remembered it, knew its secrets, and could never escape it. It was forever a part of you.

I’d survived him once, and I could do it again. Even if I don’t, I know Lilac would be taken care of, and Silas would be safe. 

It would all end now, for everyone. They could be free and happy, released from the chains Stephen Sinclair wrapped around us all. They could all finally move on to a brighter future, and that makes the pain worth it. 

His hand grabs my face, holding me steady. “Am I going to have to teach you how to behave again, Coraline?”

I bare my teeth, showing the blood in my mouth, “I am not the girl you left to rot in that basement, Stephen. You will not break me this time.”  

Another hand cracks across my jaw, the bone in my cheek throbbing with pain. Tears burn the corner of my eyes from the force of the hit. Maybe if I make him angry enough, push him far enough, he’ll end this quickly for both of us.

His arm rears back to hit me again, but it never comes.

Thuds echo outside the door.

Once, twice, and on the third, wood splinters into the room, the door shoved completely off the hinges as Silas’s body barrels through the entryway.

I flinch at the pure force radiating off him in waves, how he stalks into the room after just breaking down a door.

Stephen scrambles backward from my body just as Silas peeks in my direction. He only looks at me once before moving toward Stephen like a wild predator.

My stomach drops as Stephen struggles to move toward the gun resting on his desk, but he’s not quick enough. Just as he wraps his hand around the grip, Silas’s large palm smashes down on top of it.

With a vicious hold, he picks up Stephen’s hand in his own before smashing it into the mahogany desk. The cracking of bone reaches my ears as he repeats the process until the gun falls to the floor and Stephen’s hand is shattered.

“They say using a gun removes the personal aspect of a kill,” Silas says smoothly. “This is personal.”

Though his face bleeds fear, Stephen forces laughter past his lips.

“The other three dogs not want to play?” he mutters, trying to break free from Silas’s grip. With one swift movement, Silas responds by snatching his throat in an iron grasp before slamming him onto the desk.

His eyes glisten with rage. “No games tonight. This ends with you and me.”

“It’ll never be over,” Stephen chokes out as Silas tightens his grip around his throat, using both hands to strangle the air from his windpipe. “You can’t kill my memory. I will live in her forever.”

“Watch me.”

The veins in Silas’s arms bulge as his grip tightens, Stephen’s face turning a nasty shade of deep purple. Every breath becomes a struggle, clinging to life he doesn’t deserve.

For years, I imagined what it would look like to see Stephen die, how the light in his eyes would dim and the color drained from his face. It was my comfort dream on that thin mattress in the basement.

I never expected his death to be at the hands of the man I love.

“Look at her. I want you to remember her face and know you’ll spend an eternity in hell paying for what you did to her.” Silas seethes in a quiet whisper, “If I could kill you twice, I would.”

I watch as the life drains from Stephen, fear etched into his features as he gurgles for air. A part of me wants to look away, to shield myself from the violence, but I can’t.

Silas has my full attention.

I have witnessed him shoulder the burden of guilt that was never his to carry, watched as he suffered in silence, too afraid to speak the truth. But in this moment, as the man who nearly destroyed his life takes his last breath, I see something in Silas.

That darkness in him that frightens others. But never me.

He’s not killing for pleasure or revenge but for justice. For closure.

Death enters the room with cold hands. It fills the air, and Stephen Sinclair’s body finally goes limp.

The smell of burning flesh is rancid. It carries a hint of sour sweat, an odor of raw sewage. 

It’s singed into the fabric of my twenty-thousand-dollar wedding dress. I suppose the lingering scent is the least of my concerns, considering the state of the fabric. 

Torn, muddied with dirt, splattered with blood. 

This is no longer a white gown that marks the start of a lifetime commitment but a parting dress that symbolizes the end of a horror novel I’d been caught between the pages of for years. 

With every crackling ember that flutters from the deep hole in the ground comes a sense of relief. I feel another shackle unlocking inside of me.

I have years of healing in front of me, only the beginning of my uphill battle, but for the first time since I was kidnapped?

The bars of my golden cage have melted, and as awful as the scent of charred skin may be, it smells like freedom. My freedom. 

“Now what?” Rook is the first to break the silence, glancing over at Sage, who he pulls in close to his side. 

The way Rook Van Doren looks at Sage Donahue is a work of art in itself. Like the Creation of Adam but with eyes, fingers just reaching out, barely grazing one another. So much emotion in such a simple gesture. 

All of us are stuck in a place of disbelief for different reasons. Liberation is vastly different for each of us. Yet, Stephen Sinclair burning at the bottom of this grave represents our prison. 

One person connecting us all. One person who has died and set each of us free. 

“Tilly’s?” Lyra mutters, rocking back and forth on her heels. “We didn’t eat at the reception.” 

The glow of the fire washes over our faces, and it’s Briar who laughs first. I think I can’t tell because as soon as the sound hits my ears, my own joy rumbles my lips. 

We are all laughing. Different tones, some chuckles, others giggles, male and female. Pure human emotion in the dark of the night that buzzes louder than the cicadas in the trees. It’s laughter that makes my stomach hurt, causing my ribs to ache and for a hand to reach out to steady myself against Silas. 

Thatcher shakes his head, kissing the top of Lyra’s head softly, muttering under his breath, “What am I going to do with you, Little Miss Death?” 

They are an unlikely pair, but something about them just kinda works? Like ice cream and french fries. One is very sweet, and the other is very salty, but they balance each other out.

It’s similar to how Alistair gives off a very fuck you, don’t speak to me vibe in his leather jacket, and Briar is very I’m super nice, but my scary boyfriend will hit you. He is a shadow, and she is the light. One without the other feels wrong. 

Any of them without each other feels wrong. Out of place, and I guess that goes for me too now. 

I look at Briar, Sage, and Lyra, knowing in this moment that I hate Stephen Sinclair, but a part of me is grateful for where I ended up. They don’t make me want to relive the basement, but they make it worth it. 

We aren’t friends since high school or siblings forced to care for one another. Blood and time spent together has nothing to do with our bond. 

It is this trauma. A horrible, nasty evil that will live with us forever but also brought us together. 

Along the road of pain, we stumbled across one another, clung to each other, and refused to let go. 

We wouldn’t have met without the pain. Wouldn’t have loved as deeply as we do without the fear. 

We hold on tight to one another because we refuse to lose it. 

We know it’s rare and breakable and entirely ours. 

My eyes turn to Silas, finding him already looking at me. This pain also led me to him, forced our paths to cross, weave, and lock until we stood here, sown into each other’s souls like two torn pieces of fabric. 

We don’t fit together seamlessly, but we fit together like us. 

His thumb swipes across my bruised bottom lip. “Ask me what my favorite color is.”

Never once since we met has he given up on me. Never seen me as this unlovable, damaged thing. I plan to spend the rest of my life returning the favor. No matter how cold he keeps it in the fucking apartment. 

“What’s so funny?” 

The foreign yet familiar voice cruelly reminds us that Ponderosa Springs is a hydra. With every head you cut off? 

Two grow back.