Chapter 8 The Future

• For days, I had done nothing but sit by the small window, staring out at the world beyond the four walls that held me captive. The view never changed—the same rolling hills, the same thick trees that swayed with the wind, the same sky that stretched endlessly above it all, indifferent to the prison I found myself in.
• I hadn’t spoken to Paxton much since the last time.
• He hovered, always near, like a shadow I couldn’t shake, his presence filling the room even when he wasn’t saying anything. Sometimes he would sit in the chair near the fire, watching me with a mixture of worry and frustration, the kind that made my skin crawl. Other times, he’d pace, restless, as if waiting for me to break, waiting for me to say something, to react, to be something more than the hollow shell I had become.