“When you are ready to obey me,” he says, “I will let thee out.”

“I will never obey you,” Jonah snarls. “I will rot before I call you master.”

“Please,” Meriday tries again, her voice small. Though she isn’t chained, she still clings to her father’s side. The lantern light gleams in her wide eyes.

August ignores her. When he leaves, he takes the lantern with him, plunging the room into darkness. Meriday gasps at the sudden loss of light.

I am here, too, in this darkness. My heart skips a beat as I listen to the grinding sound of August locking the door, his footsteps receding. Jonah’s and Meriday’s voices murmur softly in the dark. How long will August leave them here? I wonder, my heart crawling further up my throat. I try to find the window, but it isn’t here. When the window appears, I am not sure, but at the moment this is a windowless room. The room has not grown it yet. And they are trapped in the dark, in this amorphous negative space that seems larger by the day, large enough that they hardly dare ungrasp their hands to find where the room ends.

But I am not locked in. I feel my way back to the door and let myself out, closing it behind me and releasing a long, slow breath of relief. In spite of my escaping, horror churns in my gut. I stand outside the door, hoping August will return and let them out.

It is difficult to tell the passage of time when you are watching a memory. After a while, I hear Jonah and Meriday pounding on the door to be let out, begging, screaming. And I think they have been in there for a long, long time.

What is it that this room is hiding? My father killed himself in it. Jonah and Meriday were held prisoner. Julian will live here, too.

There is an evil in this room.

Just as I am finally backing away from the door, I see August return and release Meriday. I do not know how long it has been, but she comes out haunted. Her eyes are vacant, unfocused. When light spills into the room, Jonah holds up his hand over his eyes, which look blind and lost.

Instead of leaving, I wait and watch.

Meriday has been given tasks. Perhaps August let her out so she could tend to the house. She returns to give Jonah food and clean the bedpan, and she looks older now.

How much time has passed? Weeks? Months?

Years?

And I understand, now, all the glimpses I’ve seen of her and August in the house. Now they make sense.

Because fate is cruel, and because they had no one left in the world but each other, during the course of these years, Meriday and August grew close. I’ve seen their cordial, clipped conversations give way to familiarity. I’ve seen them in the evenings, sitting beside the fire while August reads, or teaches Meriday to read and write. I’ve seen her look at him with fondness—but a fondness conflicted with fear, with disgust. Imagine what it must do to her to have to be in August’s company and pretend that her father isn’t upstairs rotting away.