I looked up and realized we were going deeper into the woods.

‘Michael.’ I started to panic. ‘Why aren’t we going to the house? This baby needs to be warm. It’s raining.’

‘Hush now,’ said Michael, his voice hard. ‘Stop your noise. We’re going to the little cottage.’

‘What? Why would we go there?’

‘Because I’m king and this is my castle and I’m telling you, that’s where we’re going.’

The cottage loomed up ahead then, like something from a horror movie: foggy, dark and cold.

I started yelling then. Begging. Pleading with a man who couldn’t care less.

‘Michael. This is your daughter. Please, she’s crying. You can’t put us out here in the cottage. It’s cold. It’s a half-built shell.’

‘Shut up now, Lorna. Get yourself in there.’ He flung open the metal sheet door.

The cottage was as bare and ghostly as the night I’d slept in it. No renovations had happened. There were no walls, no first floor, no staircase: just one big space criss-crossed with beams, flaking with old plaster. The windows had been shuttered closed on the outside. The floor was concrete.

‘You said you were making music out here,’ I said. ‘When you left me alone all those nights. Where are the instruments?’

‘Just shut up and get inside, Lorna,’ said Michael.

I could see Michael’s dark eyes, glinting under moonlight. They were cold and dead and they told me I had no choice. I walked right into the cottage, into the dark and shadows, clutching the baby.

‘Stay there.’ Michael slammed the metal door shut, and I heard the click and crunch of the padlock falling into place outside.

‘Wait … MICHAEL!’ I stumbled around in the dark. ‘MICHAEL! MICHAEL!’

No answer.

Reign cried louder.

As I clung to her, trying to figure out what to do, I heard a low moan from the back of the cottage.

I backed towards the door, tipping around like a spider with a broken leg.

I held baby Reign tight. ‘It’s okay, baby. It’s okay.’

But it wasn’t.

The noise had come from a big, black shadow hunched over in the corner, and every muscle in my body locked tight. I honestly thought it was a ghost. Truly.

‘Lorna.’ The voice was cracked and deep.

I blinked and stared at the hunched shadow, and it became a girl: bare-legged, head bowed, body bent over itself. A dark pool grew under her on the cement floor.

‘Annalise?’

Annalise lifted her head. A wet, black T-shirt with Michael’s face on it hung over her shivering body.

She croaked, ‘He shot me.’