Page 24 of Hallow’s Crown

He collects the wrappers, the gloves, the bottle, then gestures to the bed. “Sit.”

I do. He sits on the table again, same as before.

“By tonight, you enter the final phase. You will fight, and you will survive, or you will not. I’ll be watching.”

I let out a breath. “You keep saying that, like it’s a threat.”

He shrugs, the closest I’ve seen to indifference. “It’s a fact.”

He stands, moves to the door. He looks at me, and for the first time, there’s no calculation in his eyes. Just curiosity.

“You should sleep,” he says.

“Aw, you should too. Will you be dreaming of me?” I snarl.

He gives a slight, genuine smile. “Only if you dream of me.”

He leaves, and the lock clicks shut. I’m left alone, the adrenaline already seeping out of me, replaced by exhaustion and the ache of too many hours awake.

I lie on the bed, stare at the ceiling, and wait for the next phase.

The room is dark, and the silence is total.

But I can feel him out there, watching.

And right now, I don’t know who is testing who anymore.

Chapter Six: Bentley

Ilean forward, elbows to the desk, watching Samuel as he sleeps. Or pretends to. There is a looseness to his posture now, the battle fatigue of a man who knows there is no such thing as mercy. He lies curled, one arm beneath the pillow, knees drawn to chest, robe riding high on his hip. I could cycle through the zooms, look at his face, his hands, the bruises lining his throat and ribs, but I leave the view wide. It’s better to see the full shape of him, the way he occupies a room with less defiance now, calmer.

I’m supposed to be writing the report.

The keyboard sits beneath my palms, keys buffed clean by years of use. My fingers are steady—never otherwise—but the text on screen is a jumble of typos, words out of sequence, phrases repeated and crossed out in anger. I erase and retype the assessment:

SUBJECT: RICHARDS, SAMUEL // ASSESSMENT: VIABLE // MINISTRY SUITABILITY: ENFORCEMENT (HIGH) // RECOMMEND CLEARANCE: 30 NOVEMBER //

I delete the last line, then type it again, slower. My pulse spikes, enough that I see the tremor at the edge of my hand. I look at it, willing the blood to still, but the skin betrays me. In the monitor reflection, I catch my own face: pale, gaunt, jaw tight. Nothing new there, but the eyes are wrong. They’re too alive. Too fucking excited.

I tell myself it’s a professional interest, the same thrill I get from calibrating a new trial schematic, but that’s a lie. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about his voice, the sound of him laughing at my orders, the way he taunts me with every act of compliance.

You just want to see what I’m made of.

He isn’t wrong. I want to see the inside of him—what survives when everything else is gone.

The cursor blinks, waiting.

I finish the report, sign it with my badge code, and route it through the encrypted line. The system chirps a “Sent” confirmation, then throws the message into the memory hole. For a moment, the room is dead silent except for the faint hum of the backup battery and my own uneven breathing.

I loosen my tie, pop the top button on my shirt. The pressure at my throat recedes, but the restlessness doesn’t. The energy has to go somewhere, and so I pull up the archived footage from the shower assessment.

The scene is brutal. He stands with arms chained up, every inch of him exposed to scrutiny and to the ice-cold water. His body twitches at every contact—pain, cold, humiliation—but his gaze is fixed ahead, unbroken. When I command him to perform, he doesn’t hesitate. There is a brief war in his eyes, a flash of humiliation and rage, but then he reclaims it, makes it his. The moment he comes, he looks into the camera before fixing his gaze. Onto me.

I drag the video back, watching the instant again. The chemical purity of his hate, the refusal to look away. I clench my jaw, tasting copper.

I tell myself it’s part of the job. But I know what this is.

The Ministry would call it transference. A side effect of spending too long in close proximity to the subject. They’d say I’m projecting my own trauma, my own history of trial and discipline. They’d say it’s dangerous.