Chapter One （The Asylum）

CHAPTER ONE (THE ASYLUM)

HAZEL

My screams woke the entire mansion.

I looked at my arm, wondering if the skin was peeling off. I'd never known pain like this. I'd never thought about death before. My father shouted in barks at everyone, telling them to grab the baby next to me. They hesitated, fear shining in their eyes over a newborn.

Basil lay there quietly—the baby everyone was terrified of. I was trying not to crush him even though I needed to thrash. He never did cry much and apparently, my howling wasn't a good enough reason to start now.

He blinked at me, blissfully innocent. Dad always said normal babies cry. Normal babies care. Normal babies shouldn't have green hair and a green eye.

Basil was not a normal baby. He was my brother though.

Letting him sleep with me each night was our little sibling secret, the first of what I hoped would be many. Now the jig was up. Everything had been all wrong from the day he was born. This wasn't how things were supposed to be. Tears sprung from my eyes and I wailed harder as I realized I was in trouble.

Darkness spread across my arm in veins of deep green and black, starting from where I had tucked my baby brother's body next to mine.

Our parents told me not to touch him because he'd grow toxic, but I'd ignored them. I loved Basil. How could something so cute be so deadly? I didn't believe them.

The nursemaid rushed forward and pulled him away from me, wearing thick gloves as she handled him as quickly as possible. I reached for him and Mom yelled at me to stop, angry words even though she looked so scared.

An unfamiliar voice slithered from the corner of the room, breaking through the panicked cries.

"Wake up, Hazel." My eyes widened as I turned my head in his direction. There was a man wearing a black doctor's jacket. I shook my head. He wasn't supposed to be here.

"Hazel Fury," he said, pressing his finger to his round glasses and pushing them back up his nose. Brown eyes looked at me without blinking. If I wasn't thrashing in pain I'd shudder and run. There was something wrong with him.

And he wasn't supposed to be here. He wasn't there when this happened.

I looked at my hands and realized I was dreaming. This wasn't happening—not right now at least.

In the corner of the room, the doctor leaned over Basil's crib. His long fingers curled around the edge of frilly red silk. He was looking at my baby brother like kidnappers looked at wandering children. Yells wouldn't come out of my mouth. Get away was a mumbled croak.

The doctor gazed up at me while his hands inched closer to Baz. His mouth suddenly stretched in an imitation of a human smile. It terrified me, but what came next was worse.

His eyes began slowly breaking apart, the irises cleaving right down the middle. Nauseated and faint, I couldn't look away until two identical irises swam in the whites of his eyes—irregularly shaped and constantly moving.

My throat closed and the hair on my arms rose. My mind felt like it was being ripped in two, just like his eyes had—one part in reality, one part lost in madness.

"Wake up, Hazel." The voice boomed through the room, rattling water glasses on my nightstand. My hands twisted the bedsheets, trying to hold on. I couldn't stop looking at his liquid eyes.

I gasped, losing the feel of the bed beneath me. Everyone's mouths were moving but I couldn't hear them. I looked at my father's face and saw his nose inching lower and lower as his chin drooped. He was melting onto the floor, everyone was—their faces elongating in slow motion.

Sweat bloomed on my forehead as I collected enough air to punctuate the room in terror. My fingers twisted the sheets beneath me.

I woke up.

A gray ceiling with dots of black mold decorated the spot just above my head. My arms were crossed over my belly, hugging myself. The mattress beneath me was barely more than metal springs. My shoulders were sore. I shifted with a grimace, not liking the ache from bad sleep in a terrible bed.

"Why don't you help her up, Rachel," the voice from my dream commented in a bored tone. Hands grabbed the white straightjacket and yanked me up. I looked around the room. Ten by ten—bed, desk, and chair. A wardrobe against the wall near the open door. A private bathroom that had tiles with old, dark grout.

I measured the space from the bed to the door. I noted where the other two people were standing in the room. Then, I worked through how I could overcome them with my arms restrained.

Not that I wanted to. I was exactly where I wanted to be: an asylum for the criminally insane.

A laugh burst from between my lips, and once it started, I struggled to stop it. Not a very appropriate reaction to finding yourself committed to Verfallen Asylum. However, I wanted to be nowhere else. This crumbling gothic mansion hidden on the northeast coast had been my goal for two decades.

Well, my brother had been the goal. I would have never guessed he was in a place like this until the evidence was given to me. Finally, my long search was over.

The nurse, Rachel, had her name embroidered into her burgundy scrub shirt. She shot me a grimace as I kept laughing. Inappropriate responses were probably pretty common in her line of work.

As she worked on freeing me, I noticed a twitch beneath one of her brown eyes that never stopped. Also, her head kept slowly falling to the side. Occasionally, she would straighten it, only for it to slowly inch to the side again as if her neck kept forgetting its job.

My eyes slid to the other person in the room as my laughter finally quieted to mumbled giggles in my belly. The man who had invaded my dream stood in the middle of my room, looking sinister and off-putting. The best way to describe him was uncanny. Almost human, but not quite.

His skin was all the same color—not a freckle, nor a blemish. His eyes and hair matched in a peculiar way, and every feature was just a bit too perfect, as if someone had taken the time to design him by hand, erasing and starting over until it was exactly how they imagined a human should look.

People were never perfect like that. Never all matching, never exactly symmetrical.

"Dr. Stein," I drawled, my voice thick from a long, drugged sleep. Seeing him was the evidence I needed to know I'd succeeded. This was Verfallen.

"Or… should I call you Zero?" I asked. The nurse flinched when I said his name. Meanwhile, he didn't react to me knowing it. He stood unwavering, watching as the nurse worked the straps open on my straitjacket.

Basil was in these walls, but I was still pushing off the grogginess of drugged sleep. The emotional effort my brother required would need to wait. Being so close to him was probably why I was dreaming of the last day we were together. It was disgusting being reminded of the way I used to love him. I'd doted and fawned over him far longer than any sane person should.

Oops—probably bad taste to bring sanity into question while here. I laughed again, loudly, and for far too long. The medication was affecting me in strange ways. A sudden manic desire filled me to yell out for Basil. Let him know big sis was here, and that I couldn't wait for the fatal family reunion.

The nurse was growing upset by my laughter, and if I was freaking out a Verfallen nurse, maybe I needed to calm down just a bit. Then again, what did I care? I was supposed to be crazy. Still, I swallowed the laughter down and decided that alerting my brother I was here wasn't the best first step to murdering him.

My arm ached, the old wound flaring to life. It was a common feeling—rain, humidity, sleeping slightly wrong, overusing it, and thinking too hard about my brother all caused the ache to flare. I'd suffered through a lot of wounds, but his was the only one that stuck.

Today was going to be painful, I could tell. A shitty bed and sleeping on it wrong was going to have it out of commission. It would be work just holding my arm right so that no one could tell. Giving away that detail could make things more difficult for me later on. People took advantage of weakness.

My brother's venomous kiss made me the only known person to survive a basilisk's touch. People saw the venom-touched skin and second-guessed if they wanted to mess with me. Really, it was dumb luck that I survived—a result of it being when his venom first came in.

"You're in pain," the doctor suddenly said. My heart beat faster. I hadn't shown any signs of the pain I was dealing with. Or had I? Was I slipping up in my first minute at Verfallen?

"We'll switch out your bed," he added. The nurse went stiff, her hands freezing in the middle of messing with my straps. Her fingers hovered in temporary paralysis over the thick, white fabric.

"You want to switch out her bed?" she asked in a measured voice, turning to look over her shoulder. His eyes never left me. I grimaced, remembering how they split apart in my dream.

"Yes."

The nurse turned back to me wordlessly and began undoing the straps. Her eyes bored into mine as if she was trying to warn me.

With a thick swallow, I refocused. This wasn't a normal job—a simple mark I was being paid to kill. This was personal. This was everything .

As my arm ached, the clawing realization came to me that I was going to see the basilisk who left me with that pain. I tried to control the shake in my fingers as I was freed from the jacket. The mood swings involving my brother were already giving me a headache. Excited, terrified—make up your mind.

My eyes found the doctor again. He was a welcome distraction from the unwelcome panic I was suddenly feeling about Baz.

I knew Zero, or Doctor Stein as he liked to be called here, from the file Uncle Vernon managed to buy before I got myself purposely sent here. There had been a single piece of heavily redacted paper. Attached was an old, sepia portrait. He hadn't aged a single second.

Origins: [redacted].

Subspecies: unknown.

Powers: [redacted].

Age: unknown.

Name: "Zero"

Current Known Alias: Doctor Frankensteing/"Stein"

"Possibly immortal" someone had scratched at the bottom of the page.

That had been shocking to see. As far as I knew phoenixes, my people, were the only creatures who held that classification.

So who was this man?

The corporation that ran this place, Supra, was a powerful business with the same reach as a small government. They dealt in pharmaceuticals for supernaturals and humans alike, and used their money to yield power. The fact that even they either knew nothing about the man now standing ten feet away from me, or were hiding every single thing about him was concerning.

What I did know was that he was in charge of Supra's dirtiest secret—the very asylum I was now an inmate of.

His brown hair was long and tied at the nape of his neck. There was nothing at fault with any part of him, and it was obvious that if he took off his glasses, and let down his hair, I'd feel like I was looking at something oddly beautiful, yet cold and otherworldly. As it was, he just looked cold. His presence made him seem larger, as if his head might scrape the tiles of the ceiling as he stalked the halls.

Doctor Stein was a wild unknown—a factor ill-defined. I had to keep a close eye on the man in charge. I couldn't read him at all. He just stood there, staring blankly. I had all his attention but couldn't guess any of his thoughts.

Rachel shifted from foot to foot after freeing me, her attention dragging to the door. The nurse was growing restless as she waited for this staring contest to be done.

"I'll take it from here, Rachel," Zero commented apathetically. She stilled, her eyes widening. She opened her mouth, and then snapped it back shut. The doctor looked over at her and she nodded sharply.

"Bring her to the intake room when you're done with…" She trailed off, letting the discomfort grow. She didn't know what he wanted to do with me.

"Thank you, Rachel," he said blandly. She nodded and walked out. "Close the door," he added. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Rachel reached back into the room, shot me a nervous look, and closed the door—no questions asked. It banged softly shut as Zero's gaze swooped back to me.

"You've been trying to get committed here," he stated. Silence filled the space. I could almost hear static in my ears as my gut twisted.

How would he know that?

My arms were free, and there was only one other person in the room. I could jump up, hit him with a swift punch behind the ear, and bolt. He had the type of calluses people got from holding pens, not weapons.

Then again, I had no clue what he was.

This urge to flee kept hitting me when I was exactly where I needed to be. Was Zero causing it? He was what Supra threatened people with when someone tried to go up against them. And yet, I'd just willingly become his patient.

Unable to take the weight of his gaze anymore, I looked around the room again. It was functional, and that was the only compliment I was going to give it. There wasn't even a window. I had to wonder how anyone expected to be saner while living here—assuming that was an actual goal.

"You've been trying to get committed here," he repeated.

"Why would I want to be committed, Zero? You don't mind if I call you that, do you?" I asked, giving him a little smile.

Zero set his clipboard on the small nightstand next to my bed. I swallowed as he moved in close. His fingers brushed the orange jumpsuit I still sported from jail. There was a soft sound as his fingers trailed across over the collar. I felt the faintest sensation of his skin touching my throat and shivered. He smelled sweet and earthy.

I demanded my body to stay still instead of jerking back. I only liked touching people if I was about to kill them.

"Typically, I have nothing to do with who comes here to me," he explained, bending closer. His eyes were framed with thick, long brown lashes like I'd never seen on a person. His gaze traveled slowly over my face.

There were no lines of color in his eyes—just a solid russet brown. The effect was intriguing. For a strange moment, I leaned forward, looking into them. His irises looked like liquid. I let out a breath and leaned away, grimacing. He was far too close—the goosebumps on my arms were evidence of that.

"I approved your transfer, Hazel Fury. Demanded it." His finger slid under my chin, and he made me face him again. His pupils were pinpricks. A shudder ran up my spine that I couldn't hide.

"You wanted to be here, and I allowed that to happen," he whispered conspiratorially. My eyes darted to the closed door. Was this a secret? I didn't like that.

"Why?" I asked. His finger left my chin and settled on the inside of my good arm. I watched as his thumb pressed against the large vein just beneath the skin. He rubbed it as if he couldn't wait to press something inside. When he removed his hand and stepped back, I felt disoriented.

Zero… Stein, whoever he was, reached over and grabbed his clipboard. For the first time, I noticed it was my intake information. Dread filled my stomach. The paper was already yellowing and the ink was fading. Someone had filled in my information a very long time ago.

I could taste stomach acid in the back of my throat. This felt like a trap, but I couldn't leave. Not until I killed my brother. Everything depended on that. I ground my teeth and glared at the doctor.

"I hope you find your new home comfortable, Hazel, since you're going to be here for a while."

I fisted the thin blanket underneath me, trying to keep myself from jumping off the bed and getting out of here. My left hand struggled to tighten around the fabric, the muscles permanently damaged and feeling stiffer today than most.

Everything inside me was telling me to run. From this building, from Basil, and from this evil doctor now in charge of me.

"Oh, I don't know. I might recover from my mental health issues faster than you think," I said, managing to hide the dread I was feeling. There was a flash of humor in the doctor's expression that fled a second later.

"Since you came with very few personal items, make a list of everything you might want." My eyes twitched. I'd be here for a week max, less if I could help it. Then, I would be gone and could live my life.

He turned towards the door.

"Yes, you can call me Zero," he said casually, answering my question from before.

"Why do you lie about your name?" I asked. He acted like he couldn't hear me. Then he was gone, leaving me alone and feeling like I was in over my head before I'd ever left my room.

"Wait! Where's the intake office?" I yelled, but he didn't come back. I got up and looked out the door—he was already gone. With a sigh, I flopped back on the bed and stared at the mold dots on the ceiling.

"That one's Orion," I said sarcastically about a particular dark cluster.

It was dawning on me I was at the one place in the world that was genuinely dangerous for me.

I might not make it out of here alive. It was easy not to be afraid of a basilisk when its existence was far away. Now, I could almost feel him in the room with me, slithering around in the walls. He was here, and he was going to kill me if I didn't kill him first.

Something gold and shiny caught my eye on the nightstand. Immediately, I leaned forward and snatched up my lighter, bringing it to my lap and running my fingers over the gold filigree. I flicked the cap open and spun the starter. It sparked, but no fire came. Someone had gone through the trouble of removing the fluid. It snapped shut with a sharp click.

This had been taken away when I was first arrested. My things had been transferred here. What was surprising was that the man in charge had stolen it from my personal items, and secretly left it for me after the nurse left.

There were too many secrets with him. Too many unanswered questions. Zero had just established himself as the biggest threat here, after my brother, of course. And how did he know that this lighter, out of all the items confiscated, held the most importance?