When the transmigrator tried to seize my body for the fourth time, I finally drove her out for good.

I rushed downstairs, desperate to share the good news with my brothers.

But at the turn of the staircase, I saw them huddled together, their faces drawn tight with worry.

Cole Harding's brow was knotted, his voice clipped with irritation.

"How is it Lorna Harding who woke up again? Trafficking, kidnapping, dragging her off to the mountains. We've tried everything, and Miriam's hold on the body keeps getting shorter!"

My feet stopped dead. My whole body slammed against the wall, my pupils shaking.

Those weren't accidents?

Finn Harding picked up the thread, a note of concern in his voice. "Stage another accident? A car crash? Would Lorna catch on?"

Malcolm Harding, my fraternal twin, gave an indifferent scoff.

"So what if she does. Miriam told us herself: only when Lorna suffers a severe shock or extreme fear does she get the chance to take over Lorna's body."

Their words turned my legs to water. I collapsed onto the cold floor.

So all those nightmares I'd lived through were engineered by them. For the transmigrator, Miriam Pruitt.

I lowered my head and laughed bitterly, my eyes hollow with despair.

If that was how it was, then I'd grant their wish. I'd disappear for good.

...

My fingers clawed at the wall, leaving five bloody streaks behind.

Cold sweat soaked through my clothes. My tears wouldn't stop.

And in the hall below, the conversation kept going.

Cole's voice carried an undercurrent of exhaustion and irritation. "She won't find out. Besides, Miriam said she has a System. Once the mission's complete, she'll leave."

"We can make it up to Lorna then."

Finn exhaled a ring of smoke and sighed.

"Then we keep going. Last time before Miriam left, she reminded me not to let Lorna get hurt too badly. She said she'd feel guilty."

The coldness in Malcolm's eyes softened.

"That's just how kind Miriam is. Always thinking about Lorna."

I sat in the corner, my gaze frozen and vacant, but at Malcolm's words something flickered behind my eyes.

My lips twisted into a ghastly arc.

Kind?

My fists clenched so hard my whole body shook.

If she was kind, why did she try to steal my body again and again and again?

Why did she keep going, knowing full well I was being tortured?

She was kind.

So I was the monster who deserved every bit of it?

Dragged into the mountains and beaten. Struck with a stun baton by my captors. Was that somehow my own fault?

I closed my eyes and felt my heart constricting.

Tears hit the floor one by one.

A year ago, I'd slipped and fallen into a lake. I sank into a deep coma.

By the time I woke, two months had passed.

The day I opened my eyes, all three of my brothers were at my bedside, their faces tight with urgency, worry and fear spilling from their eyes.

"Hey," I murmured, unable to help the plaintive whine in my voice. "What day is it?"

"My head hurts so much."

But the concern I expected, the tenderness, never came.

What came instead were expressions that froze solid, and three bodies stepping back in unison, as though I were something monstrous.

"Cole? Finn? Malcolm?" Worry crept into my voice. "What's wrong with you?"

The three of them exchanged a glance, then forced their composure back into place.

"Nothing. Get some rest. We'll come see you tomorrow."

I nodded.

It stung, but I didn't think much of it. After all, only I knew how much I meant to them.

I knew they'd give their lives for me.

When I'd been sick as a child, Cole had drained half the blood from his body to save mine.

And after Mom and Dad died, Finn and Malcolm had treated me like the most precious thing in the world.

But not long after I was discharged, the "accidents" began.

The first time, I was dragged into the mountains.

I was thrown into a cellar like a piece of garbage. A man named Laurence Lawrence clamped handcuffs around my wrists and shackles around my ankles.

"Behave!" He slapped me hard across the face once the locks clicked shut. "From now on, you're staying here to breed for me!"

I'd been sheltered my whole life, protected by my three older brothers since the day I was born.

Nothing could have prepared me for this. I screamed until my throat tore, begging him to stop.

But that man was no human. He was a monster.

He ripped my clothes off and brutalized me through the night. Over and over and over again.

A month later.

When I found out I was carrying his child, the shock and the crushing weight of it all shattered something inside me. I collapsed.

When I woke, another two months had passed.

I found myself in a hospital bed. My brothers had rescued me.

After I came to, they acted no different than before. Still loving. Still caring.

But the very next day, I was kidnapped again.

This time, the abductors threw me into a pool teeming with starving piranhas.

"No!" The water churned with them, hundreds of them, their dark bodies writhing over one another. My mind nearly split apart.

They were crazed with hunger. They latched onto me and wouldn't stop biting.

Tearing away flesh.

My blood turned the entire pool red.

The terror consumed me whole, and I blacked out again.

When I woke, another two months had slipped away.

That very night, the third accident happened. I was dragged into a psychiatric ward, where electric batons and beatings were routine.

And then came now.

The more I thought about it, the more my heart felt like it was being carved out of my chest, slice by slow slice, until I couldn't breathe.

"Miss Harding? Why are you sitting on the floor?"

A maid appeared out of nowhere, her voice cutting through the hall. The three men in the living room fell silent at once, their gazes snapping toward me.

I met their eyes and smiled. A wretched, hollow smile.

Before any of them could react, I vaulted over the third-floor railing and jumped.

"Lorna!"

All three of them lunged from the couch, screaming.

I closed my eyes. The pain I'd braced for never came. Neither did the relief.

Instead, I crashed into a trembling pair of arms, and we both tumbled hard to one side.

Cole had thrown himself beneath me. He didn't even pause to register his own pain before scrambling to my side, his voice shaking with barely contained shock.

"Have you lost your mind?!"

Finn saw that I was unharmed and let out a heavy breath. The panic drained from his face in an instant.

What replaced it was pure, undisguised irritation.

"We went through hell getting you out of that psychiatric ward, and this is what you do?!"

I sat crumpled on the floor, my skirt pooling over an ankle that had snapped on impact.

"Getting me out?"

My gaze drifted up to Finn's eyes, mocking and miserable all at once. "Is that really what you'd call it, Finn?"

All three of their expressions locked up at the same time.

They exchanged a glance. A flicker of alarm, barely perceptible, passed between them.

"Of course we rescued you!" Malcolm frowned and pulled me to my feet. "Lorna, what's gotten into you?"

Cole followed up, his tone careful, probing.

"Did you hear something at the ward?"

I didn't answer. I just kept smiling, and the longer I smiled, the darker their faces grew.

"Are you done?!"

Cole's composure finally cracked. The mask fell away, and so did his patience.

"The three of us have empires to run. We don't have time to stand here and indulge your breakdown!"

He let out a cold scoff and stormed off.

Finn shook his head and followed right behind.

Malcolm, my twin, reached out and patted my head. The gesture was impossibly gentle. His words were not.

"Stop acting crazy. Got it?"

The hall fell quiet. I sat there, turning Malcolm's words over in my mind.

Was he worried about me, or was he worried the transmigrator would never come back?

The answer was obvious enough.

"It's okay," I murmured, my eyes hollow and unfocused. "I'll manage to die eventually..."

I dragged my feet, pain ground into every bone, stumbling step after step toward Cole's study.

My hands shook as I opened the computer.

I pulled up the security footage from the villa, timestamped to the periods I'd been "unconscious."

And there she was, on the living room feed. The same body as mine, but a completely different person wearing it.

A chill crawled up from the soles of my feet.

My brothers and Miriam.

From outright rejection and disgust, to tenderness and doting.

From snapping "Miriam! Get out of our sister's body!" to "Miri, please don't leave us, okay?"

Tears struck the keyboard one by one. My rigid fingers moved again.

I clicked on the study's camera feed.

"Cole, I feel guilty," Finn said, clutching fistfuls of his own hair, his head bowed in anguish.

"Lorna is our real sister. But now, in my heart, Miri already matters more than she does..."

Malcolm sighed in agreement.

"Yeah. It's not just you. I feel the same way."

"Lorna and I are twins. But I haven't thought about her in a long time. I even hope Miri stays forever."

Cole took a deep drag of his cigarette, his brow knotted tight.

After a long silence, his Adam's apple bobbed, and what came out was hoarse and utterly devoid of warmth.

"You think I'm any different?"

My breath seized.

Something behind my eyes collapsed and fell into a place it would never come back from.

On the footage, Miriam appeared.

Her face was pale and frail.

"Cole, Finn, Malcolm. Lorna might be about to take back control..."

All three shot to their feet, panic flooding their faces.

"What?! How is it happening so fast? Isn't there any way to suppress her?!"

Miriam leaned into Cole's arms.

"The System says if Lorna experiences genuine terror while she's conscious, or something that shatters her mentally, it should work..."

Before she even finished, Miriam collapsed.

"Miri!" All three screamed in unison, scooping her up and sprinting out of the room.

And after that, I supposed, came the moment they found me awake instead. The shock. The irritation. The barely concealed revulsion on their faces.

The footage froze.

I slumped back in the chair and let the despair swallow me whole.

My phone buzzed. I picked it up, and my body jerked upright.

Lorna, save me!

"Marilyn Marsh..." I choked through the agony and bolted for the door, reason gone. "You have to be okay!"

I should have known. Of course. The moment I woke up this time, they'd use my best friend's life to break me.

To bring Miriam back.

My thoughts were a tangled wreck. Grief, fury, and something close to hatred.

I barely made it out the door and into the car before the driver slammed the brakes, then wrenched the steering wheel hard.

The car flipped.

A black van plowed straight into us.

Men poured out and dragged me from the wreckage.

"Beat her!"

My body was already studded with glass shards from the shattered windows, each one buried in my skin.

"Ahhh!"

They snapped my leg while I was barely conscious. The white-hot burst of pain ripped my eyes open and tore a scream from my throat.

When they were done, the van sped off without a backward glance.

I lay on the ground, watching the blood from my own thrashing pool beneath me, spreading and spreading.

The grief stacked higher. Layer upon layer upon layer.

I blacked out.

I didn't know how long I was gone. Voices filtered in, distant and overlapping.

"That should do it, right? When she wakes up this time, it should be Miri."

My eyes stayed shut. My consciousness drifted in and out like a bad signal, but my ears caught every word.

Finn paced back and forth, his anxiety filling the room.

"It has to be Miri! So why isn't she waking up?!"

Malcolm's voice was rough.

"To trigger Lorna's most primal, genuine fear of death, the van wasn't told to hold back."