The iron door of the dungeon slowly closed behind Miranda.
The dim torchlight in the passage stretched her shadow long, sending it swaying and twisting across the mottled stone walls.
Miranda's footsteps were steady.
She neither cried nor screamed.
There was not even a trace of expression on her face, smeared with dust and blood.
Like parchment soaked in water, all her emotions had been washed away, leaving only a blank, deathly stillness.
The scene from moments ago replayed in her mind, over and over.
Ramsay's face, twisted with madness.
The undisguised coldness and cruelty in his eyes.
And those casually spoken words, enough to bring her entire world crashing down-
"You're nothing but a dog I keep."
A dog?
Ha.
Just a dog?
So all those years of love, all those years of following him, all those years of madness...
In his eyes, they were nothing more than... a dog's loyalty?
Miranda had believed she and Ramsay were alike, each other's only confidant in the darkness, soulmates who could share their deepest secrets.
But in the end, she was only Ramsay's most obedient hound.
And now, for the sake of his own future, her master had unhesitatingly offered this hound, no longer of any use, as a gift to someone more powerful.
How laughable.
How pitiful.
An overwhelming hatred should have erupted from her chest like a volcano.
Yet Miranda felt none of it.
She felt neither anger nor sorrow.
It was as though that iron door had sealed her heart away in the dungeon.
Along with it, that foolish, pitiful, self-deluding version of herself had been imprisoned forever.
All that walked down this passage now was a shell named Miranda.
A shell... that had to learn new tricks to survive.
She thought of Lynn.
In the storeroom, that