Two days.
Forty-eight hours had passed since their argument, since her impossible ultimatum had hung in the silence of the cell. Forty-eight hours of waiting, of listening to the drip of water, of tracing the cracks in the stone and imagining they were a map to freedom.
He had left that night without another word, a shadow swallowed by shadows, leaving her with the bitter taste of her own defiance. She had been certain she had doomed them both, that her stubborn refusal to leave Clara had severed the one fragile lifeline she had been offered. She had prepared herself for an eternity in this cell, for the slow, grinding erosion of her soul until nothing was left but a ghost.
But on the second night, the signal came.
It was subtle. A change in the pattern of the dripping water from the ceiling. Not the usual slow, maddening drip... drip... drip... but a new rhythm: two quick drips, a pause, then another. Drip-drip... drip. Over and over.
Tonight. Be ready.
