They took him to Bellevue.
Not the jail—not yet. But the psychiatric wing, where they could "evaluate" him before deciding on charges.
Rhys sat in a white room with soft walls and watched nurses move past the small window in the door. They'd given him sedatives. The world felt muffled, distant.
Kai was dead.
Murdered.
And Rhys couldn't even prove he hadn't done it himself.
"This is what he wanted," Rhys said aloud to the empty room. "Pryce did this. He knew they'd think I was crazy. He knew they'd lock me up."
Silence answered him.
"Where are you now?" Rhys continued, voice breaking. "Huh? You killed Kai, destroyed my life, and now you're just... gone?"
More silence.
Maybe he really was insane. Maybe he'd hallucinated Pryce his whole life and finally snapped. Maybe his mind had invented an elaborate ghost story to cope with the fact that he was the murderer—
"Never gone, beloved."
Rhys jerked upright.
Pryce stood in the corner of the room, half in shadow. Solid again, but flickering slightly—like a bad TV signal.
"You," Rhys breathed. "You son of a bitch—"
"Language." Pryce stepped forward, and Rhys could see him more clearly now. No more blood. He looked pristine, handsome, every inch the prince he'd been in life. "Such hostility toward the man who loves you."
"You murdered Kai!"
"I eliminated a threat." Pryce's voice was calm, reasonable. "He was going to marry you. Bind himself to you legally, spiritually. I couldn't allow that."
"You can't just kill people because you're jealous—"
"I can." Pryce smiled. "I have. Six times now, across six of your lifetimes. Did you think this was the first?"
Rhys stared at him. "What?"
"Oh, my dear." Pryce moved closer, passing through the physical chairs like they weren't there. "You really don't remember, do you? Not yet. But you will. The seventh life always remembers."
"I don't—what are you talking about—"
"This is your seventh life, Rhys. Your seventh incarnation since we first met. Since we first loved." Pryce was right in front of him now, cold presence making Rhys's breath fog. "In every life, you've tried to love someone else. And in every life, I've stopped you."
Rhys felt sick. "You're lying."
"Am I?" Pryce tilted his head. "Search your dreams, beloved. Haven't you had them? Flashes of other lives? Other names? Other deaths?"
He had. God help him, he had.
Dreams of drowning. Of hanging. Of poison and gunshots and—
"No," Rhys whispered.
"Yes." Pryce reached out, and his cold fingers brushed Rhys's cheek. "You were Elara first. My Elara. The love of my life and death. And when they took you from me—when you betrayed me—I swore an oath."
"I'm not Elara—"
"You are. You've been Sarah, Edmund, Maria, David, Isabella, and now Rhys. Different names, different faces, different genders." Pryce's eyes were infinite, dark. "But always mine. Always trying to escape me. And always failing."
"You're insane."
"No, beloved." Pryce leaned in, lips nearly touching Rhys's ear. "I'm in love. There's a difference."
Then he vanished again, leaving Rhys alone in the white room, shaking and cold.
On the wall where Pryce had been standing, frost had formed in a pattern:
"MINE FOREVER"
'It's part 2 of chapter 2'
To be continued..