After the shipwreck stranded me and my mother-in-law on East Island, I saved her from a banded krait bite.

She repaid me by smashing my arm with a rock and kicking me into the rain while I burned with fever.

"Useless girl," she said. "Stop playing dead. Get out there and find food."

I survived thirty days in that mud with a rotting wound and a shattered arm.

Then rescue came.

The search-and-rescue team leader pulled off his respirator mask, and I recognized my husband. Ethan Blackwood.

He walked straight past me toward Helena and handed her a warm cup of milk.

"Thank you for your patience, Mom. Thirty days of this. That must've been exhausting."

Then he looked at me.

"Nora finally got a taste of what she put Celeste through."

Around him, the actors dressed as island natives were pulling off their costumes. Underneath: crew lanyards and HD cameras.

Helena looked at me with contempt. "Close the stream. We're done. I'm sick of looking at her."

Ethan stepped on my leg—the blackened, rotting one—and looked down at me.

"A few prop snakes and you fall apart like this? With acting this good, why not go win an award?"

The chat feed was full of it. Karma. She deserved it. What a performer.

But Ethan didn't know.

The island punishment show was scripted. The snakes weren't supposed to be real.

Except someone had switched them. And the banded krait venom that hit me was very, very real.

In front of millions of viewers, I vomited black blood.

And breathed my last.

You wanted to livestream breaking your wife.

So I died for you on camera.

…

"You think biting a blood pack and spitting up black blood is enough to win sympathy?"

"Stop playing dead. Get up."

The next instant, I felt weightless. My soul lifted out of that ruined body.

No crying for help. No begging.

Dead women don't feel pain.

"Don't worry about her," Helena said. "She's been dramatic her whole life. When Celeste was being bullied to the point of a breakdown, Nora played innocent just like this."

Ethan's face was cold with disgust.

"You really went all out for this performance. Even popped your own shoulder out of socket to make me feel guilty?"

He looked at the crew. "Pack it up."

He dropped a handkerchief onto my body—onto that bloodless face—and turned away.

"She loves this island so much, let her stay. She'll crawl back when she's hungry enough."

"Exactly. Women like her don't die easy."

"Come on, Ethan. Mom spent thirty days out here for you—she's running on fumes. Celeste made all her favorites back home, waiting for us."

At the name Celeste, something twisted in my chest—the heart that had already stopped beating.

Celeste Sterling. Ethan's first love. The one he'd never let go of.

A month earlier, Celeste had been caught plagiarizing. Instead of taking responsibility, she'd posted on Instagram suggesting I was behind it—that I'd orchestrated her downfall. Ethan believed her. To avenge his first love, he'd planned this: thirty days on a remote island, broadcast to millions, watching his wife drag herself through the mud.

Everyone thought it was scripted.

None of them knew I was actually dying out there.

Ethan helped Helena into the helicopter. The door slid shut.

Then something invisible yanked me forward.

A mechanical voice, flat and cold, spoke somewhere in my skull.

[Warning: Grievance unresolved. Host soul will be force-bound to target: Ethan Blackwood.]

The next second, my soul was pulled through the hull of the helicopter and dropped beside him.

I closed my eyes.

Even death couldn't give me peace.

The helicopter lifted. The rotors churned up a wall of wind.

East Island shrank below us.

My body was still down there, alone in the mud, the rain washing over it.

Ethan leaned back in his leather seat with his eyes closed.

Helena pressed a hand to her chest, still catching her breath.

"Ethan—you don't think Nora actually… something happened to her, do you? That black blood she coughed up looked wrong."

He didn't open his eyes. "Mom. You're too soft."

"The blood pack she used? She bribed someone on the props team to swap it in. This is her whole game—look pitiful, make me come crawling to her."

"Women like that don't have the nerve to die."

Helena exhaled with relief. The contempt returned to her face.

"You're right. A thing like her. I'll make her kneel in front of Celeste and beg forgiveness when she gets back."

I floated in front of them and watched this mother and son—watched them perform.

Three years of marriage. One enormous joke.

Ethan.

You'll never know.

Nora is already dead.

She died in the trap you built for her.