"This place remembers every scream it has ever swallowed."
—Inscription beneath the west wing floorboards
She had not cried.
Not even once.
She had simply sat there, letting the silence stretch in every direction, letting it settle inside her chest until it felt as though her ribs might splinter from holding it in. The room had been so quiet that she could hear the faint hum of the glass in the window, the sound of her own breathing shifting in and out of rhythm, the distant creak of the house adjusting to the night. The tears never came. Perhaps they never would.
She had expected them, or at least thought she should. In some distant, mechanical way, she had braced for it, the way people sometimes rehearse grief before the loss arrives, turning the thought over in their minds until they believe they have softened it.
She had imagined the release as a sudden collapse, the kind of sobbing that takes the body apart, that drags air from the lungs until there is nothing left but an ache in the throat and the raw taste of salt.
She had thought her hands might tremble so violently she would have to hold them in her lap to hide it, that her stomach would turn and the taste in her mouth would sour, that some part of her would crack under the weight of it all.
But nothing cracked. Nothing spilled. She felt no breaking, no collapse, only the stillness. Only the strange, unwelcome calm that sat heavy and unmovable, as if her body had chosen not to spend its energy on something as fragile as tears.
She had known that something like this had always been possible.
She sat as though the chair had been made for this kind of stillness, her posture unyieldingly calm, too careful to pass for ease yet too unstudied to feel like pretense. It was a stillness that had chosen her, rather than the other way around, the kind of inertia that comes when the body fears that moving might make the truth more real.
Her hands rested in her lap, palms turned upward without thinking, fingers faintly curled as though she had been holding something for hours and forgotten to let it drop. She didn't look at them. She didn't want to know if they would tremble if she tried.
The nightdress clung in places where the fabric had turned thin from hours of wear, wrinkled from the way she had shifted in the chair, sticking faintly at the bend of her knees and beneath the hollow of her collarbone. It carried the faintest trace of lavender water overlaid with something sharper, something metallic. She could not tell if the iron in the air was memory or if it still lingered in the fibers of the cloth.
Her hair was knotted low at the nape, a pale snarl of silver-gold strands that shifted against her neck each time she drew a slow, measured breath. The ends were bent from being pressed too long against the back of the chair, curling at odd angles, and she did not reach up to smooth them.
There was a dull ache in her hips, not a pain sharp enough to demand her attention but something that sat quietly under the skin, like the muted throb of a bruise nearing the end of its healing.It was not unbearable, yet it was too present to ignore. It was a reminder that her body had been here, had felt this, and would carry the echo long after the rest of her tried to forget.
And in that stillness, with her body folded neatly into the chair and the silence pressed tight around her, she wondered if forgetting was even possible anymore.
A mark left behind by something she had not chosen, something fixed now in the quiet truth of her body, unalterable no matter how tenderly the house might try to erase it with warm water and soft cloth.
She would clean it properly one day, she told herself, in the same way one cleans dust from a shelf that will only gather it again.
But not yet. Not while it still felt like part of the story. Not while it was the only proof she carried of what had happened, the only thing her body had left to say.
She felt strange in her own skin, as though the invisible lines between her and herself had been redrawn in the dark without her noticing. Her reflection, she thought, might hesitate before moving with her. Her shadow might pause before sitting in the same place. There was nothing in the shape of her that had changed, yet something had shifted all the same.
It was not about the act. The act was only the surface of it, only the place her mind went first because the rest was harder to hold still.
What she felt was quieter, slower, harder to name. It was the unease of realizing that even someone who swore they would protect you, even someone who had bled for you, could still bring you harm without ever meaning to.
That possession could take on shapes no one intended, could arrive like a storm in the wrong season, wrapped in heat and desperation, in a name spoken through gritted teeth.
It was the truth that love and harm could, sometimes, share the same room.
When Blaise came to her near dawn, the light outside only just beginning to draw pale lines across the floor, he moved like a man approaching an altar he had already defiled. He dropped to his knees at the side of the bed as if he were begging something holy not to cast him out. His voice was low, cracked in the middle, and the words tumbled from him in pieces, each one fraying as it reached the air.
Blaise told her he had been drugged. That he had not known what he was doing. That none of it had been meant for her, or rather, that it had not been meant to happen like this.
She believed him.
She believed all of it.
She believed the tremor in his hands and the way his eyes would not stay on hers for more than a moment. She believed the way his body bent inward, curling around the shame like it was something he could shield her from even now.
But it had still happened. Belief, no matter how certain, did not have the kind of magic that could reach backward through time and undo what had been done. It could not lift her from this bed and place her safely back in the hours before. It could not change the shape of the night, could not pull the weight from the air or make her skin forget the heaviness of it.
She did not speak. Words felt too solid, too permanent, and she was not ready to make anything about this night solid. She let him speak instead, let his voice fray and buckle as if the syllables themselves were too sharp to hold. She let him unravel with the slow, inevitable collapse of something once painstakingly built, the way walls erode under water they cannot hold back.
When he finally broke from her, he rose and stumbled toward the basin. His hands gripped the rim like a man drowning, his shoulders hunched as if the weight of his own body had become too much.
She watched the way his back trembled when he retched, the sound raw and unshielded. When he returned, the floorboards seemed to shift under the uneven rhythm of his steps. He sank to his knees again, his voice a torn thread as he begged her to hit him, to scream at him, to curse him until there was nothing left in him that resembled a man who could be forgiven.
But she was not angry.
She only felt far away. Her body was still where it had been since the night began, upright against the headboard, the sheets tangled in her lap like vines that had grown there. Yet something quieter, something softer and more essential, had wandered off while she was not looking, slipping into a place she could not see. It had not found the way back. The distance between herself and that part of her was not cold, but it was whole, complete in a way that left no cracks for him to reach through. It was as if she were watching from a doorway in another room, her hand resting on the frame, uncertain if she should step forward.
He had hurt her. He had done it with something harder to defend against.
With need. With love, even.
And that, she thought, might be worse. Because there was no armour for that kind of wound, no shield against a person who reached for you believing they were only giving.
She wanted him gone. His presence made the air heavier. She did not know what he saw when his eyes met hers. Whether he saw the girl he still called his little witch, or whether all he could see now was his own shame, staring back at him through her silence.
So she told him the only truth she could offer.
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Gifts began arriving with the first warmth of morning light, carried in on trays by silent hands who did not meet her eyes.
She had not spoken to him. She had not sent a note or opened her door. The curtains remained drawn against the pale wash of day, and the air inside her room was heavy enough to feel like it could be touched, a stillness that pressed against her arms and settled low in her lungs. Still, the gifts came.
The first were books, though to call them that seemed almost too plain for what they were.
Heavy tomes bound in pressed leather the colour of aged wine and deep forest moss, their spines crested with delicate gold leaf that caught even the weakest threads of light.
Ancient runes curled along their covers, etched so finely they seemed to shift when viewed from the corner of the eye, the markings worked for purposes older than the language of the room she sat in. These were not simple spellbooks.
They were treasures, relics preserved so perfectly that their pages whispered when the boxes opened, as though the air inside had been sealed for centuries. The magic within them hummed faintly, deep and steady, like the quiet rhythm of breath behind glass.
She did not touch them. But she could feel them from across the room.
Then came the silks.
They arrived in stacks so high she thought for a moment the servants might disappear behind them. Each bundle was folded into black lacquered chests, the lids lined with crushed velvet that carried the faintest trace of sandalwood. Tissue as soft and fragile as moth wings wrapped each length, tied with silk cords so fine they could have been spun from cobwebs.
There was cream as warm as milk left in the sun, dove-grey that carried the memory of winter rain, the palest rose that looked as though it had been dyed in morning light, and ivory so luminous it seemed woven from strands of moonlight itself.
Some pieces were light as breath, cool to the touch even after being held in warm hands, their magic keeping them at the perfect temperature for summer nights. Others shimmered with the faintest iridescence, changing hue as they moved, as though light and shadow were chasing each other across their folds.
Without meaning to, she had taken a few lengths from their boxes, draping them across the foot of the bed. The fabric pooled over the carved wood and spilled to the floor like water overflowing the lip of a basin, rippling slightly when she moved past. The room felt different with them there, as though the silks had brought a new kind of weight, not oppressive, but impossible to ignore.
The glass pens came next. Each was shaped with the precision of a jeweler's hand, their shafts spiraling like twisted rain, their tips so sharp and delicate they seemed as if they might melt if touched too long. Some were clear as water drawn from an untouched well, others streaked with veins of gold or flecks of crushed gemstones that caught and scattered light into fragments across her table.
The inks followed, dozens of them, each sealed in its own hand-blown vial with a silver stopper worked into the shape of some small, intricate thing—a serpent coiling to bite its own tail, a moth with outstretched wings, a sleeping lioness. Others swirled in shades that shifted with the air, lightening when she stepped closer, darkening to near black when she turned away. A few had the strange, disconcerting habit of changing hue with the mood of the room, as though the ink itself was listening, waiting for a story worth telling.
The parchment came separately, bound in thick stacks, each sheet cut with perfect edges and sealed in paper wraps stamped with wax. The seal was carved with a sigil she didn't know, something not quite of this age. When she broke it, the scent of cedar and myrrh slipped into the air, warm and grounding, the kind of fragrance that could settle deep into the walls if left alone long enough. The pages were blank except for her name at the top, written in a delicate, steady script, as though every sheet had been prepared for her alone.
The flowers were last. Or perhaps they were never truly last, because they did not stop.
The first bouquet had been modest, if such a thing could be said of white lilies bound with a ribbon of silk so fine it could have been cut from the hem of a royal gown. The second, sent only hours later, was larger, the blooms fuller, their scent bolder. By nightfall, her room had begun to transform.
The air grew heavy with perfume, a layered chorus of scents that settled into the wood of the furniture, into the folds of the drapes, into the very weave of the linens.
Lilies with their deep, almost intoxicating sweetness. Sweetpeas in shades of pale blush and lavender, their fragrance clean and soft. Belladonna blossoms, so dark and perfect they looked carved, their poison quieted by charms so intricate she could almost feel them humming.
Roses in a hundred shades of white and cream and blush, their heads turning to follow her when she passed, their petals trembling as though moved by a wind only they could feel.
Orchids followed, strange and otherworldly, their blooms spilling in cascades of color she could only compare to moonlight in its different hours—silver at midnight, blue at dawn, pale gold just before the sun fully broke. Some flowers pulsed faintly with magic older than she could name, the kind that felt like the breath of something sleeping just beneath the surface.
Vases occupied every available surface now. The desk. The windowsill. The narrow table beside her bed. The shelves meant for books. Even the floor had not escaped, petals drifting down to scatter across the rugs in soft, careless constellations.
In the middle of it all sat a box no larger than her palm. It was plain compared to the rest, made of dark, polished wood with no carvings, no inlays, no embellishment. The grain was smooth beneath her fingers, warm from the sun it must have touched before it reached her. Inside, resting against a lining of deep blue velvet, was a collar.
The velvet was thick and soft, the sort of fabric that remembered the shape of whatever touched it. The clasp was silver, not bright and new but burnished, as though it had been worn smooth by time or handling. Hanging from it was a single tag, small and perfect, engraved with a single word in fine, deep script: Bubbles.
She turned it over between her fingers, feeling the weight of it, the coolness of the metal warming slowly against her skin. Light caught on its edges, sending a brief glint across the ceiling.
When she finally looked down, she found Bubbles curled beneath the desk, a pale, rounded shadow breathing slow and steady, her soft flanks rising and falling. Bubbles was dreaming, her nose pressed into her own side, making small sounds that could have been sighs.
Luna didn't move to fasten it around Bubble's neck. She didn't even reach toward her. She only kept the collar in her hands, holding it as though it might tell her something if she kept it long enough, letting the velvet brush against her palm until it felt like it belonged there.
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She walked to the greenhouse, though she suspected the house already knew before she had even taken the first step. It always knew. It had a way of carrying her secrets before she could decide if they were worth keeping, of anticipating her movements as if it had memorized the rhythm of her breath.
The halls did not shift beneath her feet this time, offering no subtle redirection or sly delay, and the lamps along the walls burned with a steady, unblinking light. The floor was cool under her bare soles, smooth as river stone, and she could almost imagine the house was holding itself still for her, as though it understood that she would not welcome its games tonight.
The greenhouse door gave beneath her hand without hesitation, creaking open on hinges that had protested her before but now seemed almost eager, as if the building itself was relieved to see her upright, moving, breathing. No air of ceremony, no burst of floral fragrance to greet her. Just the faint shift of warmth spilling out into the corridor and brushing against her cheek like a hesitant hand.
She did not look toward the fresh-cut flowers arranged in a vase by the table, their petals still perfect and wet at the edges. Nor did she touch the old armchair tucked into the corner, its back draped with a shawl left there so long ago the weave had taken on the faint scent of earth.
She was not looking for comfort. Comfort was too loud, too visible, too much like a question she could not answer. She needed something quieter. Something older. Air that had not been steeped in apology or ruined by the scent of him.
Inside, the vines had grown further than she remembered. They had claimed the paths for themselves, trailing over the uneven stone in slow, deliberate curves, their weight bending the wrought iron supports into gentler arcs. They wrapped the pillars as though dreaming in their sleep, curling into themselves with the patience of things that had never been hurried. The magic inside them pulsed faintly, slow and deep, the kind that lived in places left undisturbed for too long. Some of the leaves had turned a lush, velvety purple, their edges silvered like frost. Others shimmered faintly, as though recalling starlight they had once known, each tremor of light fading before it could decide whether to stay.
The air was warmer than the season allowed, thick with the scent of damp soil and green things growing in secret. The glass panes overhead were clouded in patches, their surfaces beaded with condensation that caught the morning light and scattered it across the floor in patterns that shifted when she breathed. Through the clear spaces, the sky was a pale, forgiving blue, but it felt far away. The warmth in the greenhouse did not quite reach her skin, as though some fine veil had been drawn between her and the rest of the world.
Bubbles darted ahead without hesitation, her soft, translucent limbs catching the stray beams of sunlight that filtered down through the glass. She moved with the careless grace of something that had never been taught fear, hopping from one moss-covered stone to the next with the certainty of a creature who knew she belonged to every corner of this place.
She chirped once, the sound high and brief, and paused near a patch of nightlilies whose deep violet petals seemed to drink the light. Then she nestled into the hollow of a coiled vine, her pale glow dimming to a gentle, sleepy blue until she was no more than a quiet lantern in the greenery.
Luna lowered herself beside the lilies, her knees pressing into the warm stone. She leaned forward until the long strands of her hair spilled over her shoulders and brushed the ground, the faint scent of lavender and old sunlight rising from them. Her fingers ghosted over the edges of the petals, careful not to bend or bruise them, her breath stirring the fine yellow threads at their center. She whispered to them, not because she expected an answer, but because there were words inside her that could not bear to be said aloud in a room where they might echo.
Her voice was soft, uneven. The sentences did not always finish, breaking apart under the weight of her own thoughts. Fragments slipped out—questions she had no right to ask, memories she could not name without feeling their shape against her ribs, things she might have said to no one if silence itself did not sometimes feel like an enemy. The flowers bowed slightly under her breath, their shadows trembling across the stone.
She spoke of things she did not understand, of choices that felt as though they had been made for her long before she could see them coming. She spoke of nights that clung to her skin long after the dawn had risen, of eyes that looked at her as if they knew the map of her bones, of the strange, fragile truth that fear and care could sometimes wear the same face. She spoke until the air around her felt heavier, as though the greenhouse was listening, and then she fell silent again, letting the weight of it settle between the lilies and herself.
Time slipped sideways in that space, the greenhouse holding its own hourglass, the grains falling too slowly to mark in any human way. The air thickened with the green weight of leaves and the faint mineral breath of damp stone, and somewhere in the far corner, water dripped in intervals so far apart they seemed to belong to another season entirely. The world outside could have been ending, and Luna would not have known.
It was sometime deep into that stillness when he appeared.
He stood in the open doorway, outlined against the dimming light beyond, his figure blurred and softened by the lattice of vines that had claimed the frame. The shadow of him was stretched by the angle of the setting sun, his shape elongated, not quite real. There was no tension in his posture, but there was a pause—an unnatural stillness that did not belong to caution so much as to something heavier, an ache that made his body uncertain of its own right to cross the threshold.
He remained there for longer than he meant to, letting the green shadow of the leaves and the shifting panes of fogged glass hide the sharper details of his face.
His gaze traced her slowly, beginning at the delicate line where her neck curved into her shoulder, following the slope of her spine, the fall of her hair as it spilled forward in a pale curtain.
His eyes lingered on the way her hands pressed into the earth with a kind of gentle possession, fingers drawing faint shapes in the soil as though speaking in a language no one else could read.
She did not turn toward him. She did not speak, nor give any outward sign that she had noticed his presence, though he suspected she always knew. Still, she did not tell him to leave. That absence was its own kind of message, and he could not decide whether it was an invitation or a condemnation. Perhaps it was both. Perhaps the cruelty was in making him live in that uncertainty.
The minutes thickened around him, sticky and slow. Eventually, he moved—not much, not enough to shatter the strange equilibrium that had grown between them in the quiet. He stepped forward once, the faint sound of his boot scuffing against stone swallowed quickly by the air. He did not cross into her space. He would not touch it. Instead, he stopped beside the narrow bench near the door, his fingers curling once against the edge before he placed something there.
The first was a single bloom from the moonvine. It had not yet opened, its petals wound tight in a spiral of muted silver and pale violet, holding the quiet shimmer of trapped light. A faint pulse of magic breathed from it, the old kind that bloomed only for those who had learned to live with longing. It would open only under the right night sky, and only for someone willing to wait.
The second was a folded sheet of parchment, creased and refolded so many times the edges had grown soft. The weight of hesitation seemed pressed into the fibers themselves. When the wind from the vent above stirred the air, it flipped once, revealing that both sides were blank.
No words, no mark, not even the pressure of a pen pressed and withdrawn. An offering that said nothing, and in saying nothing, confessed more than it should.
He left them as they were, unspoken and unclaimed.
Then, without waiting for her to break the silence or lift her eyes, he turned and stepped back into the narrowing light of the corridor beyond. His footsteps were quieter than the sound of leaves shifting against the glass, and when the door fell closed behind him, it did so without a sound. The house, which had always seemed to lean toward him in recognition, did not stir to greet his return.
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The corridor had grown still, wrapped in a hush that felt deliberate, as though the house itself had drawn in a breath and was holding it. The air seemed to wait, the weight of it pressing gently against the skin. The lanterns burned low along the walls, their light flickering unevenly, pooling in soft gold on the stone floor but leaving most of the space to shadow.
Somewhere behind them, Bubbles padded with unhurried steps, her hooves making the faintest tap that seemed to vanish before it had the chance to echo. Her pale glow swelled and softened with each movement, brushing faint halos across the hem of Luna's gown, as though the fabric itself was carrying a little of that otherworldly light.
Luna stood barefoot, her toes curling slightly against the cool stone, the night pressing cool fingers through the thin weave of her dress. Her hair had slipped forward over one shoulder, catching in the faint light, strands lifting now and then in the current that moved down the hallway. Her gaze was calm in a way that made most people uneasy, the kind of stillness that did not belong to passivity but to the quiet, deliberate watchfulness of someone who could see more than she ever said aloud. It was not a calm born of peace. It was the steady air before a storm.
Blaise was already there. He had been for longer than he cared to admit, pacing the length between two alcoves with the soundless efficiency of a predator kept too long in its cage.
The measured rhythm of his steps had eroded over the hours, until his movements no longer carried purpose but a restless need to expend something his body did not know how to name. The hours had slipped past him in a way that felt unnatural, as though the house had taken them from him without his noticing.
Now he was murmuring to himself, the words too low and uneven to carry meaning, only fragments of thought strung loosely together. His breath caught between phrases, and more than once he swallowed against something that had nothing to do with thirst. The sound of his own voice seemed to anchor him, the cadence grounding him in the stretch of floor beneath his feet. His gaze was lowered, because lifting it to meet hers too soon felt like stepping into a fire before the match had even been struck.
The moment he saw her standing there, he stilled.
"You chose all of them?"
Her voice didn't need to rise above the quiet. It carried easily, a simple question laid into the stillness, yet it landed inside him like a blade turned sideways. He had heard her speak in wonder before, and in curiosity, but this was neither. It was the sound of her sorting truth from gesture.
Her gaze flicked down to Bubbles, who had settled at her feet, the pale curve of the mooncalf's neck catching the lantern light. The collar was almost luminous in this darkness, velvet so deep it looked like it had been dyed from shadows themselves, the silver clasp engraved so finely the marks seemed to breathe when the light touched them. Along the edges, tiny stitches shimmered faintly, threads woven from some charmed silk that shifted color between frost and ash when her fingers moved. Even the way it fit had been considered, a perfect balance between comfort and claim.
He followed her eyes and knew without her saying what she meant. The flowers, the books, the silks, the collars. Every single thing.
"Yes," he said after a pause that felt too long, his voice roughened as though each word had been dragged over stone before it reached the air. "But I didn't know how to choose the right ones."
She nodded once, slowly, the movement as deliberate as it was small, as if the answer made sense in a way she did not feel like explaining. It was not agreement. It was acknowledgment. And somehow, that stung more.
The silence that followed didn't drift apart. It settled between them like something solid, like a beam laid across two points, carrying more weight than the moment before.
"The collar fits perfectly," she said at last. Her tone softened a fraction, but only in texture, not in warmth. It was simply the truth, offered without invitation for him to take it as more than that.
He didn't trust himself to speak. The breath he let out came slow and uneven, the kind that felt like it had been trapped somewhere deep in his ribs for too long. It wasn't relief exactly, but it carried some small echo of it, dulled and distant.
"May we talk?" he asked.
She shifted her weight onto one foot, crossing her arms with the kind of ease that didn't come from comfort but from a decision to keep him exactly where he was. Her expression gave him nothing.
"I don't think we have anything to talk about."
He stepped forward, slow enough that the movement could not be mistaken for threat, yet far enough to shorten the gap between them in a way that made the air feel tighter. "I would like to apologize."
"You already did," she replied. "In words. And… financially." The last word bent in her mouth, carrying a faint twist of bitterness so subtle it almost disappeared, though not quickly enough to spare him the sting.
"I don't know how to do it right," he said. There was no sharpness in it, only the raw admission of a man who had run out of ways to disguise the fact. "Gifts, I understand. But words… not very much. Not with you."
Her eyes didn't waver. They held him there in the narrow space between shadow and light, steady as the quiet in the hall, unblinking in a way that made him feel as though every other sound in the house had vanished to give her gaze room to stay exactly where it was.
"I do believe you were drugged," she said at last, her voice quiet enough that the air between them seemed to lean in to catch it. "I believe you didn't mean for it to happen like that." Her throat moved with a small swallow, one she tried to hide, the motion delicate but unmissable. "But that doesn't change what you stole from me."
The words reached him like a hand pressing to his chest, not to comfort, but to make certain he felt the full weight of them. His breath caught. He nodded slowly, each movement deliberate, as though accepting something too heavy to lift all at once.
"I would never hurt you," he said. His voice broke, not loudly, but in a way that sounded as though it had been pulled apart from the inside. "I've never said things like that to anyone, let alone someone I—" The word he meant to finish with lodged somewhere between his ribs and his throat, and he let it die there. "I'm sorry. I am."
She didn't answer. She didn't even shift her stance. It was not the kind of silence that waited for him to fill it. It was the kind that existed for its own sake, unbroken because breaking it would make it less true.
"Please," he said, and this time the sound of it cracked against the edges of the quiet, raw and uneven. "Say something. Anything."
She did not give him words. She gave him movement instead. One slow step, then another, until she stood close enough for him to feel the faint brush of her sleeve. She lifted her hand, palm cool against the fevered heat of his skin, and let it settle along his cheek.
Her touch was steady, cold and clean and impossibly careful, as if she were handling something fragile despite knowing it had already been broken.
Her eyes did not soften, but they held him all the same. Held the ugliness he could not hide. Held the ruin he had made and the pieces of it still clinging to him. There was no forgiveness in it, no anger either—just the unflinching acceptance of the truth as it stood between them.
She let her hand fall. The space where it had been felt like an exposed nerve. Without a word, she turned and walked past him, her steps even and quiet, the hem of her gown brushing the floor until she reached her door. She did not look back before it closed behind her.
He stayed where he was for a heartbeat too long, the sound of her retreat still loud in his chest, then sank to his knees on the cold stone. The corridor offered no comfort, no shadow deep enough to hide in. He knelt there anyway, in front of a door that no longer opened for him, the silence pressing down until he could not tell if it belonged to the house or to her.
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He did not remember walking back to his room. The corridor blurred around him, walls seeming too narrow, the lamps leaning in as if they might whisper what they saw. His hand found the door before his eyes did, and the handle twisted under his grip like it wanted to resist. The slam that followed shook the frame so hard that dust fell from the join in the ceiling.
Something in him snapped before the echo had even died. His breath came sharp, shallow. The shape of her face in his mind was too steady, her voice too calm, her fingers too cold on his skin. He wanted to claw it out of his head, but it stayed.
The first thing to go was the chair by the fire. He seized it by the back and threw it into the hearth, the legs splintering against the iron grate. The flames coughed at the sudden offering, sparks leaping into the air like startled insects. He wanted the sound of it to drown everything out, but it was not enough.
The glass decanter on the mantel followed. It struck the stone hard enough to burst into shards that skittered across the floor. The scent of liquor opened in the room, sharp and heavy, mixing with the faint metallic tang already rising from the cut along his knuckles where the glass had caught him.
He pulled the books from the shelves in handfuls, leather bindings tearing under his grip, pages scattering in the air like trapped birds. One struck the wall with a crack and fell open, its spine bent backwards until the stitching split. He ground his heel into it until the paper tore.
The desk came next. He swept everything from its surface with one violent motion. Papers scattered, bottles of ink burst against the floorboards, the black spreading in slow veins across the grain. He pushed the desk hard toward the wall. The crash was deep, wooden, final. A drawer sprang open, spilling pens and folded letters, some crumpling under his boots before they could settle.
The curtains would not come down easily. He ripped at them until the rings gave way, the heavy fabric collapsing on top of him like a suffocating hand. The velvet smelled of dust and stale heat. He threw it aside, stepping on it until the pile lay twisted and lifeless.
The mirror on the dresser caught his reflection and froze him for a moment. His face stared back, flushed and feverish, eyes rimmed red, jaw tight with something that no longer felt entirely human. It was not shame. It was not grief. It was both, bound together until he could not tell them apart.
He hit the glass with his fist. The crack echoed in the back of his skull. Silver fractures spread outward from the point of impact, cutting his reflection into pieces. His blood streaked the webbing, dripping to the floor in thin, bright lines.
He hit it again. And again. Until the shards began to fall into the sink below, some catching the light before vanishing into shadow. His hand throbbed, skin torn and slick, but he could not stop.
The wardrobe's door came off under his pull, the wood splitting down the grain. He dragged it across the room and let it crash against the bedframe. His clothes followed, all dragged down and torn at the seams, trampled until they were rags.
His voice rose in fragments, some words broken beyond recognition. Her name threaded between curses, torn out of his throat like something diseased. He spat them into the empty room, but they hung there, clinging to the air as if the walls wanted to keep them.
The fire cracked behind him, the light throwing warped shadows along the walls. They seemed to reach for him, curling over the broken furniture, stretching across the ruined carpet.
He tore the sheets from the bed and threw them into the fire. The flames caught quickly, racing up the fabric in a line of orange and black. The smell of burning cotton filled the air, bitter and thick.
Shards of glass littered the floor. He stepped among them barefoot now, the sting sharp enough to draw his breath in through his teeth. Blood dotted the carpet in irregular shapes. The pain barely registered; it felt deserved, necessary.
He dropped to his knees, his hands sinking into the debris, palms meeting edges that bit deeper into his skin. The sting grounded him for a moment, but the weight inside his chest did not shift. His shoulders heaved. The sound of his own breathing was harsh, almost animal.
He pressed his bloody hands to his face. The heat from the fire reached the back of his neck, but it did not soften him. The red smeared over his cheekbones, into his mouth. The taste of iron bloomed on his tongue.
The room had stopped looking like a place where anyone could sleep. It had turned into a carcass, stripped and broken, the bones of furniture jutting from the shadows, the floor a patchwork of paper, glass, and ash.
Still it was not enough.
He moved again, slower now, but with a steadiness that felt more dangerous than the earlier frenzy. Every object that had not yet been broken met the same end.
The small clock on the mantel fell, its ticking silenced. The framed photographs were shattered, their silver frames bent out of shape, the images inside torn until they were nothing but fragments of smiles and shadows.
When there was nothing left to ruin, he stopped in the middle of the floor. His knees were bleeding. His hands shook without his permission. The fire was still burning, but the light was dimmer now, the flames curling low, feeding on the last of what he had given them.
Her silence was still in his head. It had not been moved or dulled by destruction. It sat in him like a cold stone, untouched by everything he had done.
The shadows on the walls lengthened, stretching toward him like they knew there was nothing left to protect. He let them come.
He had nothing left to stop them with.
⋆｡ ﾟ☁︎｡ ⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡ ⋆
The fire had eaten most of the sheets, but the smell still clung thick to the room. It lived in the fibers of what had not burned, in the blackened edges of the curtains, in the cracks of the floorboards beneath him.
A heat lay heavy in the air, not the pleasant kind that comes from comfort, but the kind that feels like breath trapped in a closed throat, an unspoken word that will never be released. It was the heat of something that had been destroyed too recently to be forgotten.
He sat in the middle of the floor, legs folded loosely, bare feet pressed to the carpet that was no longer carpet but a ruin, a rough map of ash, glass, and dark stains that stuck when he moved. The burn on his left palm had gone deep enough to pull the skin tight and make the fingers curl slightly in protest. He had not tried to clean it. The blood on his right hand had dried in a dull crust between his knuckles, flaking when his grip shifted. His wrists ached from the force he had put into the breaking. His shoulders still held the tremor of it.
Everything was still now. Too still.
The walls seemed to lean in on him. Not enough to touch, but enough to make him feel as though they could if they wished, as though the room had begun to close its lungs around him.
The shelves that had once been neat were jagged gaps now, their contents scattered like the aftermath of some crime he could not quite remember committing.
The mirror above the dresser was a dead thing, all silver and broken teeth, reflecting nothing in full, just shards of his face cut into pieces too small to belong to anyone living. The fire whispered in the hearth, low and uneven, as if it too was afraid of breaking the quiet.
His breath came slow, ragged at the edges. Each inhale pulled the scent of burnt fabric deeper into his chest until it seemed to settle in the back of his throat. His tongue tasted of soot.
He thought of her hand on his cheek. The cold of it. The way her eyes had held him still without asking for anything, without offering anything in return. The memory was precise, fixed in place like a pin driven into flesh. It replayed again and again, an unrelenting loop that grew heavier each time until he wanted to claw at his own skin just to force it out of him. He could feel the ghost of her palm more vividly than the blood drying on his hands.
Her silence was louder than the breaking had been.
He turned his head slightly and saw the collar he had meant for the mooncalf. It lay on the floor near the door, knocked there during the chaos, untouched by the fire but somehow dimmed all the same. The silver clasp had caught the light in the earlier frenzy, a sharp gleam that had cut through the haze, but now it looked dull, almost tarnished, as though it had taken on his shame and kept it.
He reached for it without thinking. The velvet was soft under his fingers, softness made for the living, not for hands like his.
The tiny engraved tag swung once, catching what little sound remained in the room and returning it in a muted chime. The sound should have been nothing, should have vanished, but it lingered inside his skull as if it had found a space to echo.
He gripped it hard enough to feel the edges bite into his palm, reopening the burn so that heat spread under the skin. His breath hitched. He thought of putting it back in its box, of pretending it had never been made, but he knew he would not. He would keep it. Not as a gift now, but as a weight. Something small and inescapable to keep in his pocket when the house felt too quiet. A piece of proof for himself. A reminder that even when he meant beauty, he could make it feel like chains.
The fire hissed. A piece of wood inside split with a sharp crack. He flinched at the sound, though his eyes never left the collar.
His head felt too heavy for his neck. He let it drop forward, his elbows pressing into his thighs until the muscles in his back ached. He stayed that way for a long time, the blood from his hand staining the velvet darker, the heat from the hearth warming the side of his face in uneven pulses.
The shadows moved with the firelight. At first they stayed where they belonged, shifting across the walls, harmless in their sway, but his eyes kept tracking them as though they might change. Then one lingered in the far corner. It was too still, too sharp-edged to be fire. It had a weight to it, a presence that felt less like a trick of light and more like the moment before something steps forward.
His chest tightened.
He didn't look up right away. He counted three breaths, then four, before he dared to raise his eyes.
Nothing.
The corner was empty. The shape was gone. Only the broken glass caught the light now, reflecting small movements that could have been him or the fire.
But he kept staring anyway. His eyes refused to leave it, even when the muscles in his neck began to ache. Something in him was waiting for it to come back, waiting for the room to admit that it had seen him, and was still seeing him.
The air had cooled enough that the burns on his palm began to sting, the skin tightening as though trying to shrink away from the memory of what he had done. His knuckles ached with the beginnings of bruises. The back of his throat felt raw, though he could not remember shouting. His ears still rang faintly, but it was unclear whether it was from the noise or from the silence that had followed.
He let the collar slip from his hand at last. It landed soundlessly on the ash-streaked floor. The tag rolled once, twice, before settling face down, hiding the single word it carried.
His eyes drifted to the mirror again. This time he saw himself more fully, though the glass was warped and fractured. His face appeared in sections, each one carrying an expression that did not match the others. In one shard his mouth was open, in another his eyes were closed, and in another his gaze was fixed on something far away. It was like looking at several strangers wearing his skin.
He did not move closer to it. He was not sure what he might see if all those pieces aligned.
Somewhere in the house, a door closed. Softly. Slowly. Not with the weight of a hand, but with the careful push of something that wanted to be quiet.
The walls did not move, but he felt them listening.