Page 18 of Threads Of Madly Whispers

Chapter 11

Wild Rose

The Dance of the Damned

I fucked up.

No—scratch that— that was not a fuckup.

A fuck up wouldn’t feel like knives being logged in my eyeballs, to see the catastrophic dismantling that I just did must have been a gruesome sight to witness. I danced like my feet hadn’t known the mere definition of the word. My body was stiff and unruly, but it was my mind that played the biggest treachery. The betrayal of my own body tastes bitter against my tongue.

I led myself into my own calamitous regret. I obscured the lines between reality and mistaken chimera. I let myself get lost, knowingly risking the one chance I had at freedom. The glass room was teeming withBird Dogs, and yet I tore up my own failing ticket, deciding today, of all days, not only to be late but to wear the guise of unworthiness, as if I didn’t belong in this class.

Being chosen was my escape, the key to leaving thisplace behind, to inhale brighter days, to taste freer air, to know moments with less pain than the ones that would be promised today. Callum was high on something, his state unsteady, painful to witness. When the frustration inside him could no longer be contained, his hands became violent, and I became his punching bag.

I was early for once and close to unlocking the door and bolting for the bus, when he pulled me by my hair and slapped me to shreds. He was less feral today than usual, his brutality quickly fading before he scurried out of the house, grumbling curses under his breath.

Tears did not swell, only the pain and the bruises that were starting to shade. So I washed my face quickly, masked the pain with makeup, and rushed out of the house, burying the chaos beneath a facade.

My mind was still trying to grasp the threads of lucidity when I got here. Yet, I entitled my torment to imbibe my conscience, I sanctioned it to draw me into a grisly place. And I allowed it to rust my performance materially.

“Are you okay?” creased worry lines and concern-ridden eyes stare at me.

Naseria pulls me into her arms before I can say anything and I let her. It feels nice, it feels warm. I want to tell her, gosh I want to tell her but while she knows everything, she doesn’t know this one little cloth of truth I keep to myself. It would sting her and not knowing how to get me out of it would scrape at her even worse.

“You’re choking –”

She holds me a moment longer, her arms tightening around me, as if afraid I’ll slip through her fingers. Then she lets go, the warmth of her embrace fading too quickly. “I have to rush for that voluntary thing I told you about, but you’re not well. My house tonight—some wine, and we’lltalk, yes?” Her face hardens, a mask of resolve, but her eyes betray her, filling with tears that mirror my own.

I hate crying, but it’s the only thing that feels real anymore.

“Nase—”

“You’re hurting,” her voice breaks, as if the words themselves are too heavy to bear. “I see you—all of you. And when you dissociate like that, when you fall away from yourself, I fall too. I hurt, just as you do.”

I quickly wipe away the single tear that escapes down her face, and pull her back into my arms, as though trying to stitch her together with my touch.

“Forever,” she whispers, her voice fragile.

“And ever,” I reply, the words hollow but true.

“I’ve got to go, but this isn’t over,” she says, her gaze lingering on me like a shadow before she turns and disappears into the cold, her footsteps light yet distant, as if each one is pulling her further away from me.

I stand there, caught in the strangeness of it all, feeling the weight of solitude pressing down, yet something lingers in the space around me—an unsettling presence. It’s as though the shadows themselves are watching, mirroring the sensation I get whenever he’s near. That ache, that pulls in my chest, a magnetic force that’s both suffocating and intoxicating. I’ve long given up trying to tame the disarray within me, the uncontrollable hunger for things I know I should not crave. The battle is lost. The justification, gone. It’s wrong, undeniably wrong, but I find myself embracing it with an almost sadistic satisfaction.

His attention, I crave it. There’s a feverish pulse that rises within me, a heat that courses through my veins whenever his eyes meet mine. It’s dangerous, like a venomseeping into my blood, but I can’t bring myself to push it away.

I look to the glass, a curious tug in my chest, and at that moment, I feel his gaze on me, though I know he’s not there. The thought is unsettling and stirs something I’m not ready to confront. And so I decide to move, to walk away from whatever it is that’s gnawing at me. But then the door opens, a soft creak that cuts through the silence like a knife.

In steps a man clad in a tuxedo, his hair a silver and pepper thread of age that tells stories of time. His eyes sweep the room until they land on me.

Butler Benjamin. The name, though I didn’t know it then, carries an odd thought. It drags me back to a time when Mama and I would sit, curled on the couch, watching an old comedy about a butler leading a double life. The memory hits me like a sudden storm, with rain-soaked nostalgia, but I don’t have the luxury of time to ponder on it.

“A pleasant morning, Miss Fontaine,” his voice is laced with formality, wrapped in a crisp British accent that seems too out of place for this room.

I blink, my lips parted in response, but the words fall empty from my tongue. “Good morning.” The sound of my voice feels wrong, foreign.

“You’ve been requested by the founder. In the gardens.”

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