Page 42 of Threads Of Madly Whispers

Salvation, an idea so foreign, so distant, once a myth I would never have dared to believe in. Yet, when I see her, I am undone. I am convinced that she, and only she, might be my salvation. But not a salvation of pure light, no. For with her comes something darker, something more intoxicating. Salvation wrapped in damnation, a perfect blend of sweetness and sin, of salvation and ruin all at once. How fitting, for she is as much a temptation as she is a balm to my soul.

Her secrets, oh, they are many. They weave around her like a cloak, each one heavier than the last. Some I can feel in the way her eyes shift when she thinks I’m not looking, in the silences she refuses to break, in the tension that hangs between us like an unspoken truth. How they stir something deep within me, a ravenous need to uncover them all, to strip away every veil she hides behind and peer into the parts of her that are as dark as my own. It maddens me, angers me to the very core, that after all this time, I still haven’t unlockedevery one of those mysteries, haven’t tasted the bitterness of her secrets in full.

She believes this game is hers to control. How sweet, how terribly sweet is her ignorance. She thinks of herself as the one pulling the strings, thinking she holds the reins, that she is the architect of our tangled fate. But the truth is, she is as much a prisoner in this dance as I am. This is not her game alone, and it is certainly not mine either. No, this game—this endless, twisted, beautiful game—is ours. We are both players, both equally bound to the rules we write as we go, ever tangled in each other’s wills, each other’s desires and darkness.

The more she thinks she has me, the more I crave the unraveling. The more she tries to keep me at arm’s length, the more I pull her closer, drawn into the gravity of what we have created, of what we are becoming. It is a game of shadows and whispers, of power and submission, of love and hatred. It is a game that is both ours and no one else’s—a game that will end only when we choose, only when every secret, every lie, and every broken piece of us has been laid bare.

And when that moment comes, when we are left standing in the wreckage of it all, when the final card is played, I will know one thing for certain, salvation has never tasted so much like damnation. And in her, in her twisted beauty, I have found both.

Chapter 25

Wild Rose

Lost in the Rain’s Rapture

“What was she like?”

My heels clack against the ligneous floor as I pick up the portrait frame and reflect it towards the light spilling through the open balcony doors. The feathery zephyr flowing in wafts the aroma of cigars and tea around us. The rain is settling, and the glacial is slowly filling the tip of mountains as we enjoy what little of warmth is left. Or at least I do, Sebastian gravitates towards darkened spaces and gloom like a barn owl. Mariah had failed to pick up her quandary off the floor when I requested to have my breakfast in his company.

She seemed thunderstruck as she hesitantly followed behind me with a tray of food to his office. I did not bother knocking either, so I uninvitedly let myself in. The food looked too good to not have an audience. So, like manna, filled into my hands, I took the chance to inquisitively pry into his life, for reasons that are not as pious.

The breeze flurries in once more, making my skirt rise a little. Today I woke upfeelingshamelessly coquettish, feeling like swaying candor gospels sitting on a certain man’s tongue. He sits behind his desk, looking ominously unperturbed andhot, with an ivory shirt complimenting his coal-black slacks and his hair curled so perfectly on the top of his head.

His blue orbs never looked up from the documents sprawled on his table at first. But that was until I piqued his interest or, more so, what I held in my grasp, pulled his pyretic stare to me.

“She’s gorgeous.” And indeed, she was—just like her damned son. His father must have been jealous. Sebastian was the mirror image of the woman who bore him. From the black curls resting on his head to the ocean-deep eyes and the gentle curve of his nose, he was undeniably hers.

“She was.” His voice is distant yet gentle. I take my seat across from him, setting the picture back on his desk.

“You must miss her?”

He lets the pen slip from his fingers as he leans back in his chair.

“It’s beneath you to wield my mother as a tool when you could simply ask what troubles your conscience, morally.”

He gazes past me, as if searching for the cards I keep pressed to my heart. Stoic in every sense, not a flicker of softness mars his face—his demeanor unyielding. A fortress of stone, yet fractured in places. Sebastian is a wolf draped in wool, a hypocrite unable to call a spade a spade. Not when his own intentions are as clouded as mine. Perhaps it was cruel to bait him with a past still bleeding when my own wounds remain so raw.

“You talk of morals as if you have them.” I lift mychamomile tea, letting its warmth settle on my lips before sipping its richness.

“And yet you carry yourself with an innocence long lost.” His voice is calm, laced with something dark.

I set my teacup down. The bowl of fruit, glazed in strawberry syrup, and the chocolate crepes no longer look as tempting as they did moments ago.

And I am more certain now—everything his light touches withers. I’d like to see flowers survive in his presence.

“My mother always said, the world only ever knows what you show it. So while my innocence perished, my will to wilder the enemy hasn’t”

He could not be further from the truth. Innocence, once worn like a veil over the eyes, is nothing more than a fleeting fantasy. When I watched the blood of my parents spill onto the road, their lives slipping away at the hands of my uncle, that innocence vanished into the air. It shattered within me, like a mirror crashing to the floor, each broken piece reflecting a part of my soul lost forever.

My world burned to the ground that night, flames licking at the ruins of everything I once knew. As the fire consumed all that was familiar, leaving only charred remnants, I made a promise—one that would bind me to the wreckage of that moment, a vow forged in the ashes.

“A lie then.”

“Roses have thorns for a reason, Sebastian.”

He hums.

They’ll never see my tears. They’ll never watch me succumb to their brutality. They’ll never bask in my misery and they’ll never know just how many pieces I had to glue back in the dark. They fractured me and for that I shall bless them with my rage.

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