Chapter 22
The office is heavy with the scent of old paper, expensive tobacco, and the lingering, metallic tang of something I can’t quite name.
It’s a gothic sanctuary, all dark mahogany and towering bookshelves that seem to swallow the light.
Rhys is buried in his work at the desk, the rhythmic scratching of his pen the only sound in the room, while I’ve claimed a spot by the massive window.
I stare out at the grey, oppressive sky, but my mind isn't on the weather. It’s drifting upward.
Just a few floors above where I used to sleep, in the suffocating silence of the attic, they’re waiting.
My mother. My sisters. Tucked away in those tin hearts, guarded by Rhys’s men like some macabre treasure.
He told me they’re mine to decide—burial, cremation, moving them to a place where the soil isn't cursed. Whenever you're ready, love, he’d said.
But I’m not ready. I’m a fucking mess, and the thought of them—still and preserved—feels like a weight pressing down on my lungs.
I turn away from the window and look at the blank canvas. The nightmares are clawing at the back of my eyelids again, vivid and visceral. I don't want charcoal today. I don't want the dry, scratchy honesty of graphite. I want something that feels like the void.
I reach for the oil paints.
I fucking love oil paint. It’s thick, indulgent, and smells of linseed and obsession.
It has a depth that charcoal can't touch, a texture that lets me build layers of grief and madness. With this, I can create rich, suffocating blacks, deep, arterial reds, and cold, dead blues. I can paint the flicker of a dying candle, the cling of graveyard mist, the hairline fractures in porcelain skin, and the damp, oppressive feel of wet stone. It’s timeless.
It’s gothic. It’s exactly how my head feels.
I start with the background, slapping a heavy, textured layer of midnight black and deep violet onto the canvas. I don't use a brush for everything; I use my fingers, smearing the paint, feeling the slick, greasy glide of it against my skin.
I begin to shape the image. It’s a scene from the deepest pit of my memory—a distorted version of the attic.
I paint the Tin Heart, but I make them bleed, a slow, visceral drip of crimson oil that looks wet, almost fresh.
In the center, I paint a figure—not quite a person, but a ghost of a girl with cracked porcelain skin, her eyes hollowed out and filled with gold leaf.
Around her, I paint a swarm of moths. Not just any moths, but great, velvet-winged creatures in shades of ash and bone, their wings overlapping until they look like a shroud.
I paint them fluttering around the figure, some landing on the cracked cheeks, others dissolving into the darkness.
I’m lost in it. The world outside the canvas ceases to exist. I’m not just painting; I’m exhaling the filth and the trauma, pushing it out of my chest and onto the fabric. I don't notice the time. I don't notice that I’ve stopped caring about the mess.
I’m deep into a streak of cadmium red, blending it into a bruised purple, when the air shifts.
I feel him before I see him. That predatory, warm presence that always manages to find me. I blink, snapping back to reality, and realize I’ve gone completely off the rails with the paint.
I look down at myself. I’m a fucking disaster.
My hair is a wild, tangled nest, sticking up in every direction.
There’s a smudge of black paint smeared across my cheek like a bruise, and a thick, vivid streak of crimson runs across the back of my hand and wrist, looking for all the world like a fresh wound.
I’m not elegant. I’m not the polished doll he dresses up.
I look like a lunatic who’s had a fight with a paint bucket.
I look up at Rhys, my face heating up, a small, embarrassed laugh escaping my throat. "Fuck, I've made a right mess of myself, haven't I?"
Rhys doesn't laugh. He doesn't tell me to go clean up. He just stands there, his eyes dark and roaming over me with that intense, possessive hunger. A slow, dangerous smile spreads across his lips.
"Don't move," he commands, his voice a low, gravelly rumble.
Before I can protest, he reaches for his camera. Click.
I let out a genuine laugh, the sound echoing in the quiet office. "Rhys, stop it! I look absolutely mental."
"You look fucking perfect," he murmurs, stepping closer, the lens of the camera capturing every smudge of black and streak of red. Click.
I remember how I used to feel. The way I’d recoil from the camera, the way I hated my own reflection because I couldn't stand the sight of the broken thing staring back.
How I only saw my sisters instead of myself.
I used to want to disappear, to be invisible so I wouldn't have to acknowledge my own existence.
But now? Now I’m standing here, covered in the colors of my nightmares, creating something beautiful out of the wreckage. I don't shrink away. I don't hide. I just smile at him, a flicker of defiance and peace in my chest, and turn back to my canvas.
He keeps taking the photos—the way my fingers grip the brush, the intensity in my eyes, the paint staining my skin—and I just keep painting. For the first time, I don't mind being seen. Because with Rhys, the mess isn't something to be fixed. It's something to be worshipped.
Rhys has been talking about the scale of the Midnight Menagerie for hours, claiming there are corners of this fucking place that would make a sane person lose their mind. I didn’t believe him—not really. I thought I’d seen the worst of his madness, the darkest parts of his soul.
I was wrong.
He leads me deep beneath the earth, down winding stone stairs that smell of damp soil and ancient rot, until we reach a heavy iron door. When he heaves it open, the air that hits me is cold, stagnant, and thick with the scent of beeswax and old death.
"Welcome, love," he whispers, his voice echoing. "The Underground Catacombs."
My breath hitches. It’s exactly the kind of twisted shit he’d curate.
Endless, yawning tunnels stretch out into the gloom, illuminated by hundreds of flickering candles that cast dancing, distorted shadows against the walls.
And the walls... fuck, the walls are lined with skulls.
Thousands of them, bleached white and staring with empty sockets, interspersed with grotesque, carved saints whose stone eyes seem to follow my every move.
It feels like the earth itself is breathing, waiting to swallow me whole
We’re completely alone. The silence is so heavy it feels physical, pressing against my eardrums.
Rhys stops walking. He doesn't touch me, but I can feel the predatory heat radiating off him. When he speaks, his voice has changed. The tenderness is gone, replaced by something jagged and dangerous.
"I want your fear, Ophelia," he says, and a shiver races down my spine that has nothing to do with the cold. "I want it to overwhelm you. I want you to feel it in your marrow."
I freeze, my heart hammering against my ribs. I look at him, searching for a hint of a joke, but his eyes are voids—black, bottomless, and utterly unhinged.
"I shouldn't have fallen in love with you," he continues, his voice a low, menacing growl. "I’ve become something I never thought I’d be. I let you get too close to my heart, and in a few fucking seconds, I became a stalker who will never let you go. I'm a monster because of you."
He steps closer, his presence suffocating. "And now? Now I want you to run. I want to feel you trying to escape me. I want to chase you through this hellhole and destroy every single stone of this place until I get you back. I want to see that exquisite terror in your eyes."
He leans in, his breath hot against my ear, his voice dripping with a psychotic edge. "Look at what you've made me become."
I’m not faking it. The fear hits me like a physical blow, knocking the wind out of my lungs. I stumble back, my voice trembling. "Are you... are you bluffing, Rhys? Tell me you're fucking joking."
He doesn't answer with words. Instead, he reaches out and casually knocks over a heavy brass candle holder.
The flame catches on a stray piece of cloth or old parchment on the floor, and whoosh—a wall of orange fire erupts behind him, casting his silhouette in a towering, demonic shadow that swallows the tunnel.
He looks like a god of death standing in the mouth of a furnace.
"This place goes on for many many meters, love," he purrs, the fire reflecting in his dark pupils. "And there is only one way out. At the very end."
He smiles, and it’s the scariest thing I’ve ever seen. "Run."
I bolt.
I turn on my heel and sprint into the darkness, but my legs feel like lead.
I’m so overwhelmed, so fucking terrified, that my coordination is shot.
I can't move as fast as I want to; it feels like I'm running through waist-deep water.
My chest tightens, my vision begins to blur at the edges, and I can feel a panic attack clawing its way up my throat.
I'm hyperventilating, the air tasting of smoke and ancient dust.
The tunnels are a blur of flickering light and white bone. Every time I pass a carved saint, I swear the stone fingers are reaching for me. The skulls seem to be laughing at my desperation.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
I can hear him. He isn't running; he's stalking. He's taking his time, savoring the hunt, the rhythmic sound of his boots on the stone echoing through the corridors like a heartbeat.
I risk a glance over my shoulder.
Behind me, the tunnel is a corridor of fire, the flames licking the ceiling and turning the skulls into glowing embers.
And there he is. Emerging from the smoke, his face half-hidden in shadow, his eyes locked onto me with a terrifying, obsessive hunger.
He looks like a predator who has already won.