Chapter 24
My Sanctuary
THE REQUIEM | Present
You look lovely,” my Mother says.
Her voice sounds smooth. I look into the big glass on the wall, but the girl staring back at me is wearing a giant cloud of white. A wedding dress. It has lace. It is beautiful and simple, but inside my chest, a small voice whispers that it is wrong. Everything is wrong.
But I smile at her anyway. If I smile, the needles stay out of my head.
“Time for your medicine, Selene,” Mama says, holding out the little pills.
I take them from her hand. I put them in my mouth, but I don’t swallow. I hide them under my tongue. When she looks away, I spit them into my palm and slide them deep into the folds of the white lace dress. I don’t want the quiet today. I want to see clearly, even if it hurts.
Mama helps me slide into my heels. They make me tall. Then she pulls the heavy veil down over my face. The world looks white and foggy through the mesh. Mama looks beautiful too, but she isn’t wearing white. She is wearing a red gown. Red like a rose. Red like… something else.
As we walk, Mama talks and talks. She tells me about Vane. She says he is so handsome. She says he loves me so much, and she tells me how much I love him back. I listen to her words, but they don’t stick in my brain. They just float away like bubbles.
We get into the back of a big, dark car.
There is a man in the front seat driving us.
I look at the back of his head. His hair, the shape of his ears…
he looks familiar. A little piece of a puzzle tries to fit into my mind, but it stops.
I can’t remember. My brain feels like it’s full of heavy static.
So, I look out the window instead.
The car moves fast, passing big buildings. I read the letters painted on the street panels and signs as we glide by. The words look strange. They don’t look like home.
“It feels like Paris,” I murmur, the word tasting funny on my tongue. “What is Paris, Mama?”
Mama doesn’t answer. She just pats my hand, her rings clicking together.
I lean closer to the glass, watching my reflection stretch over the moving streets. I reach up and touch the heavy string of pearls resting against my neck. Marriage. We are going to a marriage. Mine.
But why does it feel like I have already been married? Why does the white dress feel like an old story I’ve already read?
I stare deeper into my own eyes in the dark glass, trying to find the girl who lived before the migraine. But the glass doesn’t show me myself. It changes. The shadows in the window grow tall. Broad shoulders. A jacket as black as the night.
Grey eyes. All I can see is grey eyes looking back at me through the veil.
My breath hitches. I lift my hand, pressing my fingers flat against the cold windowpane, trying to touch his face, trying to make the shadow real.
Thump.
The glass shatters in my mind. Flashes of bright red blood spray across a white cloth. Screams bounce off high stone ceilings. The smell of sweet jasmine chokes my throat, mixed with the sharp stink of gunpowder. Church bells are ringing, ringing, ringing so loud it makes my ears bleed—
I shake my head hard, pressing my palms against my ears to make the noise stop. The memories disappear, leaving me gasping for air.
“Selene, pay attention.” Mama’s voice cuts through the fog.
I blink through my veil, forcing the grey eyes away, and turn my head back toward my Mother. Her lips are moving, speaking words I am supposed to understand. The white dress swallows me whole.
The car stops. The giant metal doors of a great big hotel are opened by men in matching gold-trimmed jackets.
My feet hurt. The heels make the ground feel uneven, and every step I take inside the grand lobby makes the pounding behind my eyes grow louder.
Thump. Thump. Thump. It feels like someone is hammering a nail straight through the center of my forehead.
The bright chandeliers look like exploding stars.
My migraine is waking up again, stretching its heavy, ugly arms across my mind.
“Smile, Selene,” Mama whispers, her hand clamping around my forearm. Her fingers press right over the yellowing, finger-shaped bruises on my wrist.
I wince, a small whimper catching in my throat, but I twist my lips upward. I try to be good.
We walk into a private room filled with the scent of expensive wine and too many white lilies.
“There he is,” Mama says, her voice bright and syrupy. “Stina, darling, look.”
She leads me toward a man standing by the fireplace. When I look at him through the white fog of my veil, my heart sinks into my stomach. He is old. His hair is the colour of winter frost, and his skin is lined with hard, deep creases. This is Vane. This is the man Mama said I love.
I don’t know how to feel. I stand frozen, my hands hidden inside the heavy lace folds of my wedding dress, squeezing the little pills I hid there earlier.
I look at Vane’s face and try to find a memory.
I try to make his face fit into the blurry, empty spaces inside my head.
But there is nothing. He is just a stranger dressed in a dark suit.
A stranger who looks at me like I am a prize he just bought from a store.
Everything inside me screams that this is wrong. The air is too thick. The walls are too close.
“I… I need to go to the bathroom, Mama,” I say, my voice sounding small and shaky.
Mama looks at me, her eyes narrowing into two sharp slits. She looks at my trembling hands. “Right now? We have guests arriving soon, Selene.”
“I’ll be right back. I promise,” I say, nodding frantically. “Just to fix my face. To wash the cold away.”
She lets go of my wrist, giving me a warning pat. “Be quick. Do not make him wait.”
I turn and walk away, my legs moving faster and faster until I reach the heavy wooden door of the restroom. I push inside and click the lock shut. Click. Just like the cage.
I let out a ragged breath. The air in here is colder. I step up to the mirror, but I don’t look at my face. I look past my reflection to the big glass window on the far wall. It leads out to a low back ledge, only a few feet above a quiet side alley.
I look down at my dress. Then I look at the white veil pinned to my hair—the veil that makes everything look foggy. I reach up with shaking fingers and tear it out, leaving the heavy white lace behind on the marble counter.
I need to run.
I don’t know where the roads go. I don’t know what country this is, or whose house is safe. I just know with a terrible certainty that I cannot stay here. If I stay here, the white dress will swallow me, and the grey eyes will disappear forever.
I scramble toward the window, pushing the glass pane upward with all the strength in my aching arms. The cool outside air hits my face, smelling of rain and car exhaust. I don’t hesitate. I lift the heavy skirt of my wedding dress, swing my legs over the ledge, and jump.
My heels hit the pavement hard, the sharp pain shooting up my ankles, but I don’t stop. I throw the shoes off, my bare feet hitting the wet, dirty asphalt of the alleyway.
And then I run.
I run into the open streets, the white lace dragging through puddles, tearing against the rough ground. People are staring.
They look like colourful blurs as I sprint past them, my breath burning in my lungs, the needles in my head breaking into a million sharp pieces.
Run. Run. Run.
I burst out of a narrow side street onto a huge, busy avenue filled with rushing yellow and black cars. The loud honking deafens me. The bright headlights blind me. I stumble forward, my bare feet slipping on the wet road.
A sharp, screeching sound tears through the air.
I turn my head. A massive car roars toward me, its lights swallowing the dark as it hits me.
Crunch.
And everything goes black.