Chapter 35 #2
I laugh, really laugh, and something lifts in my chest I didn’t realize had been buried so deep.
And then Kai looks at me, snow in hand.
I back away, hands raised. “Don’t you dare.”
His mouth lifts. Just slightly. Just enough. Before cold explodes across my shoulder.
I scream, grab snow, run at him.
He dodges, catches my wrist, and for one second we’re close, too close. Breathless. Laughing.
His hand is cold around mine, his smile barely there, but real. Real enough that I can feel it in my chest.
And around us, the screams don’t lessen.
Bea shrieking as Will chucks snow at her from behind a bench. Kym launching a snowball with terrifying accuracy at Liam’s back. Lilia slipping, screaming, laughing harder than I’ve ever heard her.
We’re loud. We’re ridiculous. We’re soaked and freezing and out of breath.
And yet, the world couldn’t have been quieter. Like the snow’s swallowed up everything else. The fear. The grief. The questions. All of it muffled under layers of endless white.
And for a moment, I feel as though we’ve been here forever, like we would always be here. It won’t last, some part of me knows that, but for now it’s enough.
Enough to make me wish, just for a little longer, that it could.
***
Lilia eyes me warily through the mirror, her gloved fingers hovering above the bowl of dye. “Are you sure about this?”
I nod, steady. “I’ve never been surer of anything.”
Because this hair, this colour, this particular shade—I’ve never liked it. Never felt like it belonged to me.
It always belonged to him.
To Mason.
The same tone, the same dull gold that made people pause and say, Oh, you must be siblings. You look just like him.
Even our birthdays were the same.
We weren’t even twins, for goodness sake. Just horrid luck.
And I hated it. I hated how I was never just Addie.
Always Mason’s sister.
And I think I let that be true for longer than I care to admit.
So when Lilia dips the brush into the bowl, dark dye dripping like ink, and pulls the first section of my hair taut, I don’t flinch. Not once.
“I still think this is impulsive,” she mutters under her breath.
“Good,” I murmur. “It’s about time I was.”
By the time we finish rinsing, my hands are trembling slightly from the cold. Lilia towel-dries my hair with too much enthusiasm, muttering something about “dramatic transformations” under her breath.
Then she steps back, eyes narrowing as she studies me.
“Well?” I ask.
Lilia tilts her head, lips quirking. “What I think, Addie. Is that you finally look like yourself.”
And when I glance at the mirror, at the girl staring back with wet, freshly dyed, dark brown hair, I think… maybe I do.
Maybe for the first time, I actually do.
“I love it,” I whisper.
Lilia smiles, her eyes soft. “Good. You should.”
She disappears for a second, then reappears with an armful of clothes and an unnecessarily serious expression.
“Okay,” she says, dumping the pile on the bed just outside the closet. “Time for phase two.”
“Phase two?”
“The showcase. The party. You do remember we’re still going, right?”
I blink. “Oh, right.”
Lilia groans, dragging me back into the closet. “I told you already. Everyone dresses up for this. It’s like a thing. Last day of school, big ballet performance in the theatre, Christmas party at Steele House after. The outfits are the event, Addie.”
She spins toward the clothing rack and flips through hangers with laser precision, muttering to herself. “This one,” she says finally, pulling a dress off the hanger and handing it to me like it’s sacred. “This is the one.”
I stare at it.
It’s silk, backless and a deep wine-red. In short, it’s utterly stunning.
“Lilia…” I trail off, staring. “That’s—there’s no back.”
“Exactly,” she says, eyes gleaming. “It’s drama, it’s confidence, it’s you, whether you realize it yet or not.”
“I don’t think this counts as confidence. This feels like a midlife crisis.”
“Great,” she chirps. “Have it early while your skin’s still good.”
Before I can protest further, she tosses the dress at me and grabs a sleek black one for herself. It’s dramatic, and beautiful, and very Lilia.
She catches my expression and smirks.
“What?” she says. “If I have to be trapped at a ballet performance with zero snacks, I might as well look good.”
I shake my head, trying not to smile as I step into the dress she gave me. The fabric is cool against my skin, and it fits weirdly well.
After we both reemerge from the closet, Lilia grabs her makeup bag off the dresser and plops me in front of the mirror. “Sit. No objections. I’m turning you into someone dangerous.”
She works fast, a soft brush here, a gentle pull at the corner of my eye there. Smudge of eyeliner, swipe of colour on my lips.
“You’re not overdoing it?” I ask, squinting at my reflection.
“No,” she says, already working on her own mascara. “This is called effort, Addie. I do it three times a week minimum.”
I roll my eyes, but the corners of my mouth tug upward.
By the time she finishes her own look, and mine, I look in the mirror and suddenly feel strange.
Because it’s still me. Just… different. More like a version I might’ve imagined once but never really allowed to exist.
Lilia fastens the clasp at the nape of my neck and peers over my shoulder into the mirror. “Told you,” she says with a satisfied nod. “Dangerous.”
Kai
I hear them in the walls again.
The whispers. The faces that hide in the stillness of the room, somewhere in the space between the ceiling and the floor. Some of them are mine.
The light bends strangely in here. It flickers even when nothing’s on. I don’t trust it. There are shadows that move without cause, too, and I know—I know—someone else is breathing in this room. But every time I look, it’s just me.
I haven’t moved in hours. Or minutes. Or maybe it’s been days. Time doesn’t really make sense anymore. I just sit in one spot, staring at the same crack in the wall, convinced it’s getting wider. Maybe everything is.
Or maybe the crack isn’t in the wall at all.
I stare at it until my vision blurs, and even then, I don’t blink. There’s a rhythm to it, like a heartbeat I can’t quite hear. Sometimes I think if I listen closely enough, I’ll understand what it’s trying to say.
And still, the fire doesn’t go out.
It’s in my ribs now. Like something alive. Something chewing. A boil instead of a burn. And once it starts, it doesn’t stop.
I wonder what they’d make of me now. Here, like this. What would they think when I’ve finally done what I need to do?
They’ll think I’ve lost it. They’ll call me a monster. A madman, maybe.
And I’ll let them. Because to them, the only good man is a silent one.
They’ll be confused at first, but after a while, they’ll blame me for what they’ve done. What they’ve created. And suddenly, you’re not a tragedy anymore. You’re a threat.
Let them look.
Let them name me.
Their morality is convenience above all else. A leash. It bends when it’s useful and breaks when it’s not. There is no such thing as good or evil. Just perspective. Just angles. Just blood on different hands.
What’s “good” is what keeps them comfortable.
What’s “evil” is whatever threatens it.
It all depends on who’s telling the story. And who’s still alive at the end of it.
The rules to it all are a cage. And the locks are on the inside.
I think, sometimes, that I should feel bad for it all.
For the lies I told. For the strings I pulled, and the doors I opened.
For the girl I leashed—strange how I might have been fond of her. Strange, and irrelevant. Because I used her anyway.
I’ve always excelled with my words. I’ve known of their importance from a young age. It doesn’t matter what you mean, only how beautifully you can say it.
And Adeline—my sweet, earnest Adeline—she believed every syllable. Unknowingly walked through every door I opened.
My Soreya.
She will curse me when she realizes. Or maybe she won’t—maybe she will curse herself. But either way, it doesn’t matter.
I don’t feel bad.
I can’t.
Because if I stop to feel bad, the whole thing unravels. And then the fire wins, and I lose everything.
So no, I won’t feel bad. Not yet. Maybe never.
I don’t need to be good, anyway.
I just need to win. I need them to pay.
It’s the only shape my life has left.
Maybe when it’s done, the fire will go out. Maybe then I’ll find out if there’s anything left of me under it. But until then, this is what I am. This is what they made.
I hate them.
I hate them.
They’ll never understand this kind of fire. They never deserved to.
There is no forgiveness. There is no redemption. There is only me. And what I remember. And what I will do.
What they made me do.
This stalker has something to do with Wren’s death, I’m sure of it. I know it with every fibre of my being.
Let them scream when it comes. Let them beg. Let them say they didn’t know. I don’t care. I’ve needed this goal for too long. I’ve carried the fire without a direction for so long I almost forgot what it feels like to move forward.
But I’m moving now. Straight for the target.
I won’t stop until I rip apart all of those responsible.
And burn them the way they burned her.
I sit in the wreckage of my room. It looks like something out of a fever dream. Papers are scattered like ash—some torn, some burned at the edges, most stained with blood.
Blood on the corners of equations, smudged across the margins, blotting out half the numbers. Blood on the pencils, too. On all of them.
I’m bleeding, I think. I might have been for a while. But I can’t, for the life of me, remember why. Or when it started. Or where the cut even is.
Christian left hours ago. Took Elliot with him. Said nothing, but I could see the tightness in his shoulders. He’s been stressed lately. That may have something to do with me.
I wonder if Christian would help me when the time comes. If he would lower himself—stoop to that level—for me.
I suppose he would.