Chapter 5
Violet
My grand plans for the weekend had crashed and burned.
Daddy had gotten short with me, Liam proved to be useless, and Rowan’s taunts left my mouth tasting like ash.
Sunlight filtered through cream gossamer curtains in my dorm room, the sheets twisted around my legs and my laptop balanced on my knees, while I tried to figure out what to do next.
I took a long sip of my water, wanting to wash away my failures and focus on the next task at hand.
Might as well grab the bull by its horns.
The screen glowed with search results for Oubliette locations. Their website offering nothing but tasteful black backgrounds and gold script addresses. No photos of interiors. No contact information. Just locations, like breadcrumbs for those who already knew the path.
I clicked through anyway, studying the exteriors. Nondescript buildings in expensive neighborhoods. The kind of places you walked past a thousand times without noticing, unless you knew what hid behind those unmarked doors.
In my first life, Edward had taken me to Oubliettes in multiple cities. Each one was similar in layout, in atmosphere, in the careful way they separated the social floor from the private rooms below. The dancers who worked the main floor were beautiful and untouchable in their confident smiles.
And yet I had been one of the hidden secrets. . . the merchandise that bled.
My fingers cramped around the laptop edge.
The websites revealed nothing useful. No application process, no audition schedules, no hint of how someone gained entry to that world.
Edward had simply walked through the doors, and the staff knew his name before he spoke it.
I had only assumed it was his money that opened those doors.
A reputation he threatened to defile. The right introduction.
I had none of those things.
But I knew how they operated, or at least, assumed how it worked.
For as often as Edward took me, I had noticed that new dancers rotated through regularly, providing fresh faces to keep the floor interesting.
His favorite had been Monday nights “because they ran slower,” he mentioned.
Knowing this gave me the confidence that management might be more willing to consider walk-ins.
I’d need the right clothes. The right makeup.
I needed money. But more than that, I needed proximity to Edward’s world.
From what I recalled, he’d disappeared into Oubliette’s depths regularly, leaving me topside to wait like a good pet.
If I could get inside and work the floor, maybe someone would remember him.
Maybe someone would know where to find him now.
I clicked once more on the image of Oubliette in Atlanta and realized it was not too far from me.
My stomach turned over, slick and cold. I wasn’t afraid of Edward anymore.
I wasn’t the scared, ignorant child he had once bought.
However, there was still a seed of fear planted deep within me from that time long ago.
I knew I needed to dig it out before it could take root and blossom.
I had to in order to take back my autonomy, especially if I went ahead with this plan.
Vengeance required patience. . . and the grit to walk back into the same kind of hell I’d died trying to escape before I was hung up to die.
It had been my own naivety to assume that going home to ask Daddy for money would work out.
While that had proven to be a bad idea, the thought of stepping through Oubliette’s doors was even more ominous. Hence why it was my last resort.
The difference? I was choosing my own path forward this time. This body had never been touched by those hands. My memories of love, safety, and trust warred with blurred recollections that flinched at the sound of expensive shoes on marble.
I closed the laptop and shoved it aside. Philosophy class started in thirty minutes. I needed to move, needed to stop thinking about what tonight might require. I grabbed clothes without looking, my bag, my phone, and turned towards the door just as it opened.
Alice stepped through, coffee in one hand, her other reaching for her keys. We collided.
Brown liquid arced through the air, splashed across her cream silk blouse, and down her brown pants. The cup hit the floor, bounced, and rolled under her desk.
“Oh, my god! I’m so sorry.” The words tumbled out in the genuine panic I felt. My hands moved on instinct, reaching for the spreading stain, trying to somehow undo what I’d done. My palms pressed against wet fabric, against the swell of her breast beneath.
She smiled, honey-colored eyes crinkling. “I was planning on drinking that instead of wearing it.”
I looked down. My hands splayed across her chest, coffee soaking through to my skin. Heat crawled up my neck, into my face.
“Shit, I’m sorry.” I jerked back, hands now wet, and reached for a dirty towel in my hamper. “Do you want a towel?” I offered, then felt foolish when she declined. I wrapped my arm around my middle self-consciously.
“It’s fine, Violet. I should’ve been paying attention.” Her voice carried that easy grace I’d never possess, the kind of calm that came naturally to women like her.
“No, this is my fault. Let me buy you a new top. I’m going shopping after class anyway.”
She started to protest when another voice cut through.
“Your guilt is apology enough.”
I turned. The woman standing behind Alice stole the air from my lungs.
Dark skin that caught the light and transformed it into something precious as she stood there in an ivory one piece. White hair falling past her waist in waves that belonged in fantasies, not freshman dorms. Bone structure that suggested aristocracy, divinity, something beyond simple genetics.
Beautiful didn’t cover it. This woman looked sculpted by hands that understood raw, primitive desire.
“Did any get on you?” My voice pitched higher than intended. Her clothes screamed money, the kind that made my trust fund look like pocket change.
She laughed, low and alluring. “No. I dodged.” She said, her accent bearing subtle shifts in vowels that made English sound like a second language worn comfortably. Similar to Rowan’s Russian inflections, but different. Older somehow.
“Holy shit, those are some great reflexes,” I gasped, then realized how uncouth I must have sounded to her.
“So I’ve been told.” A hint of amusement glinted in her dark eyes, like I’d missed the punchline. She inhaled, slow and deliberate. “You smell. . .” She paused, tasting the air. “interesting.”
My thighs clenched involuntarily. Why did accents do this to me?
“Um. . . thank you?”
Alice nudged her friend, and even that seemed like an elegant gesture as she shot me an apologetic smile. “Sorry. Natalia can be blunt, but she means well.”
Natalia. The name rolled through my head like smoke, hard to catch and harder to forget.
I moved to the door, held it open for them both. “I’m serious about replacing your blouse, Alice. I feel terrible.”
“Again. . . don’t worry about it.” She waved me off, already moving towards her dresser. “Someone should have warned me.” She gave a pointed look to Natalia, who was examining her manicured nails, clearly ignoring her friend.
“Right. . . listen, I’m heading to class, but I’ll probably be out late tonight. Don’t wait up.”
Alice pulled the ruined blouse over her head, revealing creamy skin against a lace bralette underneath in the same fashion as her friend’s. Delicate. Expensive. Elegant.
I felt like a dumpster fire in my oversized hoodie and sweatpants.
“Perfect timing. Natalia and I are going out anyway.” She smiled, easy and unbothered by her half-dressed state. “Don’t wait on me.” She was being polite. We had never waited on each other, but the gesture was still kind.
“Thanks. I’ll see you two later,” I said, then managed something between a nod and a bow as I turned towards Natalia. Her smile curved, demure and knowing at once.
Total opposite of me. God, why am I so embarrassing?
I fled into the hallway and pulled air back into my lungs as I headed to class. I made a mental note to watch where I was going and stop crashing through this life like an anxious wrecking ball.
The auditorium filled slowly, students trickling in with the desperate energy of people who’d rather be anywhere else. I found a seat mid-section as Professor Wright strolled through the door.
Five-foot-two of controlled chaos wrapped in a sweater that assaulted the concept of color coordination.
Striking gray hair caught the overhead lights while his rainbow plaid pants clashed beautifully with the geometric nightmare covering his torso and round wire-frame glasses. Somehow, he made it work.
I typically avoided older men on principle, but his audacity bordered on attractive.
“Students!” His voice boomed, far too large for his frame. “Welcome back to another week of Philosophy 101. I see none of you have fled screaming, which speaks either to your dedication or your masochism.”
He dropped his bag on the desk. Pens clattered out, skittered across the floor in six different directions. He kept talking while crouching to collect them, unbothered by the chaos.
“Today we’re dividing the room. Males on the left, females on the right. Yes, I know! How very binary of me, but bear with it for the exercise.”
Murmurs rippled through the auditorium as we shuffled, relocated, and created a physical divide down the center aisle.
“Excellent!” Professor Wright straightened, pens clutched in one fist. “Today’s topic: gendered identity, social behavior, and the structures we build without realizing we’re trapped inside them.
” His smile sharpened. “This won’t be a battle.
Just an exploration of the walls we can’t see because we’re standing too close. ”
The discussion started with basic observations and spiraled quickly. A male student near the front leaned back in his seat, dimples flashing. “Biologically speaking, men are built for providing and protecting. Women for childbearing. There’s a natural order to these things.”
My jaw clenched. Natural order. That had been the same justification Edward used when explaining why some people were born to serve, while others were born to be served.
A girl raised her hand, chocolate hair falling across her face. “That assumes biology determines destiny. What about the barriers we’ve constructed? The ones that punish anyone who doesn’t fit the prescribed roles?”
The room shifted. Other students leaned forward, arguments forming.
Professor Wright watched like a conductor before an orchestra, waiting for the right moment to let the music swell.
“But if everyone rejects structure, society falls apart,” a tall boy by the window argued. “Individual freedom is great in theory, but what happens when seven billion people all want different things? Chaos. Collapse.”
The chocolate-haired girl found her spine and sat straighter.
“Take, for example, every major plague in history that was met first with fear. Fear of the unknown, of contamination, of each other. But fear never cured anything.” She paused, letting the silence build.
“Progress came from science, hygiene, and shifts in how we treat each other. If we reverse that progress, if we strip away rights and enforce conformity through fear, are we actually civilized? Or just well-dressed animals?”
My chest tightened. Choice and control. Freedom and survival. The same questions that had circled my skull since waking up in this younger body with older nightmares. . . and Edward’s voice ringing in my ears.
“You belong to me, pet. Your words mean nothing here. Your body answers to me.”
I dug my nails into my palms, using the sharp bite to drag myself back to the present.
After ten more minutes of discussion, Professor Wright finally raised his hands, conducting the chaos towards resolution.
“Beautiful. Contradictory. Do you see it?” His eyes gleamed behind wire-rimmed glasses.
“This is philosophy meeting psychology. One asks what we are, the other asks why we act the way we do. Neither has clean answers because humanity refuses to be cleanly categorized.”
He paced the front of the room, hands gesturing like he was pulling thoughts from the air. “We study the mind, behavior, and the ways we interact and interpret our world. And in that study, we find ourselves staring into mirrors that show us things we’d rather not see.”
Kind of like me.
I was uncomfortable in my own skin, in my own grief, feeling my life operated with an expiration date for the unknown.
I did not want to come face to face with myself, much less question why I had been resurrected in this life.
The concept of ‘magic’ was something foreign and uncomfortable that society would struggle to make sense of.
And honestly? I didn’t know if there was anything magical about my rebirth—or Daddy’s or Uncle Charlie’s, for that matter.
Nor did I want to endanger my family by revealing our circumstances.
Mankind was not kind, and the thought of becoming a test subject felt like the same chains Edward had placed on me.
Yet I was planning on entering a world I had begged myself to forget.
The discussion continued, voices overlapping, arguments building and collapsing. Professor Wright orchestrated it all with visible satisfaction, thriving in the controlled chaos.
By the time he called for attention, my brain felt scraped raw.
“Your self-reflection journals are due next Monday,” he announced. “Make them honest. I want brutal, ugly honesty, not the sanitized version you think I want to read.”
Students began packing up, the discussion dissolving into the shuffle of bags and footsteps.
“Oh, before you go.” Professor Wright’s voice cut through the noise. “Next month, we have a guest lecturer joining us. Professor James Thornwood will be discussing his research into occult studies and their philosophical implications.”
The occult? As if real darkness required pentagrams and candlelight rituals.
I left with the crowd, my decision solidifying with each step. Edward’s world thought it had broken me once. Tonight, I’d step into Oubliette ready to take back what had never been theirs to begin with.