16. Briar
Chapter Sixteen
brIAR
Oh shit… my head—
Everything is spinning. My vision is blurred and heavy. I’m lying on something soft and impossibly comfortable, but my body feels wrong—too heavy, too slow. I need to get up. I blink desperately, trying to force the world into focus, but it keeps slipping away.
I push myself upright and the room tilts violently. A wave of dizziness crashes over me.
Big, warm hands wrap around my waist instantly, steadying me.
“Lay down.” His deep voice commands, low and velvet-rough, it slides over my skin.
“Stalker,” I breathe out, voice cracking.
I hear him chuckle, a dark, intimate sound that sends an unwelcome shiver down my spine.
“I have a name.”
He helps me sit up slowly, carefully. A cool, damp cloth is pressed into my hands. “Clean your eyes and rest. You should feel better in a couple of minutes.”
“Where am I?” I ask, pressing the cold cloth to my burning eyes, trying to calm my racing heart.
“Hellebore,” he answers simply.
“The flower?” I frown, still disoriented.
“The mansion. Our mansion.”
Our?
The word sends a strange jolt through me, part fear, part something darker I refuse to name. I hear his boots moving across the floor, calm and unhurried.
I lower the cloth and blink hard. My vision slowly clears.
And there he is.
Leaning against the far wall, arms crossed over his broad chest, wearing a simple black t-shirt that stretches tight across powerful shoulders and defined arms. Veins stand out along his forearms. No mask.
Strong, sharp jaw. Messy black hair falling into his eyes. Those piercing forest-green eyes watching me with an intensity that steals the air from my lungs. A faint, dangerous smirk plays on his lips.
Jesus… he’s tall as hell. Beautiful in a terrifying, otherworldly way.
“Drystan,” he says, voice low and smooth, that smirk deepening.
Drystan.
My heart slams against my ribs so hard I feel dizzy again. My eyes can’t stop tracing the lines of his body, the way the fabric clings to his chest, the sheer presence of him filling the room.
I should be terrified.
I am terrified.
But there’s something else twisting low in my stomach, something hot and shameful and wrong.
I clear my throat and turn away, trying desperately to hide the treacherous heat crawling up my neck.
It’s a bedroom. Almost empty. One massive four-poster bed draped in black silk, one ornate chair, and a dark vanity. The walls are cold stone grey, the floor polished black wood that swallows the light. A huge window dominates one wall, barred with intricate black iron like a cage.
“Come on.” Drystan turns and gestures toward the door. I follow slowly, legs unsteady, heart hammering against my ribs. I still don’t know if he’ll hurt me. If I’m truly safe. Or if he’s going to cut me open and keep pieces to enjoy later.
The hallway is vast and suffocating. Arched stone ceilings disappear into shadow.
Four enormous paintings line each wall, all hand-painted in deep, bloody tones.
Dark, twisted trees reach like skeletal fingers toward a moonless sky.
Shadows of bodies litter the ground beneath them, limbs bent at wrong angles, blood splattered in violent arcs across the canvas. The red looks wet. Fresh.
“This is disturbing,” I whisper, voice barely audible.
“Depends on your perspective,” he says calmly, still walking ahead. “It’s an homage to lives taken.”
“Taken… by who?” My eyes lock on the last painting. Half a body is buried beneath a field of black hellebore, petals stained with gore.
“Me.”
He turns. Those forest-green eyes bore straight into mine. I cover my mouth, stepping back until my spine hits the cold stone wall.
He kills people. He’s a killer.
“Briar.” His tone is a low, velvet threat.
“No—” I spin and run.
My boots slap against the stone as I sprint down the endless hallway.
A corridor opens to my left, I take it and some stairs appear, I fly down them, lungs burning, and burst toward the massive black double doors carved with hellebore flowers.
I slam into them, yanking desperately. They don’t budge.
I whirl around.
He’s already there. Standing at the top of the stairs, towering in all black, looking down at me as a king watches his prey realize there’s no escape.
“Nowhere to go now,” he says, descending slowly, each step deliberate. “You’re here with me… forever.”
“Help!” I scream, bolting left through a towering archway into what appears to be a ballroom. The space is enormous, bathed in red-purple light that makes the black walls seem to bleed. In the center of the far wall looms a massive fireplace.
And above it—
“Oh my God…”
A huge painting dominates the space.
It’s me.
Wearing a flowing black gown, my old blonde hair cascading down my shoulders.
I’m smiling, soft, innocent, the girl I used to be.
And beside me stands Drystan, chest torn open in a gaping, horrific wound.
Blood pours down his torso in thick, glistening streams. In my hand, I hold his heart, raw, red, dripping.
The blood looks alive. The heart almost pulses on the canvas. The detail is grotesque. Terrifying. Beautiful in the most horrifying way.
His hands settle on my hips from behind, warm and possessive.
“You’ve owned my heart and soul since the moment I saw you ten years ago,” he breathes against my neck, breath hot on my skin. “Now you hold it in your hands, my love.”
I can’t move. The painting is too real. Too bloody. Too intimate.
“You’re insane—” I let out, voice trembling.
“I am,” he murmurs, lips brushing my ear, sending unwanted shivers down my spine. “For you, my love. Only ever for you.”
“You are going to kill me—” I rasp, my body shivering uncontrollably.
“Look at it carefully my love.” Drystan’s voice is silk and smoke, deep and confident. “It’s the other way around. You are the one that will end up killing me, Briar.”
Tears spill down my cheeks. “No, I’m not a killer. I’m nothing like you.”
“We are more alike than you think.”
He steps back, but I stay frozen, eyes glued to the horrific painting. The blood looks too real, too wet, ready to drip down the wall at any moment. My old blonde hair, the soft smile I no longer recognize on my own face, and Drystan’s chest torn open, his heart cradled in my hands.
“There is no one around,” he continues, voice low. “No neighbors. No towns. Nothing for miles. Stay inside the walls and you will be safe.”
He turns and walks away down the long hallway, boots echoing with the finality of a death knell.
“Safe from everyone but you,” I murmur, turning to face him.
He glances over his shoulder. Those forest-green eyes catch the low light, emerald-bright in the dark.
“Exactly.”
Then he’s gone, swallowed by the shadows of the corridor.
I stand alone in the massive ballroom, the enormous painting looming over me, a curse stretched across canvas. This mansion feels less than a home and more a castle left to rot into a beautiful dungeon with cold stone, endless shadows, and secrets carved into every wall.
He can’t keep me here forever. Lucille will notice I’m gone. She’ll call the cops. Someone will come looking.
I clench my sweater tightly over my chest, heart heavy with dread and something far more dangerous.
I can’t panic. Not now. I need to find a way out.
I walk slowly down where Drystan disappeared into. The place is all dark stone and oppressive silence, the paintings on the walls straight out of a nightmare, twisted bodies, blood-soaked earth, black flowers blooming from open wounds. He lives here completely alone?
And that painting… I haven’t looked like that innocent girl in five years. I have so many questions, but I’m terrified of the answers. If he’s been stalking me for ten years, why didn’t he stop those men? Were they sent by him?
The thought steals the air from my lungs, but I force myself to keep moving until I find the kitchen.
It’s enormous. Black walls, black wood counters with grey marble tops. The appliances look new but styled to match the gothic bones of the house. I open the fridge and freeze.
“Oh…”
It’s fully stocked. All my favorites are here, little liquid yogurts, different cheeses, hazelnut cream, fresh fruit, vegetables. And the cake I made. The one he took a slice from for me.
How does he know all this? It can’t be a coincidence.
I close the fridge and notice colorful light flickering across the hardwood floor. There’s a side door with beautiful stained glass in deep blues and purples. I grab the handle and turn it. To my surprise, it opens.
I dart outside into the cold air.
The garden is breathtaking and eerie, carefully manicured bushes, marble benches covered in moss, and a fountain of a half-naked woman with broken wings. Her face is calm, almost peaceful, despite the decay crawling over her stone skin.
What kind of place is this?
I round the fountain and pass through an archway woven with dark ivy and blood-red roses. My heart stops when I step into the hidden square.
It’s a garden completely enclosed by tall, dense hedges. In the center, hundreds of black and purple hellebore bloom under the fog, their petals glistening.
I walk through the hellebore garden, the black and purple blooms swaying gently in the cold breeze. They look almost beautiful in the fading light, delicate, poisonous, cared for with obsessive love.
So this is where the flowers he left for me came from.
A loud, guttural noise suddenly cuts through the silence, half scream, half sob. It comes from inside the mansion.
My heart leaps into my throat. I should run the other way. I should try to find the gates and escape before night fully claims this place. But another broken cry echoes from the house, and I follow the sound.
Past the kitchen, down the long stone hallway, until I reach a narrow set of stairs leading down into darkness. Only a single old oil lamp flickers at the bottom, casting long, trembling shadows on the damp walls. The air smells of wet stone, moss, and something metallic.
I should leave. I should run, but my feet carry me down anyway.
The basement is colder, heavier. Several heavy wooden doors line the corridor, reinforced with iron. A weak light spills from the last one, slightly ajar. The sounds are clearer now, wet, pained whimpers and mumbled words about flowers eating him alive.
I stop right outside the half-open door, hands ice-cold and trembling. My heart beats so hard I can hear it in my ears, I peek inside.
The blond man, Tom, is strapped to a steel table, one eye swollen shut from the beating. His nose is crooked and bleeding. Blood drips steadily onto the stone floor. He’s staring at the ceiling, muttering deliriously about black petals growing inside his chest.
Drystan stands in the corner, back partially to me. His hands are covered in blood. Dark, wet streaks run up his forearms. Is that… guts? Is he actually cutting him open?
I look to the left, there is a small wooden table with two small jars, one with a cork and one half empty, open. A label with an H on them. Is that made of Hellebore? Some serum?
“Briar.”
His voice cuts through the fog in my mind. He turns slowly. Blood coats his hands and the front of his black shirt. Those forest-green eyes lock onto mine, calm and terrifying.
I panic.
I lunge for the small table beside me, grab one of the glass jars, the open one, and bring it to my lips.
“No, Briar—!” Drystan roars, moving faster than should be possible. His bloody hand knocks the vial after I tilt it and part of the liquid slides down my throat. The glass shatters against the wall, liquid splashing across the stone.
“What have you done—” He grabs me, eyes wide with something that looks terrifying. “Briar!”
“I’d rather die than suffer like him!” I cry out, lungs burning as I struggle against his iron grip.
“Oh, my love…” His voice drops, dark and pained. “This won’t kill you. It will be so much worse.”
The walls start to breathe.
I blink hard. The stone seems to pulse with veins of black spreading across it like living rot. Drystan’s bloody handprints on my sweater begin to move, crawling up my arms.
“No… stop—” I whimper, trying to wipe them off, but they smear and spread.
He grabs me harder, one arm banding around my waist while the other presses a needle into my arm.
“No—!” I scream, thrashing wildly, voice tearing raw in my throat. “Please, just let me die in peace! Let me—”
“Shhh…” His deep voice is right against my ear, warm and steady even as the world fractures around me. “Let go, Briar.”
Darkness swallows everything.