Chapter 12
Thorn
The Thorns of Solace
She lied, her truth hidden behind the delicate curve of her lips, her eyes betraying her every word. They were the windows to her deceit, but I couldn’t help but want to pry it from her. To demand the honesty she buried so effortlessly beneath her beauty. Still, I knew I needed her to play along, to fall into the web I was spinning for us both, tangled in the ambiguity of this “agreement” that neither of us fully understood.
The air is still now, but beneath the silence, the soft rustling of the leaves sways with an almost melodic sigh. The night is heavy with an unspoken promise, the sky dotted with scattered stars. The weather sits uncomfortably in-between, neither warm nor cold, but something stirs in the air — winter’s approach, slow and inevitable. The earth, damp from the rain, gives off a deep, musky scent that intertwines with the bitter tobacco smoke I inhale, calming the storm of my mind, if only for a moment .
She’s become my knot to unravel, my stone lodged in the eye, a persistent torment that demands to be severed. Yet, each time I pull away, the craving only deepens. I am not better for it, nor am I free from it. The solitude I once embraced, the psychoanalysis, the cold distance that kept the madness at bay — none of it holds anymore. She’s a reflection I can’t escape, a constant force drawing me closer to something darker.
I let the hysteria slip sometimes, on the quieter days. I allow the frenzy to seep through, to color my thoughts, until it spreads like ink across the page of my mind. And in her, I see something I’ve never seen before, a spark that ignites the flames I’ve kept smothered. The way she moves, how her body bends with grace and falls with abandon, makes my pulse quicken. Her eyes, once filled with uncertainty, now glimmer with an unsettling peace — an invitation. She awakens something in me that I thought was lost.
I never cared for people—never found it worth the effort. Ballerinas, or anyone for that matter. They are fleeting, temporary things, their worth as fragile as the skin they wear. Humanity is a facade of greed, of flesh doomed to decay. I can see it in the faces around me, the fragility of their souls, but I never bother to look deeper. Their touch leaves nothing but ruin, detritus in its wake. Hypocritical, perhaps, since I too am made of the same flesh, the same bones, but I demand something more from them , something unattainable, something unreal.
But Odessa, she is different. She is something beyond what I have known. She is the anomaly in my cold world, the contradiction that calls to me like a forbidden whisper, pulling me into a world I’ve long abandoned.
My mother—she walks in the shadows of my past, her dance a memory that refuses to fade. Anastasia danced as if the night could stretch on forever, her every movement imbued with a life that no longer exists. She moved like her soul had been sculpted into each step, as though the world was made of rhythm and fire. Odessa dances with the same spark, the same ethereal glow, like a distant echo of what once was. The same brilliance I saw in my mother now flickers in her.
My father would watch her for hours, his eyes locked in a trance, unable to tear himself away. As a child, I couldn’t grasp the intensity of it, the way he seemed to breathe in her every movement, captivated by the beauty that I now understand only too well. It would stir something in him, an obsession I couldn’t quite touch until now, when I watch Odessa move, like a piece of the past resurrected.
She dances like a haunting melody that slips into your very bones, and I, a weary sailor lost in the storm, unable to resist the lure of destruction.
I flick the cigarette from my fingers, watching the embers fade into the ashtray, and turn back toward the office. The room is as it’s always been, as my grandfather left it—a shrine to the past. Shelves of forgotten books stretch to the ceiling, each one holding secrets too ancient to speak. The air smells of dust and leather, like time has stood still here. The set of café au lait armchairs sits silently in the center, and at the far end, the auburn desk waits, its surface cluttered with forgotten papers.
A portrait of Calix and my father dominates the space behind the desk. To the unknowing, they could have been brothers with the same dark hair and those same chestnut eyes that never revealed enough to understand. The knock on the door pulls me from the reverie of their eyes. Oscar steps inside, a file in hand, his face as expressionless as always. His cold, distant gaze is the only thing I can rely on, the only thing I trust.
Oscar’s eyes are void, empty, yet he is as necessary as the air I breathe. He is not human, not in any way that matters. He’s a tool, a mechanism—unfeeling, precise. Perhaps it’s that very emptiness that makes him the only one I can stand to have near. He is the only one who understands that some things are better left unsaid.
“Evening, Mr. Moretti.”
I settle into my chair, the leather creaking under the weight of my presence. My fingers brush the desk, feeling the cold, polished wood beneath my touch as I turn my gaze toward Oscar. He follows suit, his movements purposeful as he takes his place across from me.
“Oscar,” I utter his name, low and commanding. The silence in the room stretches thin, each breath we take weighted with expectation. His eyes meet mine, patient, waiting.
He doesn’t speak right away, as if choosing his words carefully. But I know his rhythm well enough. The task is already done. The work, the digging, it’s all been executed with precision. All that remains is to lay it out before me. To reveal the truth we both know will shape everything.
“The information you requested has been found, sir” I open the folder he passes to me and I sift through it, the photographs falling across the desk like fallen leaves, revealing their grim contents. The bodies lie there, naked and raw, their skin branded with sigils that should never see the light of day. I study them with dispassionate eyes, my fingers tracing the air above the images without ever touching the paper. The markings are wrong.
“Boureutherna Institution, 1965. A massacre betided resulting in the deaths of nuns and orphans”
Oscar’s words hang in the air like smoke, curling and dissipating with an ominous weight. The past presses in, but it is a thing already known, already cataloged in the dark corners of this world. I lean forward, steady and unmoving. I do not tremble at history. I do not flinch at its ghosts.
“I’m aware of the history, Oscar,” I say, my voice colder than I intend, though it cuts through the air with a sharpness that betrays the undercurrent of dread twisting in my stomach. “What is it that you’re getting at?”
“Two weeks ago, the same institution held an ordination. New members were sworn in. Seven lives were sacrificed.”
“They’re not apotropaic,” the words slip from my lips like a bitter truth. “No, these are not protections. They are something darker, something less... refined.”
“They’re back, sir,” Oscar says, almost as an afterthought, but I can hear the undercurrent of something unspoken
“They are not,” I reply, and the words fall from me like stones into the depths of a well, dark and final.
I drop the image on the desk, the motion deliberate, almost ceremonial. My hands move to another, and I study it with the same cold focus. The markings are different, still—raw, unpolished, and unmistakably wrong. Whoever did this was not a craftsman of the occult, but an ignorant hand, reckless and eager, as if they were playing at something they could not hope to understand.
There is a ripple through the room, a sensation I can’t quite place. But fear does not settle in my bones. No, it is something else, a sense of inevitability, the quiet hum of danger on the horizon.
“Whoever they are,” I say, my voice like a knife, carving through the tension in the air, “they do not know what they are meddling with.”
And that is the most dangerous truth of all.
“We reduced the Stamatoties Clan to cinders years ago, Oscar. This… this is not them.”
I let the image slip from my fingers, its edges crinkling as it meets the cold surface of the desk. I pluck another photograph, gaze unwavering, dissecting each mark, each detail, with the same clinical precision that has come to define me.
“This is a re-imagining,” I say. “A mockery of what once was. These markings are wrong, inferior. Whoever is behind this is trying to resurrect something long dead, but they are failing, spectacularly.”
Oscar’s eyes remain steady, unwavering as always, but the faintest flicker crosses his face. “Perhaps a blood relation we weren’t aware of,” he suggests, his voice flat, devoid of speculation.
“Perhaps,” I concede, though I know where this trail leads. Years ago, a cult was born from the ashes of my bloodline, a cult founded by my father’s half-sister. The very same cult that delivered my parents to their graves.
Calix Moretti remarried after my fathers mother died. He welcomed the devil into his home, embodied in the daughter they later birthed. Iris, a woman whose jealousy festered like a wound left untreated. A woman who, in her bitterness, came to believe in things far darker than the world ever should’ve allowed.
Her descent began innocently enough. Homilies filled with words no one had ever heard, notions foreign and strange to all who listened. But beneath that veneer, there was something insidious brewing. Incantations whispered in the dark, strange rituals, and too many nights lost in the woods. She began crafting haunted dolls, each one more twisted than the last, silent witnesses to her madness.
When Calix had no choice but to lock her away in Bourethean Institution, he believed nuns were the cure. A small, crumbling institution nestled miles away, once a sanctuary for troubled souls. A sanctuary turned slaughterhouse, a massacre that would become legend. One of rituals and bloodshed, of murder and madness.
However, she did not stop at that alone. After taking the lives of her own mother and father, she murdered my parents as well, and not only did she destroy their lives—she destroyed mine.
I was fifteen then. Bloodlust bloomed within me, a hunger I could not sate, a thirst I could not quench. I wanted her blood. I wanted to see her fall, to feel her brokenness beneath my hands. And so I did.
“Find out more, Oscar,” I close the folder shut, its contents a reminder of an unfinished war. “And let me know when my guest arrives.”
“Understood, sir.”
As Oscar closes the door shut, I feel a familiar tightness coil in my chest, a savage yearning, like claws scraping against bone. I thought I had buried all of this, long ago. But something—or someone—has unearthed what I sealed away. And that is a problem.
I rise from my chair, my movements slow, deliberate. I walk to the bookcase, pressing a hidden lever to reveal the winding staircase that leads down into the depths of my past. The dim light flickers on as I descend, casting long shadows on the cold stone.
At the bottom, I approach a barred door. My fingers brush against the keychain around my neck, the metal cool against my skin as I unlock it. The room is suffocatingly dark, but I know this place like I know the back of my own hand. I walk past another cage door until I’m facing her.
The heavy, stale air wraps around me. I pull the folder from under my arm and throw it at her. The sound of it hitting the concrete echoes like a gunshot in the stillness.
“Take.” Aversion and acrimony rise up my throat and rage birches at my bones, begging to be let out.
She slithers out from the shadows, her movements twisted, her eyes glinting with a madness that is both familiar and revolting. She tears open the folder, her fingers shaking as she examines the photographs. Her matted hair falls over her face, but even so, the smile that curls her lips is unmistakable.
A cackling, insane laugh erupts from her—wild, guttural, like the scream of a wounded animal. The sound fills the room, warping the air with its madness. She inches closer to the bars, but the chain around her neck jerks her back, choking her in her own frenzy.
“Il male è qui, il male è vicino, il male è vivo,” it comes out as a whisper, but the words are very clear. “The evil is here, the evil is close, the evil is alive”
“They’re coming, nephew, and they’re coming for you,”Her finger rises, pointing straight at me, her eyes gleaming with the twisted delight of some broken prophecy.
“You insult me.” A sinister smile presses against my lips. “Your belief that something far more heinous than myself is creeping closer with every passing second is almost amusing”
I take the small rectangular box from my pocket, feeling the weight of it in my hand, knowing exactly what it contains. I crouch down in front of her, the smell of rot and neglect so overwhelming it forces my lip to curl in distaste .
I slide the needle from the box, watching as her eyes flicker with recognition, fear mingling with her rage.
“Start talking,” I order, my voice cold and unyielding.
“I— I don’t—” Her words tumble out in incoherent gasps. “I don’t know anything…”
“Last chance,” I whisper, my voice a quiet threat.
“Maybe... maybe it’s not them. Those markings…” Her eyes dart, searching for something to hold on to, her hands clawing at the bars, trying to escape. “It could be… someone else. Someone I… I don’t know—” Her voice falters as she struggles to find the words.
“The more you prolong, the more it will pain you”
Wildflower, a beautiful, lethal elixir, and my newest concoction.
It induces agony beyond the body’s capacity to endure, a torment that stays for hours, a slow and unrelenting march toward the edge of oblivion. The perfect dose could either shatter the flesh or freeze it in a permanent prison of paralysis. But for her, neither shall come. Not yet. Instead, she will suffer a torment so exquisite, so brutal, that she will pray for death, even as it slips further from her reach.
“It’s going to feel like your bones are breaking and your flesh is tearing apart. And just when the pain grows bearable, the burning sensation that will erupt on your skin—” I dig the needle into her arm and allow the clear substance to enter her veins.”—will make you beg me to end your pathetic life and until you sing like a bird, I will make each dose parlous every night”
She might know something, a thread to pull, a fragment of truth buried beneath her madness— and I would not put it past her to hold the key.
Her body jerks violently against the cold stone, a guttural scream ripping from her throat. The poison is working its dark magic, sinking its claws deep into her, its potency unraveling her will. Her eyes widen, bulging like glass marbles, as her body locks in a terrible rigidity, bent by the crippling pain tearing through her.
“Sir, your guest has arrived,” Oscar’s voice pierces the tension, faint but clear from behind me.
“Let her in.”
Tonight, it will be a reckoning.