Maryna
I didn't go back to my room after the garden.
I wandered.
Past the banquet hall.
Past the grand library with its locked cases and censored shelves.
Past the polished corridors that always seemed too quiet—like the house was holding its breath, waiting for something to crack.
Because something had cracked.
Inside me.
Maybe it had started with the dream.
Or maybe it started long before that.
Maybe it started the night I opened my eyes and realized Rick had traded me like currency.
Like cattle.
Like I wasn't even real.
The photographs were tucked into the inside of my bodice.
I hadn't let them go since leaving the garden.
I didn't trust anyone enough to hide them anywhere else.
Not even myself.
They weren't proof.
Not exactly.
But they were something.
A spark in the dark.
And I needed light—because everything around me was thick with half-truths and silence.
I returned to the west corridor.
The one near the tower.
But I didn't go to the tower.
Not yet.
I stopped at the painting wing, where I'd once seen a curtain slip from a covered frame.
This time, I pulled the next veil aside.
Another portrait.
This one of a man I didn't recognize—tall, severe, dressed in deep red. His eyes were a storm of gray and silver. There was something about his mouth, the shape of his jaw, that made my heart stutter.
Something familiar.
I glanced at the nameplate beneath the canvas.
"Valmont. Consort-Class."
Valmont.
Again.
My name.
Our name.
I stepped back, breath caught in my throat.
"Who are you?" I whispered.
"Who were you?"
No one answered.
Just the sound of my own heart thudding like a warning drum.
Someone had scrubbed most of the information from the wall placards. Half the labels were smudged. Some had been scratched off entirely. Why?
To hide a lineage?
To protect someone?
Or to keep me from knowing something I wasn't supposed to?
I turned and kept moving.
Past portraits.
Past gilded sconces.
Until I found what I hadn't been looking for but somehow knew I'd find—
a locked door with a blood-red handle.
It didn't belong.
Too simple. Too modern.
The rest of the estate dripped with ornament and decay. This was clean. Quiet. Functional.
I pressed my ear against the wood.
Nothing.
I checked the frame.
Inscribed above it, so faint I almost missed it, were three words:
"Nulla Clavis Nisi Sanguis."
Latin.
I didn't know it fluently, but I'd seen it before.
On the page Elira had shown me.
And in the margins of that book Vasilios never let me hold.
"No key but blood."
I pulled back.
A chill slid down my spine.
I didn't need to open the door.
Not yet.
But I would.
Because this house had secrets buried beneath it.
And I was one of them.
Later, back in my room, I found the wineglass replaced.
No note.
No sign of who had been inside.
Just the same dark crimson liquid.
And on the rim—
A fingerprint.
Not mine.
Too large.
Too precise.
A reminder.
That someone was always watching.
I stood at the mirror and stared at my reflection.
Same eyes.
Same mouth.
Same name.
But something inside me had shifted.
I wasn't just surviving anymore.
I was remembering.
And when I remembered enough?
I would stop running.
And start answering for every lie they'd ever fed me.
To be continued…