Page 63 of Hellebore

He changed so quickly. The almost poetic, reverent man from the video, the one who cleaned me so tenderly, is gone. Now there’s only this colder, meaner version. His eyes had shifted. The way he looked at me, like he was barely holding himself back from truly hurting me… that scared me more than anything.

I can’t believe the hellebore didn’t kill me. I thought poison would be quick. Clean. Instead I woke up here, aching and confused, fragments of nightmares still clinging to me, flowers blooming from corpses, one growing straight out of my own chest, blood on my hands as an old man stabbed Drystan in the heart.

A single tear slips down my cheek and splashes onto the cold stone floor. Why does the thought of him dying hurt? Why do I care at all? He’s evil. He could kill me at any moment… but he hasn’t. He saved me from Tom. He stopped me from poisoning myself.

He’s been obsessed with me for years. That painting, it was me from almost a decade ago. So he knew me before everything fell apart.

I need to be smarter. I can’t freeze and let my mind take me somewhere else like it did. I need to make him trust me, at least enough to get me out of this damn cell that looks similar to a medieval dungeon.

My eyes catch something glinting in the weak ray of sunlight that manages to reach the corner of the cell. It looks like a camera, like the ones I found. Maybe he also has at least one microphone here.

“Can you hear me?” I ask, voice shaky as I pull the hoodie over my head and wrap the thin blanket around my shoulders. The cold here is bone-deep. Every exhale fogs in front of my lips.

“Yeah.” His voice finally answers, low, heavy, disappointed.

My heart stutters.

“How long have you been following me?” I ask, turning toward the corner where I think the camera is.

Silence stretches for a long moment before he replies.

“Since you were seventeen.”

I look down at the floor quickly, not wanting him to see the panic flooding my eyes. Seventeen. That was almost ten years ago. Ten years of him watching me. Ten years of shadows I never noticed.

I swallow hard, throat tight, and try to find my voice again.

“Why did you bring me here now?” I take a shaky breath, pulling the thin blanket tighter around my shoulders. The cold stone floor seeps through it, chilling me to the bone. “Why did it take you all these years?”

This time the silence stretches longer.

“I was eighteen when I first saw you,” he finally answers. “You weren’t ready for me. I wasn’t ready for you. But I knew, even then, that we belonged to each other.”

I hear him exhale, deep and strained. “I was locked up for six years. I would’ve come for you sooner if it wasn’t for that.”

“Oh.” The word slips out weak and small. Six years. That means he wasn’t around when⁠—

I shake my head hard, pushing the memory away before it can swallow me.

“How did you know we belonged to each other?” I ask, voice barely above a whisper. “I was just seventeen.”

“I played rugby while you joined the tennis team.” He says. “When I first saw you, ponytail, sweet blue eyes, something in me changed.”

I can’t hide the surprise in my tone. “Rugby? You?”

“A deal with my father,” he replies, a sharp edge of anger creeping into his voice. “I did something he wanted. He gave me something I needed. That’s how it always worked with him.”

I nod slowly.

I know what it’s like to have a father who treats you like a transaction. When I needed mine the most, he told me to be quiet. “It’s not like you were a virgin,” he’d said. The disappointment, the rage, the pain of that day still lives under my skin. That was the moment I decided to leave Seattle behind.

“What happened with your father?” Drystan asks, catching me off guard.

I shrug, staring at the cold stone wall. “He wasn’t there when I needed him the most.”

“Why did you leave Seattle?”

I look toward the camera, my throat tightening. “I can’t, Drystan.”