Chapter Eleven

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 05:00:41 +0000

He looked at her and in that instant, everything he had done tonight curdled into something sour and unrecognizable. The room, carefully arranged like a confession laid out in advance, suddenly felt like a stage after the audience had gone home. Candlelight no longer softened the shadows; it exaggerated them, pooling wax and flickering flame into something almost accusatory. The roses, still proud in their glass vase, looked obscene in their perfection, as if beauty itself had been conscripted into a lie. Even the air felt wrong, too perfumed, too intentional, thick with the effort of trying to undo damage using aesthetics and rehearsed sincerity.