Unsweet Departures

Cecilia carried her secret findings down the east wing corridors, clutching it like a lantern against the dark. She had spent days piecing together scraps of overheard words, half-glimpsed notes, the strange rules of this house that bent not to logic but to narrative itself. And now—finally—she believed she had found a way out.

It was to him she meant to tell it, to the sickly artist whose frail hands still trembled with rebellion, who saw light where others saw only rot. She had imagined the look in his eyes when she told him: the sudden flare of hope, the triumphant smile despite his waning strength.

But when she opened his chamber door, she found nothing.

The chair by the window sat empty. The sketchbooks were gone. The blanket folded neatly at the foot of the bed, as though no hand had ever clutched it in shivering fingers. The room smelled of dust and silence, not of ink and smoke.

“No…” Her voice was small, desperate. She crossed the room, tearing open drawers, pushing aside the curtains, kneeling to peer beneath the bed. Nothing. Not even a stray line of charcoal, not even a cough caught in the air.

It was as though he had never been.

Her breath grew ragged. She clutched at the table where his sketches had once sprawled. “You were real,” she whispered. “You were.”

The walls groaned with a low, crawling laughter. A voice—his voice—slid through the chamber, smooth as oil.

Real? the narrator murmured, his tone thick with mockery. You mistake my indulgence for permanence. He was a passing amusement, nothing more. A character painted in for your comfort, now painted out. Do you see, little maid, how fragile even your hope is? I can erase it with a word. And I can erase you, too, when you lose my interest.

The air pressed heavy around her. Fear swelled, fierce and cold. But she remembered. His voice, trembling but steady, messages of love, beauty, and perseverance. It sickened her that it may have had to come to this for his words to truly land, for her to finally understand. But she did.

And she would show her appreciation through action.

Cecilia’s hands stopped shaking, and she stood.

“You can erase him,” she said, her voice stronger than she felt, alight with burning, righteous anger, “But not from me. He told me to touch the light. To make rebellion even in shadows. You cannot erase that.”

The laughter faltered, slithering into silence.

She turned from the empty room, but something within her no longer bent beneath its emptiness. His absence was not a void—it was a charge, a command. If he had been taken, if his life had been struck out by the same hand that sought to bind her, then she would make his rebellion her own.

No more waiting. No more quiet obedience.

She would confront the voice itself.