They Who Slaughtered Hope 🌈| Slow Updates/Editing

Chapter 18

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𝚁𝚎𝚗

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𝘖𝘤𝘵𝘰𝘣𝘦𝘳 12𝘵𝘩, 𝘚𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘥𝘢𝘺 𝘔𝘰𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨

Ren had always been taught to beware of what was beautiful. For what is beautiful is almost always deadly. Detrimental and crippling. Deceptive. But he was a victim of beauty, in past and in present, and this was no different.

It had started when he finished his routine snooping around the Kendrick-Carson house and found a door on the first floor. Normally locked, the threshold beckoned him with the call of music worming its way in from deep within the revealed hallway.

The sniper gave in without a struggle, compelled to follow the tones to their source. There was just something so nostalgic to it, something that spoke to his soul when nothing else could.

He travelled through the corridor covered in cobwebs, questioning how often the room was utilised.

At the end of the hallway, he was hit with a blast of white from the walls mixed with a sad instrumental track. He surveyed his surroundings to see large windows bursting with sunlight, unlike those in the front of the shop.

The room itself was half the size of a proper studio, with bright dome fixtures, a mirror that masked the upper fifty percent of the wall, and bannisters that mimicked those of a ballet studio.

Then he saw Lennox. His arms were raised, and his leg was extended, both circling him as he spun and swayed and soared to the song filled to the brim with the saddest kind of beauty. The notes were long and low, and when they finally hiked up, they were pulled back down as if by the weight of the piece.

As he watched Lennox glide across the shining hardwood floors, Ren saw an alternate side of beauty. One that came in the form of a person.

Lennox conducted himself with a grace that was part inherited, from his mother, and part strict discipline. He commanded and trained his body to bend to his will, quite literally.

There was something about the way Lennox moved his body to the tune of the music, something about his flexibility that Ren found mesmerising. "Damn he can move," he mouthed, completely unaware of Emily sneaking up on him from behind.

"I figured you would find your way here. Isn't he beautiful?"

Her question hadn't even registered with his brain before Ren replied, almost in a daze, "Yeah... Er, wait! No! I mean, I don't know." He covered his face with his hands, realising what he had said in front of Lennox's mother. His cheeks flared.

Emily smiled, pleased. "Your face tells me everything I need to know."

"I don't know what you're talking about. He doesn't even like me! For fuck's sake, how the hell can I even have the right to say things like that when he hates my guts?" He had embarrassed himself even more. Was he confessing his feelings to her?

Lennox's mother said nothing in response. Minutes passed.

The conversation was going nowhere fast. Ren needed to say something before she walked away, although she didn't give him the chance.

Emily raised her hand. Speaking behind it, she murmured, "You don't need any particular right to appreciate someone's beauty, Ren. That's what you preferto be called, right? You say Lennox doesn't like you... but I would beg to differ."