Crimson || Tom Riddle

𝖔𝖓𝖊

It took seven days for the body to forget how to rot.

She didn't breath when she woke. Not at first. She just listened. The first thing she felt was the cold. It was thick. It clung to her unfamiliar limbs, seeped into her bones and rested there.

There was a sound.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

But it might have been inside her skull.

Arabella felt silk beneath her. She had been moved. She didn't move as she surveyed the room. A guest room. Purple sheets. Rose gold accents.

Her body didn't feel like her own. Every limb felt different. Like something had been inside her while she was gone — rummaging through her chest, slipping through her ribs, seeing what she'd hidden in the dark.

Slowly, she pushed herself upright, with the stiffness of a corpse. Of a body that hadn't moved in seven days. Because it hadn't.

It didn't feel like seven days, not to Arabella. She remembered the quiet. In that place between promise and punishment. Mercy and sin. Heaven and Hell.

"He killed you. I was not expecting that."

Arabella wasn't either.

She breathed in. She moved her hand, reaching to the pendant around her neck. Still there.

But something wasn't.

Her ring. It was gone.

There was a moment where nothing existed — not the drip that could be inside her skull, not the cold, not even the silence. Only the hollow space on her finger where her ring should be.

Arabella stared at her hand like it belonged to someone else. Someone pale, and frail, and bare. Someone weak, because that's what she was now.

Weak.

She had been dead for seven days, much, much longer than normal, which severely affected her powers. And now she had no ring, which meant there was nothing but darkness preventing her from frying under the light of the sun.

Not death, of course. But pain. So, so much pain. And with each passing second under the sun, she would feel death edging closer and closer, until all she would wish for is the silence of the afterlife.

Which would never come.

Arabella needed her ring.

And Tom had it. So, Arabella moved. Her bare feet touched the wood floor. She stood up, her body barely shaking. Tom hadn't left her bare, like she was when he killed her. She now wore a nightgown. Silk and an emerald green.

She imagined him dressing her body, cleaning the blood off of her, slipping a nightgown onto the body he had killed. Gentle hands, soft fingertips, slowly carrying her up three flights of stairs and laying her on silk sheets, like she was a porcelain doll.

Arabella's eyes swept over the room, crossing it and trailing a finger lightly along the vanity. The lack of dust told her that Tom had visited her.

Oh, how thrilled she was to see him.

Did he think she was dead? Or alive? Was he going mad trying to figure out how she was dead for so long?

The thoughts excited her. Patience, she told herself.

Arabella pressed her palm against the door, her eyes darting to the window. The faintest line of light crept along the horizon outside. A warning.

She was running out of time. Arabella knew this room was on the third floor, and clearly Tom wasn't on this floor.

She stayed close to the walls as she moved, melting into the shadows. Arabella slipped down the corridor, her bare feet silent against the floor. Her skin prickled. She kept her shoulder to the wall and didn't dare risk a window. Not yet. She could already feel the sun crawling higher, reaching for her.

By the time she reached the stairs, her head was pounding. Not with pain — not yet — but with the effort it took to stay still inside. She descended carefully, slowly, silently. The second floor creaked. She paused, listening again.

Still nothing.

No breathing. No heartbeat. No movement of any kind.

That was the worst part.

She knew Tom was here, he had to be. But he wasn't here.

She continued her descent, making sure to skip the steps that creaked. She didn't want Tom to hear anything, even though she was sure he was not nearby. Second floor. Still no scent. She walked across the balcony like bridge connecting two wings of the manor. It overlooked the first floor, and she peered down.

Everything was the same. What had Tom been doing for seven days, then?

When Arabella reached another flight of stairs, she descended again. But Tom was not on the first floor either. Until finally, on the ground floor, Arabella caught his scent. **** coming from the west wing.

Oh, god.

That is where he was.

Down there.

So, that is how he discovered her secret. She knew she should not have underestimated Tom's ability to take advantage of every bit of his surroundings.

Slowly, Arabella creeped closer, making sure to cling to the walls and not to make a single sound. Easy enough, seeing how she could hold her breath for as long as she wanted to.

If Arabella's heart could beat, it would be pounding now.

In excitement.

•••

a.n. ahh exciting. nerve-wracking. i still haven't planned a full storyline for this volume, im just gonna kinda write it as i move forward. but yeah, first chapter of volume two!