Ebony
My hands are locked onto the skirt of my dress. Silk under skin, and yet my body is weeping for the familiar weight of the violin. The sound of grieving souls is all that I hear, and it enraptures me, becoming lost in the maze of my mind.
Soon, my eyes are fluttering shut, feet swaying on ground that slips from under me. A billion notes intertwining and shifting apart lay in the air.
Friend. The violin was and is my only friend. In all my life, my only friend. The days where Cole lurked in my peripheral were enlightened by the lessons he made me take.
"Ladies, in this world, know an instrument like their lover's body. Perfectly and divinely. Pick one, and you will learn it."
The words are still there, haunting my dreams. His goal had been to make me pure and pliant.
Perfect.
But my own want for freedom had been stoked by the oxygen the violin gave me. There was nothing pure and compliant about the sound from those strings. That bow. It was raw. Untamed.
Beautiful.
It had held me together through the beatings. I had promised myself one last time. Before breaking, I would play one last time.
Until you couldn't, whispers that little voice, sorrowfully. It's numbed by the pain like me, unable to form the words.
One day, when I had taken incompetence to rebellion, speaking out of terms... it was not a beating I received. It was the shattering of my heart. I had found my precious friend broken on the floor. Like a dove without wings.
"This is what happens to bad little girls."
Bad little girls.
"You've been a bad little girl, my love."
It is not the echoing in my head anymore, but is the vibrant sound of my life falling apart. Like stones on the glass of a mirror. Or the windows of a castle. Safe, and sound.
But no longer.
My heart feels like it has frozen in my chest, too afraid to move, too afraid of the wrath of the man behind me. But my body, willing to appease the demands of a sadistic and domineering man, turns. Appeasement. To satisfy a country with land or riches to stop war.
To stop war.
War.
My heart has stopped, my body is turning towards him... and my mind? My mind is screaming at me to run. Run and run and run and never look back.
A civil war. With three sides.
I can't bare to face the pain that will reflect if I look at the dark eyes of the man in front of me, so my gaze searches the ground for my own reflection. There it is. Terrified. Weak. Broken. "Where is he?" My voice is begging, pleading, and I swallow my own dignity. Not that I have any, anymore.
Cole is a man who likes begging. Beg and beg and beg and maybe you'll live. And maybe... Maybe he'll let me go. But I know I'm just setting my sights for failure.
Like setting a bone and letting it heal, but breaking it again a few days later.
His outstretched palm is an invitation. A dare. Dance with me. I dare you to say no.
Oh, Cole. How I have missed out game of Tom and Jerry. Chase me, Master.
I indeed feel like playing a game of run or die because my bolder, more suicidal self decides to open her mouth.
YOU ARE READING
Embers (Burn #1)
Romance{On Hiatus for Rewrite} "What did he do to you?" "Everything he did to you and worse," I hiss, nails digging into my skin. The words are thrown out in desperation, a hook to dig into his skin like he drove into me. He erased Cole. I had wanted that...
