A Beautiful Torment

38. Change

Time became a measure of days.

Each hour bled into the next, until the days became weeks, and Belmont House began to change. At first it was barely noticeable; doors I'd never noticed before were opened and the smell of freesias began to waft in from the garden. Sophia and I spent each morning exploring the grounds behind the high, brick walls, and it wasn't long before we both began to notice the increase in security around the house – more men stood in the driveway, communicating with long, pointed stares and muttered words into their handheld radios.

A few days after my arrival, I decided to test the strength of security for myself. I snuck around the gardens, tracing a path across the grass until I reached the abandoned greenhouses at the very back of the grounds. There were no men posted here, but I noticed several cameras positioned along the wall. Barbed wire extended from the top, grey and menacing.

Curious, I picked up a small, loose pebble from the path and flung it over the wall. I watched as it soared high above the bricks, higher than the cameras, before it slammed against an invisible wall. The air appeared to shimmer, like heat rising from the concrete in the dead of summer, before the pebble tumbled back down the wall and landed at my feet. Wards, I realized.

After that incident, whenever I decided to venture outside, Sophia seemed to appear out of nowhere. It peeved me at first; I hated that I was constantly being watched, as though I could actually escape past an eight foot wall and an invisible, magic barrier, but I liked Sophia, so it didn't take me long to get used to it. It was better than being alone while Wyatt trained.

I had begun to dread the evenings. Every night, at eight p.m. sharp, Draper insisted on having Nikolas, Wyatt and I gather for dinner with him. The night after I discovered the wards around the house, he addressed me for the first time since our... conversation... about his treatment of Wyatt.

"Have I not been a good host?" His tone had been deceptively pleasant – friendly, even – but a shiver of apprehension had slid down my spine.

"Y-yes," I'd stammered. "I mean, you have... Sir."

"Then why," he'd said, his eyes narrowing slightly, "Do you intend to escape?"

I'd glanced at Nikolas, a sliver of fear jolting through me. I'd forgotten, of course, that nothing was safe. Not my emotions, and certainly not my thoughts. But Nikolas had looked... not confused, exactly, but troubled – if he had known my intentions, he hadn't voiced them to Draper. Whatever plan I might have developed would never come to fruition in my head; any thoughts I had of leaving this house – for the time being, at least – came to an abrupt halt.

"I j-just... miss my family," I'd replied, honestly.

Draper had simply offered me a condescending smile and said, "There, there."

I never make the mistake of broaching the subject with him again.

Belmont House began to transform. Catherina's Cleaning Crew returned, their tiny, severe looking leader hurling orders at them and barking at random crew members. One morning, I'd woken up to the sound of her making a large, brawny man over double her size cry. The wallpaper in the hallway was stripped, the Victorian chandeliers replaced with wrought iron, and the carpets removed to expose rich, mahogany floors. The gardens, too, received some attention – a team of gardeners were brought in from god-knows-where to oversee the planting of a maze, which grew a few inches each day. I imagined there was some sort of magic at work; I'd never seen plants grow so fast, not even on television.

I felt myself changing with the house; my skin stretching over my bones and reshaping my body. Something in my blood reacted with the influx of magical energy that surrounded the house, and though physically, I appeared the same – on the inside, I was so much stronger. My heart began to beat a new, distinct rhythm that I felt thrumming beneath my ribs, louder and stronger than the pulse that echoed through walls.