“If you’re not here to ridicule or hurt me, then why are you here?”
Her voice was firm despite the remnants of sorrow clinging to her like morning mist.
“You have seen how little regard I am to be given.”
The bitterness in her tone struck something deep within me.
They had sought to break her.To render her voiceless.
And yet?—
She still stood.
I took another step closer, drawn into her orbit against my better judgment.
“I beg to differ.”
A flicker of something passed across her face—doubt, curiosity, something more.
“May I ask why you’re out here?”
The quiver in her voice did not escape me—nor did her effort to conceal it.
“I couldn’t leave without saying something.”
The admission hung between us, heavy, laden with meaning I dared not explore.
Her lips parted, the faintest hitch in her breath betraying a moment of hesitation.
“To address the earlier spectacle at my expense?”she asked at last, her words laced with a bitterness that suited her ill.
Her pain whittled new edges into her beauty, turning something delicate into something dangerous.
I remained silent, offering only a gesture toward the stone bench nestled among the roses.
She hesitated.
Then, with a wary grace, she moved to sit, her posture rigid, her frame coiled with unspoken distrust.
I joined her—but kept a respectful distance, acutely aware of the space between us.
The space where doubt could linger.
Where uncertainty could breathe.
Where logic whispered that I should not be here.
Sitting beside her, the world narrowed to just the two of us?—
A weeping angel.
A silent monster.
Each hiding behind our masks.
And in that moment, I realized?—
Perhaps I was not the only one cloaked in shadows.
