“I’ll go,” I whispered, because fear didn’t excuse ignorance. And if the answers were buried with the dead, I had no choice but to walk among them.
She nodded. “Alright, you can freshen up. I’ll fetch your clothes.”
My body moved into mechanical mode, walking to the bathroom, and I turned on the shower. I didn’t know if I should be shocked that my mother was alive or disappointed that she hid from me all these years. Didn’t she miss me? Call for me?
Wouldn’t she comfort me, envelop me in her arms, and tell me she loved me to my face? No flowers bloom without sunlight to raise them; why couldn’t she show affection and be my sun amongst this cruel world?
I was wilting from the inside.
The water hit my skin, hot enough to sting, but I barely flinched.
Steam rose, curling around me like the ghosts I never buried—the memories, the questions, the versions of my mother I’d created in her absence. A kind one. A cruel one. A selfish one. A broken one. All of them stood beside me now, watching me fall apart piece by piece.
I pressed my palms against the cold tiles, letting the scalding heat run down my spine. Maybe it was punishment. Maybe it was a rebirth.
The sob crept up my throat, quiet at first. Then louder. Then ragged. I didn’t cry like girls in the movies, soft and beautiful and tragic. I cried like I was drowning—choking on grief I didn’t know I still carried.
How could she be alive and not come back for me?
I was a child when I stopped celebrating my birthday. Fourteen, when I stopped hoping. Seventeen, when I buried the last photograph of her in the back of my closet.
And now, twenty-three, I was scrubbing skin that would never feel clean enough—not for her, not for the world, not for the little girl inside me who still waited at the window.
I hated that I still wanted her to hold me.
I turned off the water, and the silence crashed on me.
The mirror fogged, hiding my reflection. I didn’t want to see myself. I wasn’t sure who I was anymore. A daughter? A stranger? A mistake?
A knock came on the door, gentle. Her voice followed, muffled through the wood. “Your clothes are outside.”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. My throat was raw with questions I didn't know how to ask.
I wrapped the towel around me, stepping out into the cold hallway. And there they were—clean clothes folded neatly, like nothing had shattered between us.
But everything had. And I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to pick up the pieces.
Instead, I focused on getting dressed.
The dress was the colour of dried roses.
Not red—no, red was for lovers, for women who chose their fate with open eyes.
This was deeper. Darker. A muted, bruised crimson that bled elegance and mourning in equal parts.
Elena tugged the final seam into place. It fit too well. As if it had always belonged to me, waiting in some forgotten closet of fate. I wondered who shopped for these dresses, because they all fit me perfectly, as if taken from my measurements and then handmade from silk.
A part of me loathed Zagreus for shattering my illusion that my mother was dead. Maybe I preferred her dead if she didn’t love me.
But that would be selfish of me, wouldn’t it?
I hissed as Elena pulled the dress down, and I stared at the mirror.
The neckline dipped into a modest V, revealing the hollow of my collarbones like an invitation to be shattered. Long sleeves of sheer lace clung to my arms, delicate and claustrophobically suffocating. The bodice was cinched tight, boned and structured, sculpting a figure I didn’t recognise. A stranger’s silhouette.
“Stand, Mrs. Vitale,” Elena said.
I obeyed, legs trembling beneath the silk.
