"Some wounds don't bleed.They bloom — like flowers, like fire, like the ruin of who you used to be."— Ella the Silvertongued Princess
Dove.
The past flaked away like dead skin as I shoved the gowns back into the closet, their bright silks sickly against the dust-choked dark.
I needed something plain. Something invisible.
My fingers found a white linen blouse high on a shelf — soft against my bruised skin, deceptively fine.A relic of someone else's life.
I pulled it on, the fabric whispering across the weeping cuts on my back.
At the far end of the room, the untouched door loomed.
I tried it.Twisted. Shoved.
It sneered at me — locked from the outside, meant to cage, not to protect.
I stood there a moment, breathing dust and old fear, before I turned back to the passageway.
The climb upward felt endless, even aided by the broom I'd brought along as my only companion in the dark.Each step lit a fresh fire in my broken leg, each breath scraped against the copper taste of old blood.
The passage sighed beneath my weight.Alive, almost — as if it remembered carrying others before me.Others who had not escaped.
At last, I reached the stone door.
The faint blue shimmer was waiting.Patient. Expectant.
I pressed it.
The wall exhaled a wet, grinding groan and spilled me back into the Aviary's underbelly.
The bucket lay where I'd abandoned it — a pathetic anchor to the life I was supposed to return to.
I gathered it with shaking hands.
Above me, the Aviary whispered.
Laughter that curdled the blood.Footsteps that slithered instead of falling.The sounds of hunger and cruelty wearing a thousand stolen skins.
For a heartbeat, I almost turned back.
Almost.
I staggered up the stairs, forcing myself to the main floor.
The midday sun through the high stained glass windows should have been a mercy.Instead it painted the filth in brilliant, damning color:blood streaks, wine stains, the dark slickness of things I refused to name.
I scrubbed the floors until my arms trembled, until my hands bled.
Until I could no longer feel him.
Until I could no longer feel myself.
When it was done, I dumped the water — black and reeking — and dragged myself toward my room.
The hallway stretched ahead like a tunnel to the grave.
I almost made it.
Almost.
The cane cracked against the floor like a gunshot.
The madame.
Her gaze raked over me — the blood-matted hair, the ruin of my throat.
Her mouth flattened into a line as thin and cruel as a knife's edge.
"Child," she rasped, voice trembling not with pity, but with fury."You will tell me. Now."
I told her a truth small enough to survive — leaving out the ghost, the blue flame, the place beneath the Aviary where dead things dreamed.
Her mouth twisted, and she shoved a towel into my hands with enough force to nearly knock me over.
"Bathhouse. Stay there. A girl will tend you."
It was not kindness.
It was triage.
A broken thing was still valuable — until it broke too far.
The bathhouse welcomed me with heavy, wet heat.
I stripped without ceremony and slipped into the spring, sinking until the world narrowed to water and my own ragged breathing.
I scrubbed at my skin until it burned.
No matter how hard I scraped, I couldn't scour him from my bones.
When I finally surfaced, gasping, Phoenix stood at the edge of the pool.
She wore a loose white robe, her red hair a burning brand against the gloom.
Her golden eyes fixed on me with something colder than hatred.
Judgment.
She gave a mocking bow, her voice slipping into a thick, mocking accent:
"Yer highness. Sent to tend to yer royal wounds."
The words slid like broken glass.
I didn't rise to the bait.
I just turned my back and tilted my head forward — an offering. A surrender.
There was a long, brutal pause.
Then her hands — rough, efficient — found my scalp.
Each scrape of gravel, each tug at torn skin, was another indictment.
I bit the inside of my cheek until the taste of iron filled my mouth.
When she finished, she slathered the wounds with balm that smelled of crushed herbs and old promises.
Her bandages were careful, almost reverent.
When it was done, she shed her robe and slipped into the water beside me, silent as a falling star.
We sat together, two statues carved from different kinds of grief.
Not friends.
Not even allies.
Just survivors sharing the same poisoned well.
The silence grew heavy.Pregnant with things neither of us would say.
At last, Phoenix broke it — her voice low and unyielding:
"You bleed like us."
I turned to her, startled.
But she wasn't looking at me.
She stared at the water, her golden eyes distant, ancient.
"You suffer like us," she said.
Her mouth twisted into something almost like a smile — but without any warmth.
"And you will drown like us, too. No matter what crown you think belongs to you."
The words should have hurt.
But instead, they settled over me like a shroud.
Because she was right.
There was no safe return.No salvation waiting beyond these walls.
Only the slow, brutal erosion of everything I thought I was.
And maybe — just maybe — it was better this way.
Maybe it was time for the false princess to drown, so something fiercer could claw its way out of the deep.
"We're all the same in here." I answered her softly.