It began with a silence—not the comforting kind that falls between people who know each other well, but the cold, stifling kind. The kind that stretches long after the conversation should have started, where every second feels like a stone in your lungs.
Vincent stopped meeting my eyes at breakfast.
He no longer reached for my hand beneath the table. No longer kissed my forehead before leaving. The warmth I once thought eternal now flickered like a dying flame.
At first, I told myself he just doesn't want to talk about what happened yesterday. I want to talk to him to sort things out, hoping that we could still fix our relationship, but he's becoming more distant.
One morning, he left his tea untouched.
Then he stopped showing up for dinner at all.
And when I went to find him—to speak, to ask, to plead—he looked at me like I was the inconvenience. A stain on his schedule.
"Don't you have something better to do than follow me around?" he snapped one afternoon, brushing past me in the corridor. I stood frozen as his footsteps echoed, louder than the beat of my own heart.
That was the first time.
But not the last.
The manor began to feel less like a home and more like a mausoleum. Everything still looked the same—the polished floors, the ornate wallpaper, the towering bookshelves that used to cradle my childhood. But something vital was gone.
It was as if the air itself had turned on me.
The portraits on the wall—once proud and noble—now stared down with pity. The mirrors no longer reflected a girl in love, but someone tired, someone unraveling.
I sought comfort in the only place left: the garden.
The roses had begun to wilt, their petals browned by the biting air. I would kneel beside them with a small silver shear, cutting away the rot. Deadheading the beauty.
I often wondered if that's what Vincent was doing to me—pruning what didn't suit him anymore.
I look outside. It was raining again—always raining, as if the heavens could feel the ache beneath my ribs. I stood beneath the veranda, watching the droplets fall like tiny diamonds against the stone path. The air smelled of wet earth and rotting leaves.
I heard the door slam behind me.
Turning, I saw Vincent stride out of the house, coat half-buttoned, jaw tense. I reached out before I could stop myself.
"Wait—Vincent, please."
He halted. His shoulders stiffened.
And when he turned, his eyes were hollow. "What?"
His voice cut like ice. Is it because of what happened yesterday? but he told me, He wants to stay with me, He wants to be with me.
"I—I just wanted to ask if we could talk tonight. Just for a moment. I miss you."
He scoffed. "Ryena, we're not children. I don't have time for late-night heart-to-hearts."
I blinked, as if the rain had stung me.
"But we used to—"
"That was before," he snapped. "Before I realized you're too soft to understand the world we live in. Do you think feelings fix things? Grow up."
It hit harder than I expected.
My lips parted, but no sound came.
I watched him walk away without another glance. And all I could do was stand there, soaked in grief and rain, the sky crying harder than I could.
That night, I wandered the halls again.
My mother's lab door was ajar, the faint glow of alchemical light seeping into the hallway. I paused, watching the blue flames curl in her vials, casting dancing shadows on the walls.
She didn't notice me.
She never did.
Bent over her desk, notes scattered like storm debris, she scribbled with fury in her eyes—fury for the world, perhaps. Or maybe for herself. I used to think she was brilliant. Mysterious. A woman who held galaxies in her mind.
But now?
She looked like someone who had long since traded love for equations.
"Mother?" I whispered.
No answer.
I stepped closer. "Do you know what's happening to Vincent? He's... not himself."
She waved a hand as if swatting a fly. "People change. You'll get used to it."
The words gutted me.
"Do you care at all?" My voice cracked. "About me?"
Her pen didn't pause. "Stop being dramatic, Ryena. If you're looking for sympathy, go cry in the garden. I'm busy."
I wanted to scream. To shake her shoulders. To tell her I was falling apart, and all she could do was stare into glass and fire.
But I didn't.
I left her to her work.
As I always had.
The following weeks became a blur of quiet despair.
Vincent barely looked at me.
When he did, it was with annoyance. I began to dread his presence even more than his absence. The tension between us was a taut string pulled too tight, and I knew—one day—it would snap.
He started taking closed-door meetings. He began arriving with bruised knuckles, and refused to tell me why. Sometimes, I caught him burning letters in the study fireplace.
And all the while, I was shrinking.
My voice quieter. My smiles rarer. I became a ghost inside my own life.
I sat in the corner of the grand ballroom one evening, staring at the chandeliers above. Dust had begun to settle on the crystal. No one danced here anymore. Not since Vincent became distant.
The silence pressed down on me, heavy, suffocating.
Until the door creaked open.
Vincent entered with a scroll in his hand and didn't even glance my way. He moved toward the fireplace and tossed the scroll into the flames.
I stood.
"Vincent," I called, my voice trembling.
He turned slowly, as if even acknowledging me was a task.
"What now?"
"Why are you doing this?" My voice broke. "Why are you… pushing me away?"
He looked at me for a long moment. I waited for him to crack—for the man I loved to peek through. But when he finally spoke, it wasn't what I hoped.
"Because I don't love you anymore, Ryena," he said flatly. "Stop making this harder than it needs to be. Please"
The ballroom spun.
Something inside me broke—so loud I swore he could hear it. But Vincent didn't flinch. He walked away as if nothing had happened, leaving me alone among the shattered chandeliers of a ruined fairytale.
....
That night, I curled into myself in my chamber, clawing at the bedsheets, the sobs wracking my body like a storm.
The air tasted like dust and despair.
The moonlight through the window did not comfort me—it felt like a spotlight on my grief. And my mother's silhouette passed by the hallway, heading for her lab again, without pause.
No one noticed.
No one ever did.
And for the first time, I wondered if I had been born merely to be ignored, used, or broken.
But even then—I still loved him.
That, perhaps, was the most painful truth of all.