After replying to the letter , she had kind of not herself for so long, she started fearing and weirdly comfortable with writing villian but on the other hand anna had not touched her quill for three nights. The inkpot lay untouched, dust beginning to cling to its rim like cobwebs binding a secret. She sat in her writing room, its windows covered in thick velvet curtains to guard against the prying moonlight. The manuscript pages of
*The Tale of Dorian Veyne*
rested beneath a false-bottomed drawer in her mahogany desk, safe yet suffocating. She could not bear to look at them.
Everywhere she went in London, whispers followed her not whispers of Anna Whitford, the respectable noblewoman who taught her circle of young ladies poetry and manners, but of
A. M. Harrow,
the elusive author whose book had swept through drawing rooms and taverns alike.
*The Tale of Dorian Veyne*
had struck like a storm. Readers praised its elegance, its unflinching portrayal of the descent of a man into ruin. Others spat upon its pages, declaring it blasphemous and corrupting. But no one knew it was hers. No one, except for him.
The letters had begun arriving weeks ago, written in a heavy hand, words carved deep into the paper as if pressed by a man trembling with rage. At first they were fragments unfinished sentences, quotes from her book rewritten with venom, She had ignored them, burned them in her hearth, watching the ink curl into smoke. But the last one was different.
'You may call me villain. You may name me Dorian Veyne. Yet you write me truer than I ever confessed to myself. How is it, Anna? How do you see into a man's rotting soul when you were never there?"
Also the replied he sent telling me " lady you may think that you are not meant for me to suffering yet, yet still you smiled when I bleed in that chapters isn't lady, don't forget lady I know you very well, I can came to you in physical presence as well, remember the jester funny isnt you were must be only person who can't see my face
Hahahhahahahahah, a laugh in his laugh it was mocking , it feels like he is there
She had read the line until dawn, her heart pounding. Her pen name had never been linked to her true identity, and yet here it was, her name scrawled in his furious hand.
That morning, her maid, Clara, found her pale and distracted. "You look unwell, my lady. Perhaps the teaching can wait," Clara said gently, arranging Anna's hair.
"I am well enough," Anna whispered, though her throat ached with unspoken words.
Still, she carried herself elegantly through the day, teaching her pupils in the candlelit library, her voice calm though her thoughts stormed. At night, she sat awake, staring at the blank parchment before her. Her quill hovered, but words refused her. The villain this man in the shadows had stolen her courage.
Her fears grew heavier when the papers began printing debates about
*The Tale of Dorian Veyne.*
Some lauded A. M. Harrow as "a rising genius of Gothic literature." Others condemned the mysterious author as "a corrupter of morals, a dangerous dreamer unfit for polite society." International publishers began inquiring; translations were already underway in France and Germany. The name Harrow was on every tongue.
And Anna? She could not breathe without feeling him watching.
That week, she received another letter. Unlike the others, it did not accuse. It confessed.
"I was a child when I first learned cruelty. Do '"""""you know what it is to wake each day hoping for warmth, and finding only the lash? You think me monster, Anna, but I was made, not born. When I read your book, I see myself dissected upon the page. You have torn me open. And I cannot decide whether I should thank you or end you."""""
Anna dropped the paper as if it burned her. No one not even Clara knew of the nightmares she herself carried from childhood, the loneliness, the hollow halls of her upbringing. How did he sense it? How did he reach into her private despair as if it were his own?
That night, for again in weeks, she dipped her quill. Her hand shook, but she wrote a single line in reply
"You haunt me because I have written you. But perhaps I have written myself as well."
And what is it that you want , you think your haunting can get you reborn again , what should a author like me can do '
And with that, the dialogue between author and villain began.