Chapter 001
Rain hammered against the orphanage windows like tiny fists demanding entry. Inside, fifteen-year-old Elias dragged himself down the corridor, one trembling hand pressed against the wall for support.
His threadbare shirt clung to his skin, dark patches of blood seeping through the fabric. Each step sent jolts of pain through his skinny body, but he kept moving—he had nowhere else to go.
Behind him, a trail of muddy footprints and crimson droplets followed his path from the courtyard where they had left him. Three older boys—Thomas, Victor, and Raj—the self-appointed kings of St. Agnes Orphanage. They'd cornered him earlier when he'd refused to do their chores, his fever making even standing difficult.
"You think being sick gets you special treatment?" Thomas had sneered, shoving Elias against the brick wall. "Nobody cares if you're dying. You still do what we say."
The memory of what followed made Elias wince more than his physical wounds. The kicks to his ribs. The stick that cracked against his jaw, sending a tooth skittering across the muddy ground. Victor's boot pressing his face into the earth.
A child peeked out from a doorway ahead, eyes widening at the sight of Elias before disappearing with a whispered "It's the cursed boy." The door slammed shut.
Elias had grown accustomed to such reactions. In a place where everyone was unwanted, he had somehow managed to be the most unwanted of all.
He stumbled into the cramped bathroom at the end of the hall, locking the door behind him. The fluorescent light flickered overhead, casting ghoulish shadows across his face as he stared into the cracked mirror.
Blood trickled from the corner of his swollen lips. His right eye was nearly sealed shut, the skin around it already darkening to a deep purple. But it was his eyes—or rather, the emptiness behind them—that struck him most.
"Why?" he whispered to his reflection. The word hung in the humid air, unanswered.
With trembling fingers, he opened the cabinet beneath the sink, reaching past the rusty pipes to the hidden shoebox where he kept his meager possessions. Inside: a spool of thread, a half-dozen needles of varying sizes, and a bottle of alcohol he'd stolen from the infirmary.
This ritual was familiar now. Almost mechanical. He peeled off his shirt, revealing a patchwork of old scars and fresh wounds. Some had healed into puffy pink lines. Others formed intricate patterns where he'd sewn his own flesh back together with whatever colored thread he could find.
Blue across his collarbone. Red circling his left shoulder. Black crisscrossing his right side.
His own abhorrent tapestry.
He poured alcohol over the worst of the new cuts, biting down on a washcloth to muffle his scream. Tears blurred his vision as he threaded the needle with practiced efficiency.
The first puncture through his skin sent a fresh wave of agony through him, but he continued. In and out. Pull tight. Again. Blood slicked his fingers, making the thread slippery and difficult to manage. Still, he worked methodically, sewing himself back together one stitch at a time.
"It will be fine," he whispered, the mantra he'd repeated for years. "It will be fine."
But it wouldn't be fine. Nothing had ever been fine.
His thoughts drifted to the day six years ago when Madam Theresa had called him into her office, eyes gleaming with unusual excitement. "We've found your mother, Elias," she had said.
For one glorious moment, he'd believed his life would change. That the years of mockery and isolation would end. That he would finally have someone who loved him.
The mansion had been everything he'd dreamed of—tall iron gates, a sweeping driveway, windows that gleamed like diamonds in the sunlight. His mother had been beautiful too, in a cold, polished way. She'd looked at him with the same expression someone might use when finding an insect in their food.
"This is the mistake?" she had asked Madam Theresa, not bothering to lower her voice. "This is what survived?"
A boy about Elias's age had peered around her legs, curious but distant. "Is he my brother?"
"No, darling," his mother had replied, stroking the boy's perfectly combed hair. "He's nothing to us. Just the result of your father's indiscretion with a drunk whore."
She'd turned to Elias then, her voice dripping with contempt. "You're cursed, boy. Worthless. Your father was a drunk who died in the gutter where he belonged. If you're looking for him, try hell." Then she'd pressed an envelope into Madam Theresa's hands and turned away, dismissing him from her life as easily as swatting a fly.
In the bathroom mirror, Elias's reflection fractured into a kaleidoscope through his tears. He'd finished sewing the longest gash on his side. The thread was green this time—the only color he'd had left. It stood out starkly against his pallid skin, an alien vine taking root.