Night had swallowed the Harrington estate whole by the time the last echo of Seraphina's footsteps dissolved into the corridors. Silence grew thick enough to suffocate. The lights dimmed automatically at two a.m., casting the mansion in a cool blue haze that glinted off marble floors like the sheen of water on a frozen lake.
But Adrian Vale Harrington did not sleep.
He sat where he had been since she fled—on the edge of the bed, half-dressed, half-broken, elbows braced on his knees, fingertips pressed to the space between his brows as if he could squeeze the memory out of his skull by force.
His breath shivered.Then steadied.Then shivered again.
He wasn't trembling out of fear.
He was trembling because the last thing he expected was her—of all people—to cross the one line he had never allowed anyone to approach.
He had tolerated her pleading, her manipulations, her childish attempts to win his favor, her increasingly desperate ways of clinging to the engagement like a lifeline meant to save her from drowning in a future she never prepared for.
But this?
This was different.
She had touched him.Reached for him.Tried to close the distance he had built with his own blood and will and sleepless nights.Tried to cross into a part of him no one had touched since before—
Before the kidnapping.Before the cold, dark cellar.Before the ropes digging into his wrists until his hands turned numb.Before the whispered promises of what they'd do to him if his parents didn't pay.Before the screams he never uttered but still heard echoing behind his ribs.
He pressed both palms to his face.
The air in the room tightened around him, invisible hands pulling at his chest, squeezing.
He forced himself to breathe.
In.Slow.Controlled.
Out.Even slower.Measured like a man walking barefoot over shards of glass.
But his body betrayed him.
A tremor ran down his spine.Small.But undeniable.
He lowered his hands and stared forward at the darkened room—the minimalistic decor, the immaculate order, everything precise, controlled, arranged as if chaos itself had been banned at the door.
And yet chaos had entered anyway.
Not through violence.Not through nightmares.But through a girl's desperate touch.
His throat tightened.
"Why…" he whispered emptily into the room. "Why does everything… find a way to break me again?"
No one answered.No one ever did.
He stood abruptly, pacing like an animal trapped in a cage too small for its instincts. His breaths shortened, each inhale scraping like sandpaper against his lungs. He pressed a hand over his sternum, fingers digging in as if he could pry out the phantom sensations crawling under his skin.
Her weight leaning over him—Her whisper against his ear—Her fingers on his buttons—Her breath mixing with his—
He swallowed sharply, jaw clenching hard enough that pain shot up into his temples.
He felt sick.
Not disgusted by her—Not exactly.It was deeper.Older.Older than her presence, older than their engagement, older than everything he'd been forced to become.
He could feel the past lurking just behind the surface of his thoughts, a shadowed hand reaching toward him.
He refused to let it.
He crossed the room to the closet, forcing himself to move, to do something, anything, to keep the memories from sinking teeth into him. He opened the door and stared at the rows of shirts—perfectly arranged by color, fabric, function.
He touched one absently.White.Crisp.Ironed to military precision.
But he didn't register the texture.
His mind replayed Seraphina's trembling fingers brushing one of these very shirts only hours earlier, her breath hitching, her face flushing at the sight of his new body—a body forged in pain, not pride. A body he despised as much as he relied on.
His vision blurred briefly.
"Why couldn't you just stay away…" he whispered, voice fraying.
He closed the closet door gently, as though sudden noise might shatter the thin thread holding him together.
Sleep teased him, tugged at the edges of his exhaustion—but the moment he felt his eyelids drop, the memories surged again, claws dragging.
He jerked awake.Backed away from the bed.Stood perfectly still, breath sharp and thin.
He couldn't lie down.Not tonight.
Not with the phantom of her weight still pressed against him.Not with the echo of her whisper painting the back of his neck.Not with the terror—yes, terror—that if he closed his eyes, he'd wake up back in the darkness of that cellar, her touch replaced by rough hands and the metallic scent of fear.
He exhaled shakily.
He hated this.
He hated how weak he felt even now—after clawing his way out of every nightmare, after burying every self-destructive impulse beneath discipline sharpened like a blade. He hated that her actions—not malicious, not calculated, simply desperate—could still drag him back into the places he swore he'd never revisit.
He hated that love—the thing he once begged the world for—had become the very thing that now ruined him, piece by piece, in ways no torture device or ransom threat ever had.
He walked to his desk.
Turned on the lamp.
Sat with his back rigid, forcing himself into stillness.
And then he reached for the folder he only opened when sleep became impossible.
Daily Penance Log — Day 219
He picked up a pen.
His hand shook.
He began writing anyway.
I failed.My discipline wavered.I allowed another person to break my composure.Unacceptable.I must intensify training by 40%.I must increase fasting hours.I must—
His vision swam.
He gripped the pen harder.
The ink streaked in uneven, fracturing lines.
He swallowed, forcing the tremors to still.
He set the pen down with deliberate care.
Then he whispered it—
Barely audible, a broken confession carved out of the deepest part of him:
"What else is left for love to ruin…?"
The room answered with silence.
And Adrian, sleepless, trembling, and hollowed out by the past he couldn't outrun and the present he could barely bear, lowered his head into his hands—
And waited for dawn to come and punish him further.