Page 158 of Nine-Tenths

Nothing.

Are you paying attention? We are now in the transition between Acts Two and Three, and that means it's time for what writers call The Dark Night of the Soul. Tension thickens, and the finalconflict looms on the horizon. We need to shake things up by pushing the protagonist to their breaking point.

You see, throughout the story, the protagonist has harbored a core flaw or fear, which causes them to believe or react a specific way to either a truth of the world around them, or a lie that they perceive as a truth. It's what made them—me—hesitate to jump feet-first into the action back in Act One.

Like refusing to meekly acquiesce to becoming athing, a pet, a kept man. Valued and loved, sure, but under the control of someone bigger and stronger than me, simply because they are bigger and stronger.

No.

Not Dav.

But also.

Yes, also Dav.

So, despite the positive strides your protagonist has made post-midpoint of the story, they've yet to address this core flaw or fear when Act Three begins.

Their greatest weakness. And they do have to face it. They can't ignore it anymore. Because ignoring it in the first place is what caused the problem.

Dav is thoughtful, and romantic, and so acquiescent. He makes it so easy to pretend that all of this is sweet rom-com nonsense and not at all about the effective, if accidental, enslavement of the meet-cute love interest.

But wehavebeen pretending, I can’t ignore that any more.

The Dark Night of the Soul blindsides your protagonist, pushing them to their breaking point. They must confront the weakness inside them, or give up everything they've worked so hard to achieve.

Turns out, giving up is easier than I thought it would be.

Opposite the hideous orange lounge is what Dav called the Consort's Room, when he'd first given me the tour. I had grabbed his ass and told him I fully intended to sleep next to him every night, no need for a whole separate suite for me.

(For Charlotte?)

I'm glad of it now.

I shower, draw the heavy velvet curtains, crawl into the bed and just… lay there. Hadi texts, asks if I'm okay. I tell her I am. Don't know if I'm lying. The blip of rage has faded away again, become that same white-noisenothingness.

I can't leave—both Dav and Onatah have made that clear. And if I did, god knows what Simcoe would do.

But I don't know if I can stay.

I want Dav. That I'm sure of. But I don't want any ofthis.Something I'm also sure of. I don't know what tofeel, and so I'm so overwhelmed with feelingall of itthat I’m feelingnoneof it.

I roll over and stare at the low bookshelf and a desk under the window. Someone has lovingly shelved all of my books, and the sentimental knickknacks I'd accumulated in my time at the estate, as if they expect this room to be photographed for a magazine spread.

Fuck, maybe it will be.

Some style editor may show up to do a profile of the happy couple—they're still calling usAlvalinin the press,gross—and we'll have to pretend that this is just my office, and not where I live, now. Letting my eyes drift across the spines of the books, it dawns on me that there are some titles there that hadn't been in the bags I'd brought here. I slide off the bed to my knees, crawling over. My textbooks, my thesis notes binder, my much-abused copy of the nightmare that isThe CanterburyTalesin Olde English, it's all fucking there.

It's all the shit from my apartment.

Someone has moved me in.

I can see it, now, the places where someone has tried to integrate my shoddy student shit into the decor. A film poster on the back of the door that once hung in my living room. The discontinued Beanevolence mug that was in my desk drawer, now holding expensive wooden-handled pens on the top of the dresser. My piece-of-shit-laptop resting on a sleek mahogany desk.

I feel…

Violated.

Like I'm a new rescue cat they need to introduce to a house, so they've taken something familiar—the equivalent of an old tee-shirt—and jammed it into my cage.