Page 46 of Bound By Crimson

Chapter Forty-Six

Sanctuary in Stone

Lyric didn’t want to be in the house.

The walls pressed too close. The rooms echoed too loud.

The air itself sagged with judgment—so heavy, it was hard to breathe.

So she slipped outside.

She didn’t know where she was going.

She only knew she had to move—anywhere away from polished floors, from tight-lipped maids, from the ghost of Kai’s fading touch.

The garden greeted her with a hush. The air was cooler here. Wilder.

She followed the stone paths without thought, her steps tracing old routes through the hedges. Past the maze. Past the manicured edges of everything she no longer recognized.

And still, she walked.

The farther she went, the more the land unraveled. No trimmed bushes. No sculpted beds.

Only tall grass and twisted vines clawing across the earth like veins.

Eventually, she reached it.

The wall .

The towering stone barrier, cracked and worn by centuries, stretched across the back edge of the property.

No glimpse beyond it. No promise of escape.

Just vines choking the stones, moss filling the cracks, time sealing it shut.

Tucked beneath a low-hanging tree, nestled into the wall’s roots, sat the bench—her quiet place, her only escape, even if it offered none.

Lyric sat.

And for the first time all day—she cried.

No swallowing it down.

No forcing composure.

Just raw, broken sobs. Her shoulders shook. Her hands curled in her lap.

Her belly heavy beneath her dress.

She didn’t know how long she stayed like that. Minutes. Hours.

Time didn’t seem to exist here.

Everything—her life, her choices, her future—felt unbearably far away.

She clutched the locket at her chest, her thumb tracing the clasp she didn’t dare open.

“Mom,” she whispered hoarsely. “Please help me. Please tell me how to survive this.”

The wind stirred the ivy above her.

She bent over slightly, cradling her stomach with both hands.

“I want to be strong for you. I want to be enough. But I… I don’t know how much more I can take.”

Silence answered her.

And in that silence her thoughts turned cruel.

Maybe it was her fault. Maybe if she were better—softer, quieter, smaller—this would all be different.

Maybe she was the one ruining everything.

She wiped her face with trembling fingers.

Be better. Try harder. Don’t make waves.

That’s what they wanted. That’s what survival required .

She rose stiffly to her feet, aching from the weight she carried.

Before she turned back toward the estate, she glanced once more at the wall.

At the ivy curling like skeletal fingers across ancient stone.

She paused for a moment, realizing that this was the only place that she felt safe.

It was the first time in weeks she’d felt like she could breathe.

She turned away from the wall, carrying herself back to the house,

Not because she wanted to—

But because she had nowhere else to go.