Page 126 of Scarred in Silence

45

Astra

I stand in front of the full-length mirror, watching the ghost of myself take shape. It reminds me of Elliana. Not sure who is staring back at me today. Today she feels powerful.

The black dress hugs me like a secret I never meant to tell—silk, sleeveless, with a slit that cuts high up my thigh. It’s elegant in the way a knife can be elegant. My platinum hair setting softly on my shoulders like a halo of frost, framing a face that doesn’t beg to be understood anymore. It demands to be remembered. To be heard.

Lucien hasn’t said anything since I stepped out of the bathroom.

He just watches me. Always.

His tie hangs loose around his neck, the white shirt already pressed, the black slacks sculpted to his frame like they were designed for bloodstains and boardrooms alike. He looks like power incarnate, but it’s the stillness that unnerves me.

“You don’t like it?” I ask, smoothing the fabric at my hip.

“I didn’t say that,” he answers, voice thick.

He moves behind me and rests one hand on my waist. In the mirror, our reflection is something mythical. Two devils playing dress-up in human skin. Perfect.

“It’s a lot,” I whisper.

“So are you,” he replies.

I bite the inside of my cheek. My heart pounds, but not because I’m afraid of my parents. Not anymore. It’s everything else—the silence they left me in. The shame. The disappointment they carved into me like scripture.

“Are you sure you want to go through with this?” Lucien asks, his thumb tracing a slow circle over my hipbone.

“No,” I answer. “But I have to.”

I don’t want closure. I want confrontation. I want them to see what they tried to bury. I want them to sit at their pristine little table in their too-clean house and choke on the realization that I survived anyway.

That I became something they couldn’t ignore.

Lucien lifts a strand of my white-blonde hair and kisses it.

“They’ll hate this,” I murmur.

“Good,” he says simply.

I grab the black leather jacket off the bed and shrug it on. It used to be his. It still smells like him—cologne and gunpowder and the kind of sin that leaves bruises shaped like promises.

“Lipstick?” he asks.

“Already packed it. Red.”

His smile is faint but sharp. “Of course it is.”

He finishes tightening his tie in the mirror while I buckle the ankle strap on my heel. I hate that this feels like a performance, but maybe it’s always been one. Maybe every interaction with them has been staged since the moment I stopped being who they wanted me to be.

Lucien watches me like I’m a weapon he forged himself. Like he knows exactly how much damage I can do.

“I’ll follow your lead,” he says.

“No,” I say, standing tall. “You don’t need to. I know the lines by heart.”

He picks up the small velvet box from the nightstand, the bullet he gave me, and slips it into his jacket pocket. I don’t ask. I don’t need to.

It’s probably the final nail.