Page 25 of The Tyranny of our Longing

She frowned at the succinct message, trying to divine the emotion with which it would have been penned through the words left unwritten.

Was he angry with her? Disappointed? Or was there truly nothing else to his direct words but the shadow of her own guilty conscience?

With a sigh, she pocketed the note. She put together a tray of food and coffee, then made her way to her studio. The ballroom was half in gloom even with the curtains open, the rain settling over them once more in smoky sheets of looming clouds. But only when Phaedra had finally deposited her tray on the mantel and lit the burners to melt fresh wax did she notice the absence of something that should have greeted her the moment she had opened the door. There had been no draft.

Brows furrowed, she turned to the previously broken window, regarding with surprise the apparent efficiency of Nathaniel’s staff. The pane had not been patched, but replaced entirely, all trace of its former damage gone as if it had never been.

She took a step, her fingers lifting, a sudden urge seizing her to reach out and touch it, to somehow assure herself that it was not simply a figment of her imagination. But the absurdity of the notion finally caught up to her, and she pulled her hand back and turned away, focusing her thoughts on her painting instead.

She studied her earlier progress, noting how she was further along than expected, the now dry paint showing a much more detailed and intricate image than what she remembered.

She took in the changes, her surprise merely superficial this time, for she was familiar with this wondrous quality of her medium of choice. Of how the paintings looked different in the day than they did at dusk or night, the small details coming to life as light filled their grooves.

She picked up a brush, and started on the form of Ana, highlighting the soft waves of her auburn hair and the blush of her cheeks in her awed expression. Her skin shone skeletally white against the dark of her dress, and the promise of the green fabric offered an almost angelic radiance to the hands reaching for it.

Phaedra stopped, taking a moment to observe the colors on the panel, the green that should have been vivid and glowing instead of the ethereal yet muted hue the wax had allowed, and Nathaniel’s strange note finally made sense. The green was wrong.

She looked up at the portrait of Ana in her radiant emerald dress, recalled the rich shade of the wallpaper hugging the walls of her room and the hallways beyond. Then she looked back at her own painting, the difference glaring. Wrong.

But of course, it would be wrong. That shade of green would require ingredients she did not have, ones she knew would not blend well with the wax. It was a color she could not create, one she could not even begin to imitate.

She wondered if it truly made a difference. Because if Nathaniel was interested in the setting of the scene, the postures and expressions of its actors, and the array of objects surrounding them, the exact hues should not matter. Not in a way that would prove significant. Should they?

She folded her arms, uncertainty seeping in through the edges of her reasoning. She had told him of her limitations and he had acknowledged them. Could it be that he had not anticipated the extent of the difference?

She wished he would be there, so she might ask him directly. Ask him why it was suddenly so important. Ask him what had changed.

She wondered where he was, and if his unexpected departure had anything to do with their brush the night before. To call it a meeting would be denying its unwelcome nature, and she could not even hide behind its brevity to mask what it had truly been. An intrusion.

She rolled her shoulders hoping the motion would somehow shed some of the uncomfortable weight settling in her bones, and went back to work.

Leaving the question of the fabric for later, her brush moved on to the two figures falling into the background—the late Mr. Hawthorn ushering his bashful wife out the door, his hands caressing and guiding, his eyes sparking with adoration for his beloved long-unseen.

Phaedra frowned as the image of another set of eyes, hauntingly similar, flashed through her mind. The violence of the remembered gaze seemed almost impossible in the light of day, bleak as it was, and she wondered for the first time if it had truly happened. If it had not just been another strange nightmare, brought on by whatever morbid spirit had hold of her impressionable fancy.

The whole scene she had witnessed felt so out of place now, Nathaniel’s movements so unnatural as if they would belong to someone else, the eyes wrong in⁠—

Phaedra’s hand stopped midair as she stared at the painting coming to life before her. Something scratched at the back of her mind, as if an idea—a realization—wanted to break free, and take its rightful place among her thoughts. So she did the only thing she knew was right.

She allowed her mind to go blank, leaving her hand to move of its own volition, unconscious thought guiding it to what she did not knowingly understand yet. And so she watched, stunned, as the features of Bartholomew Hawthorn changed, adoring eyes morphing into predatory ones, his hands no longer caressing and guiding, but claiming and demanding. And Mariana Hawthorn no longer looked back at her daughter with a bid of frail goodbye, but with the expression of visceral fear of an animal ensnared.

CHAPTER 18

Phaedra paced the ballroom, her eyes fixed on the three frames hanging on the wall even as she moved. The unexpected revelation twisted around her bones, making her movements jagged, her mind awhirl in a war of hope and dread battling for dominance.

She wanted nothing more than to see Ana’s journal one more time, to reread the entry, now with different eyes, so she might decide if it was sudden clarity that had guided her brush, or mere misinterpretation.

She stopped, her eyes roving over the portraits, trying desperately to gouge some modicum of information from their dead stare. But either the artist had not wished to eternalize what had truly been in their faces, or there had simply been nothing there to show.

She wondered if she was wrong. If whatever she imagined was simply that—mere fancy spun into life by the hand of her own lurid memories, the ones that would not die no matter how deep she would bury them. Had this been nothing more than the projection of her own experiences, or had she indeed glimpsed the truth behind the veil?

She looked at Mariana, at her stiff and proper posture, her face devoid of all emotion. She knew how easy it was, how natural it could become to slip behind the mask, the bruises and breaks hidden beneath so many layers that one could even question their existence.

She wrapped her arms about herself, a shudder moving through her. She shut her eyes, willing her lungs to breathe, her body to calm, her mind to untangle from the knot it had wrung itself into. Because the fact of the matter was that she did not know. She merely suspected. And even if her suspicions clanged with every note of something true, it would not be enough. She needed something more to prove her misgivings, something tangible, something eternalized beyond life…

Something written.

Her eyes snapped open and, in an instant, she was out the door, hurried steps flying up the stairs. Her chest was heaving as she finally arrived at the library doors and pushed inside.