Page 21 of Porcelain Grave

His hand comes up, gripping the back of my neck, pulling me an inch closer. His eyes are blown out, shimmering with a manic intensity. "I won't just help you, Ophelia. I'll hold each one of them down, pinned and screaming, just so you can slice them open and watch the light leave their eyes."

I can't help it. I giggle—a small, broken sound that feels right in this madness. "We'll look like a proper murder couple, won't we?"

"The most fucking gorgeous pair of monsters this town has ever seen," he growls.

He doesn't waste another second. He stands up in one fluid motion and pulls me up with him, my naked body shivering slightly as the cool air hits my skin. He leads me toward his closet, but it's not just a place for clothes. He pulls back a heavy curtain to reveal a corner that looks like a fucking armory.

The walls are lined with steel and matte black. There are handguns—Sigs, Glocks, customized revolvers with ivory grips—and longer rifles that look like they could take a head off from a mile away. Beside them hang knives of every shape: jagged combat blades, sleek stilettos, and heavy-duty hunting knives that look like they could carve through bone like butter.

They are so sharp that they look like they would cut you just from looking at them.

Then, he reaches for two masks. Rhys hands me mine. At first glance, it looks delicate. Almost beautiful. A white porcelain masquerade mask, shaped like the face of an antique doll that has been forgotten in a dark attic for a century. The surface is flawless in some places, impossibly smooth and pale, but fractures spread across it like frozen lightning. The cracks aren't painted on.

They look real. Like someone dropped a perfect doll and instead of throwing it away, they carefully put every piece back together. Thin veins of neon light run through the fractures, glowing softly beneath the porcelain. A cold, ghostly blue pulses through the cracks, as if something alive is trapped underneath the surface. The left side of the mask remains untouched—beautiful, innocent, almost angelic. The right side is ruined. The porcelain has shattered around the eye, creating jagged fractures that expose a faint glow beneath. The cracks crawl outward like a spiderweb, reaching toward the cheek and jaw.

The eyes are the most haunting part. Not like Rhys's.

They are the eyes of a doll. Wide. Empty. Unnaturally beautiful. A soft ice-blue light shines from inside the eye sockets, giving the illusion that the doll is awake. The mouth is small and delicate, sculpted like a porcelain doll's expression. But the lips are slightly cracked, with a thin line of neon light tracing the fractures. Not a smile. Not a frown. Just an expression frozen forever. Like a doll waiting for someone to decide whether she is precious...

or broken.

The mouth, instead of the stitched lines like most LED masks, it's a cracked porcelain smile with glowing fractures. The lips are sculpted into a delicate doll-like shape, but the cracks running through the lips are filled with neon. Have the largest crack run from her eye to her mouth. Like the doll's face shattered diagonally. The crack becomes a visual scar.

The light gives it the appearance of a silent, glowing corpse.

He puts on his.

It’s a masterpiece of cyberpunk horror. A glossy black porcelain base, shaped like a masquerade mask but twisted. The left side is clean, outlined in a soft, ghostly white glow. But the right side... the right side is chaotic. Bright blue neon lines drip down the face like melting paint, trailing off the chin in glowing droplets.

The mouth is one of the mask's most unsettling features. It is thin, narrow, and expressionless, giving the impression of tightly closed lips. Instead of being sculpted with realistic details, the lips are defined by a glowing soft white neon outline that contrasts against the glossy black surface of the mask. The lower lip extends downward into a single elongated drip in the center of the chin, making it appear as though the mouth is melting or formed from liquid light. The corners of the mouth are slightly downturned, creating a cold, emotionless expression rather than a smile or frown.

The eyes are hollow, dark pits, and the lips are slightly parted in a cold, emotionless white line. He looks like a futuristic cult leader, something inhuman and predatory.

I whisper to myself, low, "The blue tears.”

"This is what we wear," he tells me, his voice muffled and distorted by the mask. "For the six murders. Our uniforms for the slaughter."

He slides my mask over my face, the elastic snapping tight. Then, he dims the lights.

The room plunges into shadow, leaving only the eerie, neon glow of our faces. He turns me around, pushing me toward the full-length mirror behind us. We're both still completely naked, our pale skin contrasting sharply with the glowing, sinister masks.

"Do you like it, Ophelia?" he asks. He reaches over to the wall, grabs a heavy handgun, and presses the cold metal of the grip into my palm, closing my fingers around it.

I stare at my reflection—the eyes, the mouth, the gun in my hand, and the naked, trembling curves of my body. The mask glows ice-blue. I look like a fucking nightmare. I absolutely love it. "I love it, Rhys," I whisper, a manic edge to my voice.

The glow comes from inside, not around. When I look at someone, it will feel like the doll is looking back.

The eyes are not painted. They are alive. Two spheres of icy blue light burned beneath the porcelain, like a doll that had opened its eyes after a century of sleep. Tiny blue LED filaments inside the porcelain cracks. The light leaking through broken pieces, so when I speak, the glow moves slightly with my mouth.

Not a creepy grin. More like a doll whose expression is permanently frozen.

I turn to him, glancing down at myself. "My boobs are too big, though. They ruin the silhouette."

Rhys doesn't say a word. He takes the barrel of the gun and slowly, possessively, traces the curve of my breast, the cold steel dragging across my nipple. "They're perfect for me," he murmurs.

I giggle, the sound echoing strangely inside the mask. I set the gun back on the table and reach for the two-sided axe leaning against the wall. I hoist it up, resting the heavy blade across my shoulders, tilting my neck to the side in a mock-casual pose.

His black mask would be glowing cold white and blue like a predator. Mine would be glowing blue like a haunted porcelain angel. He looks like death. She looks like the thing death fell in love with.