32

I found Florence standing alone on the front stairs, staring at the moon. It bathed her in silver and highlighted all the darkest tones of her auburn hair. I wanted to touch it, run my fingers through it, and remind myself she was real. Her skirts hid most of her curvy figure but the corset she wore dug into her hips and tugged at her waist, forcing her chest to spill slightly from her pretty pale green blouse. She was breathtaking.

Wes had been on a warpath, trying to figure out how to convince us to leave the Manor. He was determined that she would destroy us in some way. I was convinced she might be an angel because no one, monster or otherwise, had ever made me feel the surge of butterflies in my chest that she did every time she smiled at me.

“What are you looking at?” I asked her, and she whipped her head around to look at me, arms folded over her chest.

“The sky,” she sighed, and a tiny huff of warmth floated into the chilly air.

“Pretty,” I said, not looking away from Florence.

“Your brother drives that metal coach like an insane person.”

I laughed and came to stand next to her. Wes had left so fast that no one could ask him questions about where he was going or when he’d be back. But, knowing him the way we did, it would be a minute before we saw him again.

“It’s called a truck. That one specifically is called a Bronco. And he just needs to clear his head,” I said.

“I’m extremely envious of his ability to run away,” she said, not looking away from the sky. Something devastating was in her voice as she said it, and then her eyes sparkled and she looked at me quizzically, “You got rid of the horses but then call it a Bronco?”

I snorted, enjoying the look of adorable confusion on her face and shaking my head. “Let’s save the history lessons… future lessons?” I mulled it over briefly and then shrugged the thought away. “Whatever lessons they would be, for Clay.” I watched her for a second longer and stepped off the stone steps in my jeans and a band t-shirt. “Show me around.” I tilted my chin toward her, extended my hand to her, and smiled. Just open yourself up to me , I silently begged. “I haven’t explored outside. Inside is enough of a maze.”

“Alright,” she said, voice thick with amusement as she offered me a lazy smile and took my hand. She gathered her skirts in her other hand and descended the stairs, starting the tour around the Manor with the front garden. It all looked the same to me, run down, falling apart but there had been small moments, when the floors didn’t seem so cracked and the wallpaper looked brighter than before.

She pointed out every little detail she loved about the Manor, never complaining that she was bored with anything. She loved the vines that climbed the windows and the wildflowers that bloomed in the spring. Nothing seemed old or tired in her eyes. She appreciated every detail as if it were the first time she had seen it even if I couldn’t .

I just enjoyed watching her talk. Her bottom lip jutted out when she was trying to find a word more progressive than her current language, and how her eyes twinkled like glitter when she told me that her favorite place in the entire house was the field outback because there was a tree to climb.

She tucked her hand into the crook of my elbow. The gesture was small, but it set off fireworks along my skin, and my eyes flickered down to how her fingers curled into my forearm. Florence pointed to the small running foundation surrounded by bushes of dark roses she described. As if she spoke them into existence, with a blink of my eyes the cracked, dying bushes bloomed. Doubling in size, each flower spreading its petals and soaking up the moonlight.

My lips parted in amazement and closed again, keeping my shock to myself. Trying my best to remain stoic in a righteous attempt not to startle her.

It was truly incredible how Florence’s outlook on the Manor was so different from ours. To her there was no crumbling brick or rusted and dingy windows. Every piece of it was like it had been built yesterday. When Florence didn't respond, I tracked her gaze to the large iron gate at the end of the driveway.

“Have you ever tried to leave?” I asked her.

“In the beginning,” she said, continuing our slow pace around the side of the house, “every day.”

“And you never made it out the door?”

“Not at first. Over the years, slowly but surely, I could creep over the threshold, my boundaries increasing until I could walk around the front of the house. And then, eventually, I could get to the garden, and then the field.”

“But never the gate?” I asked her. “Have you tried recently?”

Florence shook her head at me; her demeanor had curled in on itself, and she seemed terrified.

“What’s going on in there?” I stepped forward, unlinking our arms, and blocked her path.

She was only a few inches shorter than me, but I lowered myself to look into her eyes.

“There are details about my past.” She licked her lips nervously and looked away from me. I couldn’t quite place why she was so upset but something was bothering her, and the fact that she wouldn’t tell me upended my normally playful mood.

“Hey.” I held my hands back in surrender. “There are a lot of scary monsters in the world with more teeth.” I smiled at her, and her eyes flickered to the dimple on my cheek as they turned a shade lighter and her body started to relax. “I’ve been bitten, stabbed, and nearly beheaded by most of them.”

“Koen,” she stuttered.

“Nothing you say is going to scare me, and it stays between us,” I added, knowing that if Wes could hear me right now, he’d have both hands around my neck. “Never trust them, no matter how much they plead and beg, Koen. Deep down, all they want is blood.”

“I’m never sure.” She looked back at the Manor like something was watching us. “If I grew stronger or if I was given more freedom. But I’m grateful either way. Being outside makes me feel alive. ”

I straightened out, processing her words. She had done that before. She spoke about the Manor as if it were alive, but it seemed strange. She was fond of it but also feared it like a caged animal. I would have to break my promise if only to tell Clay what she had said. Any tiny detail from her was one step closer to figuring out how to free her.

“What if we try?” I asked her.

“That’s not a good idea,” she said, backing up a step. I reached out to her and wrapped my fingers around her wrist, which was always so warm.

“I’ll be with you the entire time,” I told her. “Can we try together?”

The word ‘together’ seemed to shudder through her like a chill. Her eyes flickered to and from the gate then back to me as she visibly forced herself to steady her breath. I tilted my head to catch her gaze and pressed my lips together in a thin line.

“I won’t let you go,” I whispered under the wind that brushed our cheeks, and her eyes snapped to mine.

I know how foolish I must have looked, tripping over my two feet just to garner her attention, but there was a magnetism to Florence that I had never felt before. And part of me, hidden under all the sense I had, was the hopeful kid I used to be. He held all the yearning for joy and tender care I hadn’t felt in a long time. And it radiated from her like a sunbeam, calling to me like a moth drawn to a flame.

“Okay,” she conceded, pressing her hand into mine a little tighter.

We walked down the path toward the gate. Each step Florence took felt a little more like walking through hardening cement. She got slower with every inch we gained closer to the gate. I kept my hand gripped around hers as I popped the latch on the iron bar and kicked it open with my foot.

Not letting go of her, I slipped in front, walking backward through the gate. Our arms extended between us as the space grew. “Are you okay?” I asked her.

She nodded.

“Are you lying?” I smiled.

“A little,” she breathed out through shaky lips. “Don’t let go.”

“I won’t.”

But the promise meant very little as she stepped across the gate’s threshold.

The toe of her shoe brushed against mine only for a moment, before she was lifted from the ground.

Florence was violently ripped from my grip, and I was sent flying backward as if a blast of energy had gone off between us and separated us by force. I rolled in the dirt, pushing to my knees and coughing up a sticky stream of blood that coated the inside of my mouth and then painted the gravel between my hands. Both impaled with tiny rocks, I couldn’t take a full breath and realized that I must have hit the ground hard enough to knock the wind from me and possibly break a rib.

I blinked the tears and dust from my eyes, rolling to my back and curling into a ball, trying to get my body right before I looked around in panic for Florence. There was a deep track from what could have only been her feet sliding and grasping for purchase, but she was nowhere to be found.

“Florence!” I called out to her as the darkness settled deeper against my shoulders. I screamed her name until my voice was hoarse, but she never came back to me.