Wedding eve

The night before the wedding was the quietest night Mary had ever known. It was not the peaceful quiet people spoke of with longing, not the hush that came after laughter or prayer. It was the silence of a graveyard—thick, oppressive, alive with the knowledge that something had ended and something worse was waiting to begin.

The house itself seemed to be holding its breath. Even the walls felt different, as though they were listening. The servants had been dismissed early, their footsteps fading one by one down the long corridors until there was no one left who might accidentally offer kindness. The chandeliers were dimmed. The carpets swallowed sound. Somewhere far away, a clock ticked with slow, deliberate cruelty.

Her father had taken no chances.

Her window was nailed shut, thick wooden boards crisscrossed like a warning sign. Not even moonlight could find its way in properly; it slipped through the cracks in thin, pale lines that cut across the floor like prison bars. A guard sat in a chair directly outside her bedroom door, the scrape of its legs against the marble still echoing in her ears from earlier. He had been there since sunset. He would remain there until morning.

She was allowed no phone. No books. No paper. No pen. Nothing sharp. Nothing heavy. Nothing that could distract her from the reality of tomorrow, or give her the illusion of control.

Mary sat on the floor in the center of her room, her knees drawn tightly to her chest, her arms wrapped around herself as if she could keep herself from unraveling by sheer force. The bed loomed behind her, perfectly made, white sheets tucked so tightly they looked untouched, unused, innocent.

She couldn’t sit on it.

The sight of the white sheets made her think of the wedding night, and the thought hit her like a blow to the chest. Her breathing stuttered. Her heart began to race, sharp and erratic, as though it was trying to escape her ribcage. She pressed a hand to her mouth, willing herself not to gag, not to scream.

She stayed on the floor because the floor felt safer. Solid. Cold. Real.

After a long moment, maybe longer she reached into her pillowcase and pulled out the one thing she had managed to hide. The gold locket lay heavy in her palm, warm from the heat of her body. It was old, the hinge slightly loose, the surface scratched from years of being opened and closed with trembling fingers.

Her mother’s picture was inside.

Mary opened it carefully, as if the image might vanish if she moved too quickly. The photograph was faded, the edges worn soft, but her mother’s face was still there. The familiar curve of her smile. The sadness in her eyes that Mary had only learned to recognize after she was gone.

Her throat tightened.

“Why didn’t you take me with you?” Mary whispered into the dark. Her voice sounded too loud, too fragile in the empty room. “Why did you leave me here?”

The silence answered her. It always did.

Her chest ached as memories came unbidden, crashing over her in fragments she couldn’t stop. The smell of rose-scented perfume filled her senses so vividly she almost turned her head, expecting to see her mother standing behind her. She remembered the way her mother’s hands used to tremble as she brushed Mary’s hair, fingers lingering too long, as if memorizing the feel of her. She remembered the whispered apologies pressed into her scalp, words Mary hadn’t understood at the time.

She remembered waking in the middle of the night to quiet sobbing, pretending to be asleep while her mother cried beside her bed. She remembered the way her father’s voice used to change when he spoke to her mother how it dropped, sharpened, stripped of warmth. Ownership disguised as authority. Control disguised as concern.

It was the same voice he used with Mary now.

The realization made something snap inside her.

A sudden, frantic energy seized her, sharp and desperate. She scrambled to her feet, the locket clenched in her fist, and ran to the door. She rattled the handle violently, the metal cold and unyielding beneath her hands.

“Let me out!” she screamed. The sound tore from her throat, raw and unpolished. “Please!”

For a moment, there was nothing.

Then the guard’s voice came through the thick wood, bored and flat, as though she were an inconvenience rather than a human being. “Go to sleep, Miss Vance. You have a big day tomorrow.”

The words made her stomach twist.

“I’ll give you money!” she cried, panic breaking her voice into jagged pieces. “I have jewelry! Please—just let me run. I’ll disappear. He’ll never find me!”

She pressed her forehead against the door, tears blurring her vision, her breath coming in painful gasps. She could already see it in her mind: the road stretching out ahead of her, the freedom of movement, the anonymity of somewhere far away.

“Go to sleep,” was the only response.

Mary’s legs gave out.

She collapsed against the door and slid down until she was a heap on the floor, her back pressed to the wood as though she could somehow merge with it, dissolve into it. The sobs came then, uncontrollable and violent, tearing through her chest until her lungs burned. It was the kind of crying that left you hollowed out, that felt like it might kill you simply by existing.

She felt like an animal caught in a trap, cornered, frantic, willing to chew off its own leg to get free. But there was no way out. Every exit had been sealed. Every plea had been anticipated and dismissed.

Her thoughts turned, unwillingly, to Arthur .

She thought about his heavy, spotted hands. The way his skin looked against hers when he stood too close. She thought about his eyes, the slow appraisal in them, the absence of shame. The way he looked at her as if she were not a person, but a possession waiting to be claimed.

Tomorrow night, she will be in his house. In his bed.

The contracts she had signed, her had already given him legal right to her body. The words had been clinical, detached, stripped of humanity. But the meaning was unmistakable.

The thought made her want to scream until her throat bled.

Instead, she swallowed it down and began to pace the room. Back and forth. Back and forth. Her bare feet traced the same worn path over the carpet until her legs ached and her head throbbed. She counted her steps. Lost track. Started again.

Every hour, the clock in the hall chimed, its deep sound rolling through the house like a death knell.

As the first gray light of dawn began to creep through the cracks in the boarded-up window, Mary sank back into the chair at her vanity. The mirror stared back at her without mercy. Her reflection looked older somehow, as if There was a knock on the door.

It was soft. Controlled. Final.

“It’s time,” Elena said when the door opened. Her voice was gentle, practiced. “The hair and makeup team are here. The car leaves in four hours.”

Mary stood up.

Her eyes were red, her face pale, her body heavy with exhaustion. Her heart felt like a stone lodged in her chest. She didn’t argue. She didn’t resist when Elena guided her to the chair.

She didn’t flinch when hands touched her hair, when brushes swept across her skin, when they began to paint her face into something presentable. Something acceptable.

She simply stared straight ahead, hollow and unblinking—a ghost waiting for the ceremony that would bury her alive.