You never forget the first time you realize your skin is a trap.
I was nine when it happened—standing in the upstairs washroom of my family's estate, brushing soot from my cheek with the back of my hand. The mirror was cracked. The air smelled of damp towels and iron pipes.
The moment I touched my face, something else touched back.
Not physically. Worse.
It wasn't my grief that flickered in the glass. It was my mother's.
Love first. Bright and desperate, brittle around the edges. Then… disgust. Not at me. At herself. Then pain. Pain like an animal. Sharp and raw and full of teeth.
I'd only meant to clean my skin. Instead, I slipped beneath it.
After that, I learned to stop touching—mirrors, people, anything that remembered feeling.
Which is why, when Dorian knocked again the next morning, I very nearly ignored him.
"Open up," he called through the door,with a flat yet humouours tone "I bring flowers and death."
I considered letting the fog keep him company, but curiosity got the better of me.
The door creaked open with audible sigh.
He looked worse than yesterday. His coat was soaked, his eyes rimmed red from too little sleep and too much truth. He held a folded piece of parchment in one hand and a crumpled brown paper bag in the other.
"Bread," he said, holding up the bag. "And liver paste. You like liver paste, right?" he said with a half grin which would make you think he was having a stroke.
I stared at him. He sighed.
"Fine. I like liver paste. It was an excuse."
I took the paper and turned away.
"You're welcome," he muttered, trailing after me. "Gods forbid anyone in this city say thank you without bursting into flame." he stated rolling his eyes.
I opened the parchment on the counter. Another photograph.
A young woman, no older than twenty, lay on a marble slab. Her skin was pale, her limbs arranged with ceremonial care. Her mouth had been sewn shut—red thread, meticulous, cruel. Her fingers rested over her heart.
And between them, like a confession, a spider lily bloomed.
My throat tightened behind the mask.
"She was a seamstress," Dorian said, quieter now. "Worked the north docks. Lived alone. No enemies. No lovers. Just a few coins hidden in her floorboards and a half-knitted shawl still on her table."
"Time of death?"
"Same as the last one. Hour of the Bell."
I touched the edge of the photograph.
Emotion clung to the paper—faint, but there. A whisper. A hum beneath my fingertips. I could already feel the ache curling under my ribs.
"I'll go," I said.
"To the morgue?"
I nodded once.
Dorian raised an eyebrow. "Thought you hated that place."
"I hate most places."
"Well. Fair."
The Vullum morgue was a repurposed chapel that smelled like formaldehyde and unfinished prayers. Saints stared down from cracked glass with blind, pitying eyes. I envied them.
The body lay on a table in the center of the room,on a worn out decaying metal table ,that had seen a many poor souls,The table and body lay bathed in gray light that filtered through a stained-glass window depicting a weeping angel.
"She's beautiful," Dorian murmured beside me.
I looked at him with worry
"Not in that way," he muttered quickly. "Just… peaceful. For someone with a mouth full of thread."
I stepped closer. The emotion hit me like a wave.
Love—not soft, but sharp. Love like a knife held to her own throat. Then longing. Terrible, breathless longing. And something worse than either: the belief that no one would ever understand it.
I gripped the edge of the table to keep from swaying.
Dorian moved beside me. "You okay?"
"No." I forced a breath. "But that's nothing new."
"She did this to herself, didn't she?"
I nodded.
"She wasn't murdered. She offered herself."
Dorian cursed under his breath. "What kind of magic is this?"
"Emotional," I said. "But corrupted."
He blinked. "Like yours?"
I turned to him slowly. "Do you want my help, Dorian, or do you want to strip me open and study what falls out?"
"I—" He looked away, jaw tightening. "I just want to understand."
"No," I said softly. "You don't."
We stood in silence for a moment. Dust drifted between us like snow that had lost its way.
Finally, I reached for the girl's wrist. My glove stayed on. Always. But I felt her. Even in death I felt her or...what was once her.
She had been in love—with someone who never saw her. She believed if she sealed her mouth, her heart would speak louder.
And it had. Straight into the grave.
I stepped back, trembling. "Someone is turning emotions into rituals."
Dorian ran a hand through his hair. "Great! So we're not dealing with a killer. We're dealing with a psychotic priest."
I met his eyes. "Worse. A believer."
We walked back through the fog in silence.
Dorian kept stealing glances at me, like he wanted to say something but wasn't sure which version of himself should say it. The jaded man? The one who laughed at gods and curses? Or the boy I'd once seen crying over a grave in his dreams?
He finally cleared his throat.
"Tell me one thing."
"No." I said quicker than he could let out a breath
"You don't even know what I was going to ask."
"Yes, I do."
"Come on, Lenora. Give me something. One scrap. One piece of who you were before the gloves."
I stopped walking.
He stopped too, a step ahead, turning toward me.
I looked at him through the fog. "You want to know who I was?"
He hesitated.
"I was the girl who touched her mother's cheek and saw every regret she'd ever buried. I was the girl who kissed her first friend and felt him flinch inside,Disgust in his soul. I was the girl who had her body carved to make it safe for others to be near."
The silence after that was the heaviest thing I'd ever carried.
Dorian didn't look away. To his credit, he didn't pity me.
He just nodded once, slow. "Okay," he said.
That was all.
When I returned to the apothecary that night, the first thing I saw was the third spider lily, blooming just outside the window.
Its petals were open wide,fresh...glowing like the sun in distance ocean waters...no that's too peaceful... more like....blood and tears under moonlight..
And I knew, deep in the oldest part of me, that another soul had already been offered.