Chapter Three : The Cold Beautiful Cage
728 Words
The drive to the Voss estate took forty minutes.
Sienna knew because she counted,
Not deliberately she wasn't that composed. She counted because her mind needed something to do that wasn't thinking, and so it latched onto the seconds and held them one after another, the way you hold a railing in the dark.
Damien sat beside her in the back of the car.
Not close. There was space between them — careful, deliberate space, the kind that doesn't happen by accident. He sat with one arm resting along the door, his body turned slightly away from her, his gaze fixed on the window on his side.
He had not spoken since they left the ceremony,
Neither had she.
Sienna kept her hands folded in her lap. She could still feel where he had held her hand the warmth of it, the firmness. She pressed her palms together now and focused on that pressure instead.
Don't think about that she said to herself.
She looked out her window.
The streets she knew fell away one by one the coffee shop where she used to study, the bookstore that stayed open too late, the bridge she crossed every morning on her way to campus. Replaced by wider roads, quieter roads, roads lined with trees so tall and perfectly even they looked deliberately planted.
Everything out here was deliberate.
A gate appeared ahead tall, black iron, set between two stone columns so large they made the car look small. A guard stepped out, saw the vehicle, and stepped back immediately. The gate swung open without a word.
Of course it does, Sienna thought. Everything opens for him.
And then the house appeared.
Sienna had prepared herself. She had thought it will be large, it will be expensive, it will make you feel small.
She had not prepared herself for how it actually felt.
The Voss estate rose at the end of the driveway like something from another world entirely grey stone, enormous windows, four floors with wings stretching out on either side. Steps leading up to an entrance framed by columns three stories tall. Perfectly symmetrical. Perfectly cold.
No flowers near the entrance. No color anywhere. Just grey stone , dark glass and immaculate grounds that had clearly never been touched by anything as careless as joy.
This is what power looks like, she thought. Come in if you dare.
She stepped out of the car and stood beside Damien and looked up at it.
"It's big," she said.
It came out before she could stop it. Honest. Simple.
Damien looked at her those grey eyes unreadable as always and something flickered briefly across his expression before disappearing.
"You'll learn where everything is," he said.
"I'm sure I will," she replied.
She walked toward the steps without waiting for him.
Inside, a woman appeared immediately small, neat, somewhere in her late fifties, dark hair pulled back sharply from a brisk efficient face that was not unkind.
"Mrs. Voss," the woman said, and the title landed so strangely Sienna almost looked behind her. "I'm Margaret. I manage the household. I'll show you to your room."
"Thank you Margaret," Sienna said warmly. "It's lovely to meet you."
Something crossed Margaret's face quick, almost invisible. Like she hadn't expected to be spoken to that way.
Her room was on the second floor, Large. Impersonal. A bed dressed in white and grey linen so smooth it looked untouched. A wardrobe full of clothes she hadn't chosen. A window that stretched nearly floor to ceiling overlooking the back grounds.
And beyond the perfectly trimmed hedges a garden.
Overgrown. Wild. Forgotten.
The only thing on the entire estate that looked like it had once been allowed to simply be.
Sienna stood at the window and looked at it for a long time.
Dinner was quiet.
Afterward, Damien stood and looked across the long table at her.
"The room on the third floor," he said, his voice even. "End of the east corridor. Don't go in there."
Sienna looked at him steadily.
"Why?" she asked.
A beat of silence.
"Because I'm asking you not to," he said.
And he walked out.
Sienna sat alone at the table with the candles burning low around her.
She looked up toward the ceiling.
Third floor. East corridor. End of the hall.
She told herself she wasn't curious.
She absolutely was.
- Writer
