THE GLASS CASTLE

CHAPTER 2

CHAINS OF CRUELTY

Days bled into weeks. Isabella’s cruelty grew into a routine. She scolded him for the smallest mistakes: a missed speck of dust, a tray held at the wrong angle, silence when she demanded conversation.

Her friends mocked him, calling him “the stray dog.” Ethan bore it with clenched teeth, but at night, alone in the servants’ quarters, anger burned like acid in his veins.

Still, he couldn’t stop watching her. When the parties ended and the guests left, he saw her standing alone in the glass halls, her reflection fractured into a thousand pieces. She looked lonely. Almost human.

One evening, she caught him staring.

“What are you looking at?” she demanded, voice like ice.

Ethan dropped his gaze. “Nothing, Miss Veyra.”

What happened today Ethan pondered alone, I still cannot believe it did my ears deceive me?!!.

For all my days in her mansion, for all the mornings when her voice lashed across my back sharper than the sting of the broom’s bristles, never never has she spoken to me the way she just did. Calm, gentle, almost as though she forgot who I am, almost as though I was not a servant, but someone worthy of respect.

I stood there, numb. I thought I had misheard. My heart hammered so loudly I barely caught her words. She the heiress whose tongue is sharper than her jeweled hairpins, whose moods change like tempests, whose laughter burns colder than her scorn she spoke like water, soft and still. No command, no insult, no mockery hidden between the syllables just calmness.

It was so strange, I nearly dropped what I was holding. And if I had, perhaps she would have snapped back into the cruel tone I know too well. But she did not. She kept her voice steady, as though some invisible hand had silenced the thunder that always lived in her throat.

Why?

What is happening to her? Or rather what is happening to me? Could it be that I am losing my mind, hearing kindness where there was none? No. I know the difference between poison and water. Her tone today was no poison.

It unsettled me more than all her shouting ever did. I am trained for rudeness; it does not wound me anymore. But kindness from her unexpected, uninvited cuts deeper, because it feels like a trap. Like bait left in the forest for a hungry creature. And perhaps I am that creature, foolish enough to step closer, to dream of warmth where there is only cold stone.

Yet what if it was real?

What if she let slip a part of herself she has long buried? Could it be that beneath her silk gowns and glittering jewels, beneath the mask of arrogance she wears so well, there is something trembling, something human? If so, why would it show itself to me, of all people? I am nothing here. Less than nothing. I am a shadow that sweeps the halls so her slippers never grow dusty. She has a hundred others she could speak kindly to a father, a cousin, a friend, a suitor. But no. Today, she spoke softly to me.

The memory clings to me like fire to dry grass. I replay it again and again, hunting for malice hidden in her tone. But I find none. Only calm. Only a voice I had never imagined belonged to her.

Perhaps she is sick. Perhaps her heart has tired of cruelty. Or perhaps this thought frightens me most she wanted me to notice. What if she meant for me to hear that gentleness? What if she wanted me to remember it, to puzzle over it, as I am doing now?

If so, she has succeeded. I am no longer at peace. Her calm voice echoes louder than her shouts ever did. I feel as though she opened a door, just a c***k, and behind it lies a world I was never meant to see.

And so I cannot rest until I know why. Until I know what stirred her to speak like that. Was it accident? Was it mockery? Or was it… truth?

I vow I will not let this slip past me. I will work harder, I will endure longer, I will sharpen my eyes and ears until I catch her again in that rare moment where her soul speaks without its armor. For if the heiress truly holds gentleness within her, then the world is not what I thought it was. And if it is all a trick, then at least I will uncover the secret and guard my heart against it.

Still… deep inside, though I dare not admit it, part of me hopes it was real. Part of me hopes that calm voice will return. For in that fleeting moment, I felt something I have not felt since childhood or seen., he had seen something in her eyes a shadow, a c***k in the glass. Making him him want to know more about her, even though she only sees and treats him as a lowly servant boy who has no class, whealth nor high status.

Ethan kept pondering on this and finally vowed not to make any mistakes, until he gets answers to all his secret questions and more.