Violet Chains

Smoked between Ribs

The sky had barely brightened when Iris returned. Duskmere was a city that always seemed on the verge of waking but never truly did—just a constant restless breath rolling through streets that stank of soot, wet stone, and regret.

His boots dragged as he climbed the cracked stairs of the old tenement. The wood groaned under his weight, as if the building itself disapproved of his choices. When he pushed open the door to their apartment, a mix of damp air and worn fabric greeted him.

Cera looked up from her place near the window, where the first cold rays of dawn filtered through stained glass. She held a battered satchel in her lap, mending a tear with patient fingers.

"You’re back early," she said without looking away. “And you look like hell.”

Iris didn’t respond immediately. He crossed the room in silence and dropped into the only piece of furniture with a cushion—an old armchair that had once been blue, now faded to something in-between ash and memory. His body felt carved from stone. His thoughts, molten.

“I saw him again.”

Cera’s hand stilled. The needle paused mid-air. Her gaze snapped to him.

“Almond?”

A nod.

“What the hell, Iris?” Her voice was sharp but not unkind. “You said you were going to the market.”

“I lied.”

She didn’t interrupt him, but her brows drew together in a way that said she already knew the truth would taste bad.

“I went to Drevar Manor.”

The air in the room turned still, thick with silence.

"You what?" she whispered after a moment.

He stared at the crack running along the ceiling. “I wanted to see what kind of monster lives in that golden cage.”

“And what did you find?”

Iris let out a dry laugh. “Someone who already knew I’d come. It was like he’d planned it. Like he was waiting for me, standing at the gate as if I belonged to him.”

Cera sat down slowly beside him, curling her legs beneath her. Her voice dropped. “Tell me everything.”

So he did.

He told her about the chilling calm in Almond’s voice, the way his words wrapped around Iris like silk and thorns. He told her about the garden, still and quiet, as if every flower was listening. About the brief moment Almond reached for his chin—no threat, just a touch—and how his body had reacted like a pulled string.

“I felt like I was losing parts of myself the longer I stood there,” Iris said finally, voice low. “And the worst part? I didn’t want to stop it.”

Cera’s eyes shimmered with concern. “You’re not thinking clearly.”

“Maybe not,” he said. “But I am feeling clearly. I’ve never been seen the way he looks at me. Not even you look at me that way.”

“That’s because I don’t want to own you, Iris.”

The words sat heavy in the space between them.

“You don’t understand,” he said, suddenly restless. He got up, pacing. “It’s not just attraction. It’s like… he sees something in me and is waiting for me to realize what it is.”

“That’s exactly how they pull you in,” she snapped, standing now too. “That’s how people like him work. He doesn’t want you, Iris. He wants the idea of breaking you.”

He stopped pacing and looked at her. “Then maybe I want to see how far I can bend before I break.”

Cera flinched. “Don’t say that.”

He hesitated—then dropped heavily back into the chair and buried his face in his hands.

“Cera,” he murmured. “Do you ever wonder if we’re just... stuck like this forever?”

She moved closer, gently brushing hair from his face. “What do you mean?”

“I mean this life. These walls. This hunger. I was nine when my mother died, remember? No name for my father. Just a note pinned to her coat and enough debt to bury us both. I was sold for coin by a man who called himself my uncle. Three years in a brothel before I escaped.”

Her breath caught, but he kept going. The words poured out like rot being drained from a wound.

“I survived by making people look at me the way Almond looks at me. Like I was worth something. Even if it was only for a minute. That’s what scares me. That I know this game—and part of me still wants to play it.”

Cera sat beside him again, wordless now.

“He scares me,” Iris whispered. “But I’m even more scared of going back to being invisible.”

“You’re not invisible,” she said fiercely. “Not to me. Not to the people whose lives you’ve touched. You matter.”

He gave her a tired, bitter smile. “Then why do I only feel real when he looks at me?”

Cera wrapped her arms around him. They stayed that way, wordless, for what felt like hours. Outside, the city continued its slow mourning hum. But inside that tiny room, two friends tried desperately to hold the shattered pieces of one life together.

And though Iris had returned from the gates of Drevar Manor physically untouched, something inside him had been awakened—an ache shaped like hunger, power, and the kind of attention he had long ago stopped believing he deserved.