Chapter one hundred and eighteen
Chapter one hundred and eighteen
Vivienne & Emeline
The room feels smaller tonight.
Not because its dimensions have changed—walls don’t bend for grief, ceilings don’t lower themselves out of pity—but because the air has thickened into something that clings to the skin, invisible fingers pressing at my throat. Emeline lies beside me on the narrow bed, her breath shallow and steady, her hand curling into mine as if she’s tethering me to a shoreline I can no longer see.
“You’re awake,” she whispers, though her eyes remain closed.
“I can’t sleep.” My voice sounds foreign in my own mouth. Too sharp. Too certain. I want to take it back the moment it leaves me.
Her fingers tighten around mine. “Good. Don’t.”
The word ripples through me, unsettling in its simplicity. I should ask what she means—why she speaks like someone who knows more than she should—but I don’t. Silence feels safer, though the silence is not empty. It hums, low and steady, like a generator deep beneath the floorboards.
“Do you hear it?” she asks suddenly, her eyes flicking open.
“Hear what?”
“The walls,” she says, and then she smiles—fragile, almost luminous in the half-light. “They’re breathing.”
For a moment, I want to tell her she’s wrong, that walls don’t inhale, don’t exhale, don’t pulse with quiet life. But when I press my ear against the plaster, I swear I can feel it—the faintest rhythm, like the muted thud of a heart buried behind brick.
Emeline laughs softly. Not the laugh of a child, not the laugh of a girl who should still be sheltered by innocence, but something older, sharper. “It’s always been alive. You just didn’t want to see it.”
My stomach twists. The room shrinks again. I feel the weight of her hand in mine as both salvation and shackle.
“Em…” I whisper, though I can’t bring myself to finish the sentence.
“You wanted me safe,” she interrupts, her voice calm, final. “But safety doesn’t exist. Not here. Not with him gone. The only safety is staying where the walls can hold us.”
The thought terrifies me, yet the more she speaks, the more it seduces. Outside this room—outside this stifling cocoon—is nothing but doubt and collapse. Inside, at least, there is her, her warmth pressed against me, her certainty radiating like a fever.
“Do you believe me now?” she asks, turning her face so close that I feel her breath on my lips.
I want to say no. I want to say yes. What slips out instead is: “I don’t know anymore.”
“That’s enough,” she whispers, and then she pulls the blanket tighter around us both. “We’ll stay here. We’ll stay until it stops mattering.”
The walls exhale again—long, slow, inevitable—and I close my eyes, uncertain whether I’ve surrendered or been sealed inside.