I recorded a message to Rowan, the assistant who had kept my gallery alive for years.
“Find me a cornea donor. Also, reserve me the earliest flight out the day after tomorrow.”
My eyes had once been my livelihood—every hue, every glimmer of light passing through them before it reached canvas. Julian had taken them for his lover.
So I would take everything back.
But first, I needed to see.
I used to believe in beauty. In love. In color. I believed in Julian, the way I believed in my art.
Paint fades. So does devotion.
He had chosen.
Now I would too.
---
Light seeped faintly through my closed lids when I woke again. The silence told me it was late.
I tried to make it to the bathroom alone, counting each step. My knee smashed into a table leg and I went down hard, biting back a cry.
The door flew open.
“Elara! What are you doing?” Julian rushed over. “Why didn’t you wait? I was only gone a moment.”
A lie. He didn’t smell like the outside world.
“I’m okay,” I said calmly. “Go back to whatever mattered more.”
His hand patted my hair. “Nothing is more important than you.”
Those words once meant everything. Now they meant nothing.
He helped me up and escorted me to the bathroom like a jailer.
Afterward he asked, “What do you want for lunch? I’ll make anything.”
“I want to go home.”
He hesitated. “But your condition—”
“I don’t know this place. At home I won’t keep crashing into furniture.”
“Fine,” he agreed.
Back at the villa, I was already planning my escape when he spoke again.
“A friend of mine lost his wife during childbirth. He was in an accident yesterday… he didn’t survive. He asked me to take care of his baby.”
I sipped water, masking the disgust. “Bring her here tomorrow.”
He hugged me. “That’s why I love you. You’re always so kind.”
He cooked dinner. I barely ate.
“You hardly touched it,” he said. “Want me to make something else?”
“I’m full.”
He was about to push when the doorbell rang.
Julian went to answer the door.
The instant I heard the lock turn, every muscle in my body went rigid. A familiar scent floated into the room — the same perfume I’d worn for years.
His voice dropped low. “You weren’t supposed to come until tomorrow morning. Where’s the baby?”