Outside Cameron’s room stood a young woman exactly a foot shorter than him destroying her right bottom lip as she paced back in forth around his door. She usually came by his room when she wasn’t busy or took any messages required, to him. Any additional moment she could be near him she was, but today she was conflicted. Last they spoke he told her to come by any time and he wanted to know more about her. Which made her excited. People told her not to get close to the Fangaria’s, something was wrong in this house. They couldn’t mean Cameron, though. He was different.

She could hear him crying, again. For such a big man, he was transparent as a window. He felt guilty for the way they treated Seth. The sibling played, what her poor gullible Cameron thought was going to be a prank on their second eldest brother but ending which the baby girl’s life in a thread. The servants although invisible saw and heard everything.

The woman gathered her dull blond ringlets into a high pony tail. She had made up her mind as she turned the knob. As she heard what sounded like breaking glass, she opened the door full swing. Was he alright? She surveyed the room and it was a mess. The after math of a tornado or boy wrestling with his demons; Open chest, clothes, books, papers, tables, chairs, curtains, broken glass, thrown pillows, toiletries…..broken glass. The woman followed the trail of glass through a large partition until the glass turned into jagged rubies and there in the middle of the wardrobe, a man crouched over on his knees the center of a burst of glass. “Cameron!” she ran over to him turning shards into dust under her heels as she hugged his face with her bust before her arms, joining him between his barrier of glass. “Cameron?” She delicately brought his swollen face up to hers with little resistance. “Cameron, Sir.” she traced his new single scar with the back of her middle finger then her lips. The subtle piece of affection he got nowhere else brought him to, accompanied by another flood of tears.

“Annamarie.” Her name oozed out like the first hit of a cigarette in 15 years. He balled the back of her dress in his hand like a security blanket and dragged her on to his lap scraping ankles across glass. She winced but wouldn’t let him see. “Sir?” she wondered in the mist of his silent tears.

“Cameron. Or whatever you want to call me, but that.”

“Love?”

He looked at her and he saw her. For all the self-pity and false strength for some unknown reason she not only likes him, thinks a good person, but possibly love. “I don’t know…” he looked away still holding her tight, a little too tight they both fell back. She cradled his head protecting it on the way down.

“Are you okay? I didn’t cut you?”

“I’m fine, love.”

He sighed. “I don’t know. I mean I don’t think I know what that is. It feels heavy.”

“Just Cameron, then.”

“I’m sorry.” He covered his eyes. “I can’t do anything for anybody.” He reached for a large piece of glass. She heard and looked over at the distorted jigsaw piece. He was clutching. “Do you mean to hurt me?”

“NO! No...No…never,” it fell to the floor as he forsake it for her butt, pulling her dress up at the end. “Just me.”

“Think,” she reached into his pants and pulled out his already swollen length, massaging it between her index and middle occasionally slipping it in between her index and ring finger, slowly, deliberately, hardly touching. “Every time I want to hurt myself or think negative thoughts think them about me instead. Maybe you can see how ridiculous they are.”

He could not focus on forming a coherent thought to answer her with the heat of her thighs and the motions of her hand, but then she stopped. He saw she was leaning over him waiting for a reply. What was she saying? He had to piece it together if she was going to keep going. Something about negative thoughts….bugs…Father….hmm. Negative thought? He wished, she would move even just a little bit. It would help him focus.

“Promise Me.” She asked.

Huh? He hadn’t caught up to the last thought. ‘Oh!’ he thought. ‘Alda-Cassidy and Seth’ his lower body reflected his emotions and limped over withering down to size like a wilted flower. “But I hurt them. I hurt Seth. I thought we could be friends. I hurt little Alda-Cassidy in the process. I don’t even know if they’re okay. Someone came and took them.”

“It was an accident.”

“No. It was planned. Elizabeth said she planned it. She’s not that smart. I wasn’t going to go along with it in first. I was just going to let them do whatever they wanted and leave me out of it. They’ve played small pranks before but at that moment that thing did not look or at act like my brother, so I tied him up. I thought I was going to get to talk to him. I knew nothing of Cassidy. But I did nothing. I said nothing. I didn’t want to get found out. Now, Seth’s going to die.”

Annamarie went quiet and looked away. Her image of him slipping away. She knew the surface story and bits of other bits.

“I don’t understand.” He mused. She looked back. “We left him tied up.”

“He cut the rope.” She dismissed.

“no.” he was calming down. “No, Elizebeth said she found a weird room. There was chains bolted to the walls and ground, a chamber pot and a desk with a key. It was like something for an animal, but-”

“We have prisons downstairs.”

“This wasn’t downstairs. Whatever, you’re not understanding. Gabriel carried him in there and I locked the chains. They were heavy and thick, unbreakable without tools and there were none. Definitely not in reach, at least.”

Annamarie made a realization. She had made the wrong choice. He was not the man she wanted, but unfortunately he was the man she loved. She bent down and kissed him. “It could’ve been worse if you weren’t there. I know your brother’s and sister’s, especially as Lady Gabriella’s personal maid.”

“Really,” he breathed not trusting himself.

“Yes, now promise me.” She kissed him slipping her tongue inside toying with his like a friendly game of thumb wrestle. “I promise.”

“Take me to the bed.”

He stood up with her in tow. “Ah-I’m not that flexible.” She laughed wrapping her hands around his neck, digging her nails in for extra security. He shifted bottom to fit one check squarely in his hand while the rest was on his arm. “You’re tiny. I have you with one hand.”

She pressed her whole body against him. He melted in the warmth of her breath in the crevice of his neck, breast pressed into his chest, and the damp nested on his arm. He took her head and held her there. This was without a doubt happiness.

********** ********** ********* *********** ********** ********** ********** ********** ********

At the twins chambers there was a knock at the door. “I’ll get it.” Gabriel stood up.

“I’m closer.”

“Ugh” he threw himself on her more plush bed like a stiff potato. She shook her head. Sometimes he can be weird she thought.

“For you my Lady.” A young man with a strange attire; a black oversized shirt with a hood, oddly colored and textured blue pants stood at the door, a letter in his outstretched hands. She took the letter. It was soft like rose petals. There was no sender just her name: Gabriella Bellafor in smooth elegant cursive with exaggerated G and B. she opened the unsealed letter and inside on a small 3x5 thick just as soft piece of paper was a small sentence. Do You Want To Be Free?

“Gabriella, what is it?”

“nothing.” She looked up to no man. Startled she looked out in the hall. There was no one in either direction. “Just this letter.” She turned around and held up a large purple flower petal.