by Emily Shore
I beam up at him. It’s the first time I’ve seen him really smile. It’s much fuller than I expected. It accentuates his features like he’s turned on twinkle lights underneath his skin so he glows. He might look like a pirate, but he’s a sweet pirate. No rogue.
For only one preparation, Queran is altogether perceptive. Or maybe I’m just readable. I guess he did get one thing wrong. Butterflies inside me versus birds. Butterflies always win. They don’t peck. And they’re far more intelligent. After all, no butterfly tells its offspring to migrate hundreds of miles home before it dies, but somehow, their children still know the way.
Will any of us ever get home?
Will Bliss want to come with us when the time is right?
“Queran.” I place the bird branch on the vanity, then stare up at him. “Do you have a shape for my sister?”
Queran holds up his finger again. Patient, I watch him turn to the side and cross the threshold into Bliss’s private space. Dangling from a string connected to one of her bedposts is another origami shape, which he untethers before approaching me again. This was shaped years ago. I can tell by the faded gray of the paper, the wear and tear of time. It’s a complicated pattern, and I wonder how long it took him to complete it. Full of intersecting triangular folds that all form a complex star—one with gaps so I can see through each one to whatever’s on the opposite side. Inside one gap appears a Queran eye, a blue Northern Light ribbon as I hold it up.
Gentle, he takes it from my hand and then begins to shake it, desperate movements, before he shrugs and sticks one finger through the center gap. I read the message loud and clear. Beautiful and intricate on the outside like a convoluted labyrinth, but empty on the inside.
No, I believe there’s something more, but if this young man has been preparing my sister for years and seen nothing but this, how can I expect to find something else when we’ve only just met? Especially when she wants nothing to do with me.
Ten years ago…
Bliss
“Good girl, Bliss.” Force patted my head when we arrived at the Breakable Room.
I’d heard of the Breakable Room. How it was Father’s happy place. Once, I’d peeked around the corner when I saw him walk down the hallway to that room. He’d entered, closed the door, and hadn’t emerged for an hour. When he had, he hadn’t looked like Father. One of his hands had been so red it resembled a giant blister. The ends of his whip had been bloody.
He used to bring Mother there all the time.
But it was the first time he’d brought me there.
After opening the door, Father gave me a little nudge inside. I wanted to leap into the room. It was an honor to be here. Father was sharing a special secret with me. But I wasn’t brave enough to leap. Just like I wasn’t brave enough to go up to the roof and swim in the pool like he always wanted. I was never brave enough for the pool he built just for me on the first level of our Penthouse. Too caught up with how the water could get all up in my nose and my eyes so I couldn’t breathe…I couldn’t ride a horse either. Or join Father for skydiving or rock climbing or any of his other daring do’s.
Father closed the door behind him.
Confused, I glanced around, wondering what could possibly be so special about this place. There was nothing but glass walls all around us. Even a glass floor, but they were like a magician’s mirror. I couldn’t see through them at all. All I saw was my own reflection. They were like mirrors.
Father touched my shoulder, then tucked a couple of my curly waves behind my ears, fiddling with the ends around my neck.
“My little girl is growing up,” Father pronounced.
I smiled up at him. So often, he spent too much time away from home. Of course, I was always busy. Father made sure I had special tutors for dance and music and acting. I loved acting the most.
“Bliss.” Father’s hand wandered to the back of my head as he stared down at me. “You perform very well in your acting class from what I’ve heard.”
“Yes, Professor Shurp says I’m a prodigy.”
“Good, my love. Tonight, you will perform for me.”
“For you?”
“Yes. Think of it as a game. But you must follow the rules, which I set, and you will do everything I tell you to do. Do you understand?”
I bit down on my lip but nodded. “Yes, Father.”
“Good girl. You’ve always been my good girl.”
Because all I ever wanted was his happiness.
“Will this make you happy, Father?”
He cupped my chin, lifted it gently, and said, “I hope so, my bit of Bliss. If not…” His eyes strayed to the whip dangling from his belt.
After I performed, it was the last time he ever called me Bliss.
It was the last time I ever saw the inside of the Breakable Room.
It was the first time I felt his whip.
Present
Father has confined Serafina to a suite because he will begin Serenity’s training in the Breakable Room. The routine is familiar, so I take the necessary steps to prepare myself. Slipping into the submissive role suddenly seems more difficult. In the past, I’ve mastered this for my father and for clients because it takes a strong woman to do so, particularly at my age. If the Temple recruiters spoke the truth in ads, they would state the requirements of a Temple girl must include an absent vomiting reflex, penchant for masochism or ability to endure great pain and degradation, suppression of the fight-or-flight instinct, and, most importantly…no tears.
Tonight, for the first time, I recognize I am not completely catering to another person’s whims and desires. All other times, I’ve managed to push mountains in front of my mind and disappear to cope with what my body must endure. Not tonight. I don’t want to disappear. I want to feel every whip crack. Donning the skin of a child is risky. It will unearth memories I’ve long since buried.
Tonight, I become Serafina again. Before, this disappointed him. Now, thanks to Serenity, it won’t. I could never become the angel he saw in our mother, but nor could I adopt the dominant demon that burned in his own heart. Little comfort that countless girls couldn’t satisfy him either. I came close, but nothing like my mother.
And he punished me for it that night.
That first time, the whip burned. Flaming serpent fangs clawing at my child’s flesh—a delicate garment that has since borne the brunt of thousands of different skins. Sometimes, if he has an important client for me, Father will order a session in the regenerator to repair my old scars and bruises or the freshly seared flesh for the times he’s punished me. Other times, automatic-skin graft technology if there is no rush because healing still takes longer with grafts—even if the process has quickened from months to days. I wonder if healing will be in store after tonight.
Submission is not unwelcome. So many clients have other needs that are far more complicated. Pain is simple. And real. Serenity won’t see what I’m doing. She won’t realize this will be an offering. Not a sacrifice. I am giving something of myself.
For once, I’m doing this on behalf of someone else. It’s all new, but I don’t want to lose it. Father won’t see it either, but he never will. Since that night, he gave up seeing anything but a broken girl.
Even if it means my father will destroy my sister in the process, I would rather it was her and not Serafina. I can’t lose what I never had to begin with, but now I’ve met Serafina, now I’ve spent time with my mother, I can’t help but admit my desire to keep her close. I will do whatever it takes to preserve what Father has not destroyed. I will suck the pain so she does not have to.
14
T r a I n i n g
Serenity
The Breakable Room.
Though I should’ve expected nothing less than from my father, it still feels like shards of glass lodged in my throat. They grow larger once Force opens the door and I see my sister kneeling inside, her back to us with nothing but a thin, transparent shift covering her.
“Good girl, Mara,�
� Force commends.
Is my sister’s heart like a spider web that our father has spun into his own design? How old was she when he started?
My father turns to face me. “Life is all about balance, Serenity. For every decision we make, there is an opposite that counteracts our own. Dominant—” He motions to us. “Submissive.” He points to Bliss. “Giving and receiving. Yin and Yang.”
He reminds me of Jade. Her words resound in my head about how submissiveness is never passive. Bliss is the very portrait of submissiveness. Sky was not.
Unlike Jade, Force does not stipulate any boundaries. Nor does he communicate in any way. All he does is withdraw the whip from his jacket and place it in my hand, fully expecting me to use it. A trial by fire. This is more about me than Bliss. There is no respect.
What Jade did was against Sky’s will, but it was far different from this.
I hold onto my mother. Nothing else but her face when Force slaughtered my real father. Nothing else but Bliss’s voice when she offered herself in our mother’s place. Offered. Most of all, I try to remember her sacrifice.
When I close my eyes and flick the whip against her back, I understand this isn’t about Force. It’s about Bliss, Serafina, and me. A triangle.
Force pushes his way inside, voice hardened. “You broke nothing.”
He’s referring to the undamaged shift she wears, the lack of cuts dealt by my hand.
Too impatient, Force rips the whip from my hand, stands next to me, and cracks it against the upper part of Bliss’s back, demonstrating. It slices the fabric clean. It snaps her skin in two. She flinches only a little, but I don’t see her cringe. No wince in her eyes. Her hands haven’t even moved from their folded position in her lap. One garish gash shows Force’s success. As well as his mastery of the technique. More so than Jade ever was.
“You have my blood. Start acting like it.” After prying open my fingers, he slaps the whip handle into my palm.
Force is the ultimate deceiver because he deceives even himself. I’ve read my mother’s journal. I know the secrets in my father’s eyes. For him, the control isn’t what he enjoys most. The violence is his drug. The abuse. The sadism.
No matter how he dresses it up in dominant words, Force is a sadist through and through. He’s punishing Bliss for something. For not being me? Not being like him?
Desperate to find balance, I raise one finger to my father just before approaching Bliss. Then, I kneel beside her.
“Serenity,” Force bellows.
“Get up.” Without moving a muscle, Bliss whispers the words so low Force can’t possibly hear.
I ignore my father. I need to tell her. I need her to know.
I whisper in Bliss’s ear. “Thank you.”
Her exhale is all I need. That she understands where Force has no love for her, no sense of respect or equality, I do. To me, she is the strong one right now. Right now, we are both human. We have equal blood, equal hearts, equal souls. We always have.
I rise to a stand just as Force reaches my side, eyes narrowed to a burn like scorched emeralds. This time, I don’t stop. I want to go slow as Jade did, but I know what my father expects. I know Bliss can endure.
“Well done, Serenity.” Force admires my stroke when it lands on Bliss’s back, creating a line diagonal to the one he’d just formed moments prior. “Each line you create is different. Each mark is a new page to her story. Each one is a badge, a testament to the power you have wrought. Please continue.”
Yes, power. That is all it is to him. A power play. All a game.
It’s not a game to me. More and more fabric is ripped, but with each new mark, I see other patches of her back where skin has been healed, where previous lines scarred, turned silvery from time. Healed to a certain degree. Skin grafts, I’d wager. How many times has he done this to her? How many clients have taken out their own violent fantasies on her skin?
It feels like Bliss is somewhere between fantasy and reality. She is so beautiful in this moment. Just like Queran’s tetra-star shape. Intricately healed scars have mended over each other, paving the way for these new ones from my hand. I’m just adding more paper triangles to her.
Pretending for my father comes simple. Whatever mask I wear, he accepts. So when I pause, step back, and stare at the torn strips of flesh I’ve inflicted, he takes it as appreciation. He doesn’t see it as a delay tactic—a way to draw out the experience with some moments undefined by pain. Does she feel it? My mother wrote about how she wouldn’t even feel the pain at times. Or how other times when she became a ghost to the Unicorn, she would welcome the pain because it brought a different form of pleasure with it—knowing she was fulfilling my father’s desires.
I want to believe Bliss is not doing this for Force. At the most, she’s doing this for our mother. At the very least, she’s doing this for herself. Anything but for Force. We can share our mother. I want to know there’s something at the end of this rabbit hole. Not just me falling again and again, diving deeper and deeper until there’s no hope I can ever crawl out.
I won’t become a monster.
Sky would never let that happen.
I must never let that happen.
15
H e a L i n g
Bliss
I grit my teeth after the first strike. Sink my head low, clenching my eyes after the next few. Not every whip crack slices.
Then, my skin begins to soften. Pain grows with every passing second.
I wish she wouldn’t stop every few seconds. There’s too much space between the strokes. Too many seconds before the next blow lands, taking me by surprise. So many of my clients do not stop. Whether pounding, biting, choking, scratching…beating. What Serenity gives is a rash pain, but it’s a quick one. Over all too soon. These few second intervals Serenity deals are driving me mad.
Breathing becomes difficult. The pain fades compared to the necessity to breathe. Every time I feel like I’m ready to pass out, Serenity’s whip cuts me again, sending lightning shooting into my organs, causing me to seize up.
“Stop,” Force finally cuts her off. “I want to see.”
He crosses the floor until he stands behind me. By now, the shift I wear dangles loosely off my skin, held on by a simple ring of fabric around the back of my neck. Instinctively, I wince when Father drags his thumb down one of the open wounds, murmuring in approval. Ten in all.
“Beautiful. Not as deep as mine but a worthy first effort. Look, Serenity. Look at what you’ve done. Where there is pain, there is also joy. From the pain will come healing, and with healing, there will be strength. You are giving your sister strength.”
She is giving me nothing. I win that strength on my own. I own it all by myself.
Serenity chooses not to respond. I have no interest in seeing her expression, in reading her emotions. Whether she agrees with him or loathes him for this, I couldn’t care less. This isn’t about her. It’s about me. Her hand caused the damage, but the pain is mine. The aftermath is mine, and she can’t share it.
I will not allow it.
“Tomorrow, I will personally take you on a Temple tour,” Father announces to Serenity.
I’ve never left the Penthouse. Serenity will have access to everything. She will take part in exhibits on all levels while I will remain up here—close to the clouds but always in the shadows.
“Get some sleep,” he tells her, but I still don’t look back at them. “You’ll need it.”
I hear the door close, but I can still sense her behind me. Sighing finally, I perform utterly slow movements as I try to get to my feet.
“Bliss—”
She starts to touch my arm, but I flick just my head at her and snap, “I don’t want your help.”
“Bliss, I-I was trying to make it—”
“There is nothing easy about it.” I manage to keep any emotion under the surface. “There is no way to soften the blow. You don’t understand. You’ll never understand.”
I pause to take st
ock of her expression. In her eyes, I read guilt, sympathy. Damn, I read pity. Then, it all shifts. Her features screw tighter, eyes and lips contorting. Good, anger I can handle. It’s an inferior emotion. It just proves I’m stronger than her.
“I’m not him.”
I deadpan. “No, you’re much worse.”
When I step into my suite, I expect to find Queran. Father normally assigns him to heal me after client appointments. While I do find him, Serafina is also standing there. All the healing remedies along with the skin grafter sit on a small table near the mirror. I don’t know how long she’s been waiting, but once I see the origami objects in Queran’s hand, I know she must have been waiting for me during all of Serenity’s training.
He holds up the tiny unicorn shape, then gestures to her and to the healing remedies.
I nod with a soft sigh. “Just for tonight, Queran.”
Reluctant, Queran nods, squeezing my hand once before departing.
“Just for tonight,” I repeat to my mother, reminding her.
“Lie down on the bed, Bliss.”
My mother offers no other words, just the simple directions. She understands exactly what I need. I imagine she had her own healer. Perhaps she went through more than just one. Father isn’t the type to heal. He would have hired multiple healers for Serafina.
At least Queran’s hands are equally masterful at healing.
He was shy at first. Though I was still young at the time, healing was a more intimate service than preparing. By now, it’s second nature for us. Serafina’s hands are patient but still different from Queran’s soft, steadfast ones. For my mother, the tables have turned. I sense the way her fingers experiment with my skin, lingering even after she’s applied a salve to numb and antiseptic.
Finally, she trains the skin grafter on my open flesh. A moment later, I smell the lasers patching my skin.