Page 258 of Coal Hearts

I didn’t turn into a rampaging lunatic intent on raping, pillaging, and murdering.

I didn’t sprout fangs or a tail or go loping after a full moon.

I was still just a man.

A man who was finally honest.

Sitting upright, I tipped the rest of my wine onto the grass, tucked my unsmoked cigar into my trouser pocket, then shot to my feet as if I weighed nothing at all. No longer burdened. No longer drowning beneath anchoring lies.

I strode calmly and confidently toward the fortress where I’d been forced to step into me.

My thoughts were still my own.

My heart still beat, my senses still worked, I still breathed and existed.

All my life, I’d been so afraid of personal acceptance that I’d built up a fantasy that the day I became who I truly was was the day I died for good.

But I didn’t die tonight.

I’d metamorphosised.

I’d shrugged off the ill-fitting chrysalis.

And now, I flew.

Chapter Five

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Ily

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CLOUDS IN MY HEAD, MY mouth, my ears, my heart.

I groaned and tried to crawl my way out of the fuzzy, foggy entrapment, only...something heavy pinned me down.

Sleep dissolved instantly, slamming me into a vicious headache. My hand raised to try to rub away the discomfort, only that was trapped too. Blinking away threads of nausea and confusion, I raised my head and froze.

I lay in the jewelry room.

Naked as the day I was born.

Dressed in a few scant band-aids, I slowly shifted against heavy, crushing body parts and sat up.

The people surrounding me mumbled with annoyance. Some rolled over and slung arms and legs over their closest companions. Others huddled deeper into their dreams as if unwilling to come back to reality.

A circle of them.

A hoard of them.

Just like all the jewels dumped into baskets and draped over each other, Victor’s jewels did the same thing.

And I sat in the middle of what looked like a massacre.

Bare limbs punctuated by scant white blankets drawn from single beds. A blend of skin colours, hair colours, bruises, cuts, and pain. I hadn’t met all the slaves serving in this fetish-filled stronghold, but seeing them all in one room made me freeze.

At first, I thought it was another illusion. It had to be the drugs. Because if it wasn’t...