The canvas stared back at me, white and accusing.
My fingers trembled around the brush. The dream still clung to me—the voice, the obsidian eyes, the wanting . I told myself it meant nothing. A trick of grief, of sleeplessness, of this crumbling house pressing its weight against my sanity.
Yet when I dipped the brush in paint, I didn’t think of Victor’s face.
I thought of him.
The figure from the mirror.
The first stroke was hesitant—just a wash of shadow, the suggestion of a jawline. Then another. And another. The bristles scraped the canvas like whispers. I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until my lungs burned.
Something shifted in the room.
The air grew heavier, thicker, as if the walls themselves leaned in to watch. My reflection in the window behind the easel flickered—for a moment it wasn’t me holding the brush, but a silhouette, taller, sharper.
I spun around.
Nothing. Just the empty studio, the dust motes dancing in the weak morning light.
But when I turned back to the painting, the shadows had deepened. The jawline I’d sketched now looked deliberate. As if the portrait was painting itself.
A knock at the door.
I nearly ruined the canvas with a jagged streak of black.
Madame Morvane stood in the doorway, her hands folded over her apron. Her gaze flicked to the easel, then away, quick as a shuttered lantern. “You’re up early,” she said.
I stepped between her and the painting, my pulse thudding in my throat. “I could not sleep.”
She studied me for a long moment. Then, softly: “The attic door was open.”
A chill prickled my neck. I hadn’t gone back. Had I?
Before I could answer, she added, “I closed it.” A pause. “Some things sleep for a reason, Miss Elysia.”
When she left, I expected the spell to break—for the painting to look like what it was: the ramblings of a tired mind.
But it didn’t.
It looked alive.
The shadows had resolved into the sharp angle of cheekbone, the curve of a collar. And the eyes—God, the *eyes—*two pools of black that seemed to follow me as I moved.
I told myself to stop. To cover it. To burn it
Instead, I reached for more paint.
The voice from my dream curled through my mind, smug as a cat.
Yes, it sighed. Like this.
And as the hours slipped by, I realized with dawning horror:
The portrait was no longer mine. And soon, neither would I be.
ns216.73.216.192da2
