I had dinner with Thorn every night, but since the revelation with Pia, I kept my distance. I knew he’d noticed.

He’d done everything but call me out on it directly, and a part of me resented him for not acknowledging the growing chasm between us. At first, he was kind and gentle, worried his lovemaking had left me too broken to heal, but when I denied his kindness, he turned angry and disappointed. As much as my heart broke for what he’d had, I couldn’t forgive him for what Pia had told me. The rose garden was a burial ground where inevitably every rose would end up… She’d not only made it clear that there had been plenty before me, but she’d also cleared up the mystery of what happened to the girls after Thorn got sick of them.

The answer was simple - they were disposed of. After all, in the end, they were nothing but his property, and I knew once he broke something beyond repair, he didn’t hang on to it. He simply fucking got rid of it.

I still took dancing lessons with Marchante, who had shifted most of his attention to Amber. I knew that after Thorn’s angry lashing out, he was afraid of so much as to look at me in the wrong way. It was another reason why I started to resent him - he’d given me a teacher, someone to train me in what I loved most - and then intimidated him to the point where he gave me nothing but compliments. To someone like me, who had trained under Madame’s strict baton, it meant a struggle, because I needed critique to get better. Still, it was better than rotting alone in my room, waiting for the inevitable moment when Thorn decided I was useless to him.

The only person left in the world that I still trusted was Amber. I spent hours upon hours with her, distancing myself from Thorn while silently observing her, trying to decide whether she deserved the fate he’d condemned her too.

That afternoon, we were sitting on the balcony of her room after practice, doing stretching and massaging cooling lotion onto our aching legs. I could feel something was off - Amber kept looking away, unable to meet my eyes and obviously preoccupied with thoughts of her own.

“I have to tell you something,” she finally admitted what I already knew, her voice shakier than I’d ever heard it. “And I’m scared.”

I looked back to the room, slowly got up and shut the French doors on the balcony. “The weather is so nice today,” I said as I shut them. “Beautiful and sunny. There’s a bit of a breeze, though. I’ll just shut the doors so they don’t slam shut themselves.”

Amber stared at me with wide eyes, and I smiled at her before sitting back down and taking the bottle of lotion from her hands.

“Cameras inside,” I explained. “Hopefully there are none out here.”

She nodded, whispering, “I know.”

“About the cameras?” I asked, and she nodded again, suddenly grabbing my hand and holding onto me with a panicked expression on her face.

“Harlow, I slept with someone,” she said, and I stared at her as her eyes filled with tears of guilt. She wiped at them with her dainty fingers. “I’m so sorry. I tried to hide it. I didn’t want to tell you, burden you.”

“Did they force you?” I asked her urgently, gripping onto her arms.

“No,” she said, giving me a surprised look and obviously noticing that a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. “Did… did they force you?”

I carefully avoided the question and dodged the topic by asking more about her confession. “What happened? Who is it? Does Thorn know?”

“He’s… he’s a guard,” Amber admitted. “We just connected, I guess. He was so rough at first, but we found out more and more about each other and it just… happened.”

It was hard to comprehend that Amber was as old as me. She’d always felt like a younger sister, even if by just a couple of months, so I had a protective streak when it came to her. I needed to know losing her virginity had been her choice.

“And… no,” she finally whispered. “To answer your last question. Thorn doesn’t know. Do you… do you think he’ll be mad?”

I stared at her, knowing full well there was no way she could possibly be aware of Thorn’s plans for her. He hadn’t told her yet, and I wasn’t about to, but at that moment, I knew I had to get us both the hell out of there.

“Amber,” I said urgently, reaching for her and grasping her hand while she looked at me with surprise in her eyes. “I want to get away from here. I want to run. Will you come with me?”

“Run away?” she asked, glancing at our clasped hands then behind us at the opulence and luxury of the Mansion. “But… We have everything here.”

“Everything?” I asked her desperately, shaking my head with the knowledge she didn’t yet possess. “We have nothing, Amber. We’re nothing but property here. Wouldn’t you rather be back in London, living your own life?”

Her eyes grew distant as she thought hard about it, and for a second, I was certain she would turn me down.

“Do you love him?” I asked her, and her eyes grew even wider. “The man, the guard… The one you slept with, Amber. Do you love him?”

Her answer could change everything. It could make me want to stay behind and fight for her relationship with Thorn, make him reconsider things. All I needed to hear were those three little words from her lips, telling me she loved the man. But they weren’t coming.

“Do you want to leave?” I asked when she didn’t answer.

“I…” She looked into my eyes, and her expression turned serious. “I will leave. For you. With you.”

I didn’t completely understand her cryptic answer, sounding almost like she wanted to stay there forever, but that seemed unfathomable to me. She had a family back home and her love of dancing, her own life… How could she want to leave all that behind? Even with the man she’d mentioned, their feelings obviously hadn’t evolved further than them sleeping together. That in of itself was a shock to me.

“I’ll help you,” she went on. “I think… I think he, the guard, could be the answer.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, and she leaned closer conspiratorially.

“I know there are deliveries here daily,” she said softly, concealing her voice so the cameras inside surely wouldn’t be able to pick it up. “Food, laundry, clothes, all kinds of things. And he… he oversees some of it. I think I could trick him somehow… get us out of here.”

“You would do that for me?” I asked her, and she smiled through the tears clouding her vision, mirrored by my own.

“Of course,” she muttered. “You’re not just my best friend. You’re like family to me, Harlow.”

Even the mention of my name felt like a delicious transgression, something Thorn would never allow and would have Amber punished for swiftly. She usually refrained from using the name “Rose,” and it had been a long time since I’d heard her use the name I was born with. It felt good and spoke of a future I was desperate to have - without the Mansion, without Pia and… yes, even without Thorn. As much as the thought scared me, it also filled me with anticipation, knowledge that there was something waiting for me back at home - if nothing else, there was Madame, who I knew would continue training me if I showed up again. And hopefully, my performance in The Nutcracker hadn’t been forgotten. I was still desperate for a role in a bigger ballet.

All of a sudden, the French doors opened, and we jumped apart guiltily as Pia strode outside.

“What are you two gossiping about?” she asked, a hint of jealousy in her voice.

I’d often thought of Pia’s role in the Mansion, sometimes realizing that she was always by herself, and she often seemed not just bitter but also lonely. I didn’t know whether she was sleeping with anyone there, but it was obvious she wasn’t popular amongst the other girls.

“You,” I replied to her icily, and she gave me a cold stare then rolled her eyes.

“Well, Thorn wants to see you now,” she said, faking a yawn. “I was told to go fetch you.”

I stared at her, trying to see whether she was lying and whether this visit was because the cameras hadn’t been able to see us, and they were trying to stop something in its tracks, unaware the seed had already been planted.

I exchanged an innocent enough look with Amber and got up, my skirt falling over my thighs and my legs glistening with freshly applied lotion.

“I’m ready,” I told Pia, who tore her eyes off Amber and walked me down the hallway towards my own room. Neither of us said a word, and for once, I was grateful not to be involved in a word war with her. I had enough on my mind as it was already.

“I think there’s something you should know,” Pia finally said once we reached my bedroom.

I lingered in the hallway, my hand already on the handle of the door.

“What is it?” I asked tersely. “I don’t have all day.”

Menacing venom shot through her eyes as she blocked my path and stared me down. She was shorter than me, but it didn’t mean she wasn’t terrifying. Not to mention her weapons were stronger, her knives sharper than my tongue. She could get revenge on me anytime she wanted to.

“Don’t think I don’t see the pity in your eyes,” she spat out, and I looked away. “Don’t hide it from me, little girl. I know you feel sorry for me. Well…” She leaned closer, her finger twirling a strand of my blonde hair around itself. “I just want you to know,” she went on sweetly. “There’s nothing to feel sorry about. In fact, maybe you should be jealous instead. Maybe you should think about who held your place before-”

“Pia!”

We both looked up to find a thunderous Thorn standing a few feet away, his eyes unleashing their anger on the woman next to me. He walked over to us, and I watched the woman next to me freeze up in fear, feeling a weird sense of entitlement as he grabbed my waist and pulled me towards him, kissing me passionately right in front of her. My body was shaking from the information she’d just relayed, but I wasn’t able to respond yet. Instead, my heart thumped as Thorn pulled away from me and glared at Pia until she walked down the hallway looking defeated. He ushered me to my room, my legs barely able to carry me as I walked inside and collapsed on the bed.

“What was she talking about?” I asked, my voice shaky. “Who had my place before me?”

“She’s a fucking liar,” Thorn snarled, pulling the curtains closed over the windows. “You don’t need to listen to her, Rose.”

My heart kept pounding. Should I believe him or not? My gut was telling me he was right about her being a liar, but there was something else there, something Thorn didn’t want me to know.

“Did you…” I swallowed the lump in my throat, forcing myself to go on. “Did you sleep with Pia?”

He came closer, the room now much darker and enveloped in shadows. I knew he wanted to fuck me, but I was hesitant. As much as my body wanted him, I needed answers first. I needed to find out the truth about him and Pia once and for all. I’d been playing guessing games for too long.

“Once upon a time,” he said. “There was a girl who thought she owned the fucking world. She thought she could-”

“No!” I cried out, jumping up from the bed and forcibly pushing him away when his hand came to rest on my shoulder. “No. No more stories, Thorn. I want to know the truth!”

His eyes were dark and stormy as we stared at one another.

“Yes,” he finally said. “I fucked her.”

“Was she…” I tried to process the information, but my words seemed to be failing me. “Was she your Rose?”

“She…” He looked uncomfortable as fuck, but he never looked away from my eyes. “At one point I thought she was, yes.”

It all made sense then; the fucking burial ground of the rose garden, the only rose he’d spared. Now I’d taken her place, and there were only two options of how my time at the Mansion would end - either he’d get rid of me and put me in the ground, or he’d keep me as a prisoner forever.

“Get out,” I whispered, and he stared at me incredulously as I turned my back toward him, unwilling to look into his eyes. “Please. Just go.”

I felt him lingering behind me, wondering and almost hoping he would defy me and invade my bubble like he had so many times before, yet he didn’t. Instead, he sighed heavily and left the room, the door closing behind him with a resounding click.

Once he was gone, I realized I needed to run while I still could.

Time was running out.