Cold, hard steps echoed beneath her feet as she climbed up the stairs of the cellar. Made of stone and secrets, the mansion inhabited many miraculously huge bedrooms, almost all unoccupied, but her place was that forsaken, dingy basement. Many times she was shoved down those steps, a cascading fall that led to her home and prison. Every part of it owned her, from the copper scent of blood on the walls to the stench of sweat and tears engulfing the space. Tonight, however, she would climb up and out of that dungeon. The punishment, beatings, or worse could be inflicted by him if he caught her, but she found it irrelevant. After all the stages of trauma, one was simple numbness and apathy to the world around her, and the terrible predicaments she would find herself in between the four walls of that cellar. Tonight was not the night to think about that, however. Tonight, she was going to dance.

The ballroom of the mansion made of stone and secrets contained shiny, wood floors and a piano in the corner. The glowing chandelier gave it a golden tone, the tone of harps and angels. She felt out of place, she was out of place in her tattered yellow dress that was ripped and smeared with blood. Mirrors were not something he thought of including in the cellar, so she could only judge her appearance with how dirty and grimy she felt inside. This was no matter, it wasn’t like anyone cared about her anyway. The soft ticking of a grandfather clock and the cadence of her feet against the too clean floor was her music. Arms arched and feet in fourth position, she closed her mind and remembered the good days, ones of buns and tutus and nutcracker symphonies in the background. She remembered the days of her freedom.

Her feet moved in time with her heart, and around the room she went, flying, soaring, arching. The scent of daisies was one she was familiar with, it only happened when her dancing overextended her consciousness. The daisies abruptly vanished, and that’s when she knew someone was behind her. Landing harshly on the ground, her entire body halted. Eyes wide with fear, bones tense with the anticipation of pain, she slowly kneeled down. Into the submissive position she went, head down, trembling erratically without knowing who she encountered. If it was him, oh god, there wouldn’t be food for weeks. Tears flowed freely down her face, bringing with them the loss and torment that came with her life. Then there was a hand, a soft, supple, hand on her chin. It slowly defied gravity and pulled it up, only then she realized who it was, all her stone and secrets cracking.

Chocolate eyes met luminescent blue ones as she met his son’s gaze, his pale skin and blonde hair standing out against the dirt on her face. She stiffened in surprise, as the only emotion she could detect in his expression was sympathy. Hastily, she stood up, only then realizing how terrible she must look. He watched, he had always been watching the yellow dressed girl from the cellar, without her possessing any idea. The amount of times he went to bed, restless with the knowledge that his father was downstairs with her, was comparable to the amount of bruises littering her body. Only now was his first good look at her, however, and her beauty astonished her more than the scars she carried. She still looked surprised, confused as to why she wasn’t hit yet. He only looked back, studying the girl he felt incessant pain for, the one person in the world her father would immediately kill him for associating with or even talking to. He studied her features, he studied the features of the woman he loved. Effortlessly, he grasped her hand, making her flinch at the contact, and twirled her in a circle. With the closest expression of a smile she could muster, she hesitantly placed her hands on his shoulders, and they danced, her yellow tattered dress blowing in the air. Move by move, the two forbidden souls gradually broke the stone and secrets captured in their hearts.