Chapter 13.1

 

The gallery had gone so still that Roisin could feel the footsteps vibrating through the skirting boards. The assistant’s hand was still wrapped around hers, cold and tense, as though she were bracing for impact.

The footsteps in the back corridor stopped.

Silence.

Then a soft, deliberate inhale — not loud, not theatrical, but unmistakably human. The kind of breath someone takes when they’re listening for something. Or someone.

The assistant’s grip tightened.

Roisin felt her own breath catch in her throat.

The corridor light flickered once, twice, then steadied into a dim, sickly glow. A shadow stretched across the far wall — long, thin, distorted by the angle of the light. It moved slowly, as though the person casting it were gliding rather than walking.

The assistant whispered, “Don’t look directly at him.”

Roisin swallowed. “Why?”

“Because he notices.”

The shadow lengthened.

A figure stepped into the gallery.

He didn’t enter like a person. He entered like a temperature change — a subtle shift in the air pressure, a thinning of the space around him. Roisin felt it before she saw him fully: a prickle along her arms, a faint tightening in her chest, as though the room itself were bracing.

He was tall. Too tall, or perhaps the proportions of the room made him seem that way. His coat hung from his frame like a second skin, heavy and dark, absorbing the light rather than reflecting it. His hair was long and red, streaked with yellows and oranges as if fire was flickering up through the tresses, falling over his forehead and down his back in uneven strands. What she could see of his face, which was very little from such an angle and distance, was pale, almost luminous in the dimness.

But it was his stillness that struck her.

He didn’t move like someone entering a room. He moved like someone who had always been there and was simply revealing himself. What was worse was she could see no prisms within him; nothing emerging or turning. She could sense no evidence of what she was beginning to think of as a soul, and what she had, up until now, agreed with Paul that they were angels. Was it only a semantic difference? She had yet to find out or prove otherwise.

The assistant bowed her head slightly — not out of reverence, but out of caution.

Roisin followed her lead and kept her gaze low, fixed on the floorboards.

The artist stopped a few feet from the third painting. He didn’t speak. He didn’t breathe loudly. He simply stood there, as though listening to something inside the canvas.

The assistant whispered, barely audible, “He always goes to that one first.”

Roisin risked a glance.

The artist’s head was tilted slightly, as though he were trying to catch a faint sound. His hands hung loosely at his sides, fingers relaxed, but there was a tension in his posture — a coiled stillness, like a bird of prey waiting for the right moment to strike.

The painting seemed to respond.

The wings — half‑formed, half‑broken — shimmered faintly, the shadows deepening, the highlights sharpening. Roisin blinked, unsure if she was imagining it. The colours pulsed once, like a heartbeat.

The artist exhaled softly.

It was not a sigh.

It was recognition.

Roisin felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise.

The assistant leaned closer. “He can sense when they’ve changed.”

Roisin whispered, “How?”

The assistant shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t think he knows either.”

The artist lifted a hand.

Slowly.

Deliberately.

He didn’t touch the painting. His fingers hovered a few inches from the surface, trembling slightly, as though feeling heat radiating from it.

Roisin felt something then — a faint vibration in the air, like the hum of a distant engine. It wasn’t sound. It wasn’t movement. It was pressure. A subtle push against her skin, as though the space between the artist and the canvas were charged.

The assistant whispered, “Sometimes it reacts.”

Roisin’s pulse quickened. “To him?”

“To whoever’s watching.”

The artist’s hand lowered.

He turned his head slightly — not toward them, but toward the space between them, as though sensing a presence rather than seeing it.

Roisin held her breath.

The assistant squeezed her hand.

The artist took a step back from the painting.

Then another.

He turned.

And looked directly at them.

Roisin felt the air leave her lungs.

His eyes were dark — not black, not brown, but a depth that seemed to absorb the dim light around him. They were neither cruel nor kind but seemed entirely absent of any emotion at all. They were not human in the way she understood humanity. They were ancient. Tired. And unbearably alert.

The assistant bowed her head again.

Roisin couldn’t move.

The artist took a slow step toward them.

His footsteps were soft, but each one seemed to echo inside her chest.

He stopped a few feet away.

Close enough that she could see the faint lines around his eyes, the slight tremor in his fingers, the way his coat hung oddly, as though it were too heavy for him.

He tilted his head.

Not a greeting.

An assessment.

Roisin felt exposed — not physically, but internally, as though he were looking through her, into the parts of her she kept hidden even from herself.

The assistant whispered, “Don’t speak.”

The artist’s gaze shifted to the assistant.

Then back to Roisin.

He took another step forward.

Roisin’s pulse hammered.

He raised a hand — slowly, gently — and reached toward her face.

Not to touch.

To sense.

His fingers hovered inches from her cheek. They were long and thin; more like the crooked talons of a bird of prey than a mortal man. Despite the absence of prisms, she could see how thin the skin covering them was; like one of the carefully unwrapped mummies the British Museum had pilfered from Egypt and set out for display.

The air between them tightened.

Roisin felt a faint warmth, like the heat from a candle flame held close to the skin.

The artist whispered — so softly she almost didn’t hear it:

“You’ve seen them.”

Roisin’s breath caught.

The assistant stiffened beside her.

The artist’s hand trembled slightly, as though feeling something in the air around her.

He whispered again, “You carry it.”

Roisin didn’t know what he meant.

But she felt something shift inside her — a subtle, terrifying recognition, like a memory she didn’t know she had.

The artist lowered his hand.

He stepped back.

His gaze never left her.

The assistant whispered, “Don’t answer him.”

Roisin didn’t.

She couldn’t.

The artist turned slowly, his coat brushing the floor, and walked back toward the third painting.

He stood before it again.

Still.

Listening.

Waiting.

The assistant leaned in close to Roisin’s ear. “This is only the beginning.”

Roisin swallowed hard.

She believed her. But the beginning of what?