Chapter 5
The fever came on portrait eighty-five. I woke with my skin on fire, the servant's room spinning like a carousel gone wrong. My phone said 6 AM. The canvas waited, blank and accusing.
I couldn't stand. My legs folded beneath me, boneless. The floor was cool against my cheek, and I thought about staying there. Just staying.
The door opened. Greyson's shoes—Italian leather, polished to a mirror shine—stopped inches from my face.
"Get up."
I tried. The room tilted sideways.
"I said get up." His hand closed around my arm, hauling me vertical. The world went white at the edges. "You have twelve hours. Gwen wants this one for her Instagram."
He left. The lock didn't click. It never did anymore—he knew I had nowhere to go.
I crawled to the easel. My hands found the brush through muscle memory alone. Gwen's face swam in my vision, multiplying, fracturing. I painted through the fever dreams, through the moments when I couldn't remember my own name.
Somewhere in the delirium, my brush moved on its own. In the background, behind Gwen's perfect smile, I painted words into the shadows. HELP ME. The letters were barely visible, hidden in the folds of the curtain I'd rendered behind her.
When I finished, I took my phone with shaking hands. Photographed the canvas. Sent it to Owen with two words: Portrait 85.
Then I collapsed.
---
I woke in my bed, still dressed, still paint-stained. Three days had passed. Fifteen portraits hung on the walls of the living room now. Eighty-five down.
Fifteen to go.
Greyson found me in the kitchen, trying to keep down water. He leaned against the doorframe, his tie loosened, his expression unreadable.
"When you finish the hundredth portrait," he said, his voice conversational, "I'm filing for divorce."
The glass slipped. I caught it. Barely.
"Gwen and I are getting married. She wants a spring wedding." He checked his watch. "You'll be out by then, of course. The contract stipulates you have twenty-four hours to vacate after completion."
I stared at him. At the man I'd loved enough to destroy myself for.
"The final portrait," he continued, "needs to be special. A masterpiece of submission. It'll hang in our bedroom." His eyes met mine, empty as winter. "Make it count, Iris. It's the last thing you'll ever paint for me."
He walked away. I stood there, water dripping from my fingers onto the marble floor.
Fifteen portraits. Then freedom.
Or oblivion.
I wasn't sure there was a difference anymore.
---
The storm hit on the night of the hundredth portrait. Rain lashed the floor-to-ceiling windows, turning the city lights into watercolor smears. Thunder rolled through the penthouse like a living thing.
I set up the easel in the living room. My hands were steady now—the fever had broken, or maybe I'd just burned through everything that could burn. The recorder sat in my pocket, small and hard against my hip. Owen had brought it yesterday, along with the go-bag now hidden in a locker at Grand Central.
"Finally." Gwen swept in, champagne bottle in hand. She'd been drinking since noon. Her words slurred at the edges, her lipstick smeared. "The last one. God, I thought this would never end."
She sprawled on the sofa, her dress riding up. Took a long pull from the bottle.
"You know what's funny?" She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "You actually thought he loved you. That's the best part. Watching you paint me, day after day, still hoping."
I squeezed paint onto my palette. Titanium white. Cadmium red. Lamp black.
"By tomorrow, you'll be homeless." Gwen's laugh was sharp, brittle. "No husband. No money. No home. Just another failed artist with daddy issues."
The recorder captured every word.
Greyson entered, his shirt unbuttoned at the collar, a tumbler of scotch in his hand. He settled into the armchair, his gaze fixed on me with the intensity of a man watching an execution.
"Begin," he said.
Lightning split the sky. In its flash, I saw us reflected in the windows—Gwen sprawled and drunk, Greyson cold and watching, me with my brush raised like a weapon.
I touched the locket at my throat one last time. Then I began to paint.
The final portrait. The last stroke of my imprisonment.
Outside, the storm raged. Inside, something else was breaking.
And I was ready.
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