*Liam*
I wasn’t sad when my brothers died. Percy and Pascal were gone, and I felt nothing. Maybe I should have, but after years of bruises and bitter words, there was nothing left of the boys I once followed into the woods. Mother used to forbid us from going, but after she was gone, there was no one left to scold us or patch up our scraped knees. We drifted apart, each of us growing colder in the empty spaces she left behind. Father stopped caring, stopped being there at all. Now, at their funeral, none of us cried—not me, not Father, not Henry. Only a few of my cousins and Percy’s last girlfriend shed tears, though hers seemed more like relief than grief, as if she was finally free from his cruelty.
Father didn’t say a word to me or Peter, who looked like he’d rather be anywhere else. If not for Ruby Yuwen, Peter might have ended up in the ground beside them, but now he just fussed with his hair in the casket’s reflection, not even bothering to fake sorrow. Henry was silent, too. After those strange words, it looks like it started—he just clammed up. What started? What did he mean? Did he see this coming? Was it his doing? I had no answers, only questions that pressed in, making my stomach churn.
All I really knew was that Henry didn’t love anyone. The only thing he seemed to like about me was how much I looked like his dead wife. My brothers’ deaths barely seemed to register for him. For now, I knew he wanted me alive, so I kept quiet and tried not to draw his attention.
His silence made my skin crawl, but it was also a strange kind of relief that i didnt have to face him. After the funeral, my stomach twisted itself into knots, medicine or not. We all went home, though Peter disappeared to his usual brothel before we even got there. I did what I always did when the world felt too heavy—I tried to quiet my thoughts.
The first time, it felt like a stupid idea, but I kept coming back to it. When the house was quiet and everyone else was asleep, I would sneak into Mom’s old room. When I missed her, I used to curl up in her bed, breathing in the faded scent of her perfume, reading battered children’s books to myself. The smell faded over time, the books grew tired and worn, but I still came here, searching for comfort in a different way.
Just like that first night, I found myself standing in front of her closet. There, hanging quietly, was a simple beige dress that used to be white. I could still see her chasing after us in that dress, breathless and laughing, her face flushed redder than the tomato soup she always made. That day, we tracked mud everywhere, and she made us scrub the floors, but we did such a terrible job that she ended up on her knees beside us, laughing while Father complained in the background.
I took the dress out and pressed it to my chest. It used to swallow me whole, but now it fit. I slipped out of my clothes and into the old fabric, and for a moment, when I looked in the stained mirror, it wasn’t me staring back—it was her. Her eyes, her smile, her whole presence seemed to fill the glass, as if she’d never left. I knew it was just my reflection, but somehow, it always soothed the ache inside me.
After hours of sitting there, watching myself—watching her—until my heart finally slowed, I crept back to my own room. I put the dress back in her dresser, right where it belonged.
The next day, word came that the queen’s yearly mask ball had been announced. It was the kind of event where everyone dressed up—famous figures, legends, animals, even as someone of the opposite sex, though those last ones were all meant in jest, not for me. Some men did it as a dare or as punishment for debts, but no one, as far as I know, has ever done it as I do.
It was one of the rare times I could wear a dress in public. Last year, I even tried makeup for the first time, fumbling through it after lying to the shopkeeper that it was for a girl I was seeing. I got the dress the same way. Of course, that started rumors about a girlfriend, so after just one night, I ended up giving everything away to a girl who’d sent me more invitations than I could count. I played along, spent a night with her, and it ended badly. Even though I already knew, it still hurt to realize I wasn’t attracted to women. She said maybe I was just nervous, but I’d known the truth for a long time.
So now I needed a new dress, new everything—makeup, a mask, the works. I couldn’t risk using one of my mother’s dresses; Father would notice. So I went to another shop, one known for keeping secrets. Madam Marigold’s. The moment I stepped inside, an employee was already at my side.
“Hello, my name is Lionel. How may I be of service, Lord Liam Solaris?”
“Ah, um, yes.”
“The men’s section, perhaps? It’s on the upper floor if you follow me.”
“Ehm, could we talk privately, perhaps?”
“Oh, of course, my Lord, just follow my lead.”
He was dressed to perfection, black hair slicked back in the latest style, mustache curled just so. He led me to a quiet room, and once the door shut, the world outside disappeared. I told him I needed a dress for the mask ball, tried to laugh it off like it was a joke, and asked if he could keep it just between us. He just smiled, measured me, and slipped out the back.
Those few minutes waiting for him to return with dresses felt like the longest of my life. If this place wasn’t famous for its discretion, I might have had to invent another fake girlfriend just to cover my tracks. But if this worked, maybe I could do this again. He came back, arms full—dress, shoes, choker, socks, underwear, a bit of jewelry, a little makeup bag, a fan, and a feathery half-mask shaped like a parrot’s beak. He packed it all into a suit box and handed it over with a strange little smile. On the way home, I hugged the box to my chest, half-expecting someone to rip it away and expose me, but no one did. For the first time, I had a dress that was truly mine.