Page 103 of The Devil's Canvas

No anger, no sadness. Just a quiet dismissal. She’s done carrying that weight.

She turns to the thrones, her voice steady. “Can I see Rosalind? And Bella?”

A figure shifts. The one cloaked in ash and root leans forward, voice low.

“You must ask the flame.”

Ophelia steps forward, like she knows exactly what to do, like she was born for this. The fire responds, curling inward, brighter, sharper.

“Show me Rosalind,” she says. “Show me Bella.”

The flames shift.

A kitchen appears, cast in gray morning light. Rain pecks gently at the windows. Rosalind sits at the table, shoulders tense, one hand wrapped around a chipped mug, the other pressed against her forehead. Bella paces the floor in wide circles, hair tied back in a messy knot, her voice strained.

“She wouldn’t just disappear,” Bella says. “She always checks in. Even when she’s spiraling.”

“She didn’t disappear,” Rosalind replies. Her tone is calm, but her eyes are raw. “She was taken. Or something worse.”

“No one’s seen her since Melanie’s premiere ofThe Sun Will Forget Us,” Bella murmurs. “No new posts. No calls. Nothing.”

Rosalind looks down at the phone in front of her—Ophelia’s. Cracked. Cold. Still locked.

“She didn’t run,” she says. “I don’t care what they think.”

The fire shifts again.

A bulletin board covered in flyers and maps. A timeline drawn in color-coded markers. Photos of Ophelia tacked between newspaper clippings and missing person posters.

Rosalind stands before it all, arms crossed, lips tight. A detective beside her flips through his notes.

“With all due respect,” the officer says, “the public fallout with her sister, the premiere—it fits a certain emotional profile.”

“She’s not hiding,” Rosalind snaps. “She’s missing.”

“She’s humiliated—”

“She’s stronger than that.”

The detective doesn’t press further.

The image shifts again.

Bella curled up on the couch, wrapped in one of Ophelia’s old sweaters. Rosalind watches from the window, her reflection pale in the glass. She holds the phone like it might still ring.

But it doesn’t.

The room is quiet.

And Ophelia just watches.

She doesn’t cry. She doesn’t speak. But I can feel it—how still she becomes. How much she feels. She watches them try to find her like someone peering into a version of the world she can’t quite touch anymore.

Someone learning how to grieve what she hasn’t even lost.

She turns toward me, eyes wide, shimmering with something between guilt and disbelief. “I thought I still had time.”

“You do,” one of the Concord says, voice quiet, but not unkind. “Not to undo the past. But to close what remains.”

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