A SYMPHONY OF SINS (JAYFER FF)

POV- JAY JAY

I used to think the manor was a cage.

A beautiful one, yes. Velvet-lined, oil-painted, soaked in perfume and drenched in silence. The kind of silence that doesn’t feel empty—but watched. Like the walls are listening. Judging. Waiting.

But a cage nonetheless.

Now?

I’m not so sure.

Maybe it’s not the cage I fear anymore.
Maybe I’ve become the bird who forgets she has wings.

Or worse—maybe I’ve remembered that the sky outside is just a bigger kind of prison.
That freedom is sharp. Brutal. Cold.

And Keifer?

He’s warm.

Even when he’s all thorns and glass and wrapped truths.

Ever since the boutique incident—since the lights flashed like lightning and the strangers screamed my name like they owned it—my brain has been... off.

Crooked. Fractured.
Like a picture frame that keeps tilting no matter how many times you straighten it.

There’s a flicker behind my eyes when I look into mirrors now.
A subtle tug at the corners of my lips when I try to smile—like muscle memory refusing to play along.
Like some other version of me is clawing at the inside of my reflection, begging me not to forget her.

And whenever I pick up the violin—

God.

My fingers tremble like they’re not touching strings.
Like they’re holding a blade.
A memory.
A body.

That’s why when Keifer told me about the gala—told me my face had been requested, that there was “buzz” about my return—my first instinct wasn’t just to say no.

It was to scream.

To run.

To disappear into the smallest version of myself.

I told him I couldn’t.

That I wouldn’t.

But then he said it.

Voice like silk dipped in blood:

“The world took everything from you, Jay. Don’t you think it’s time to show them… they never broke you?”

His thumb brushed across my lips like it belonged there.

Like it had always belonged there.

And for a breathless second—I let him believe it.

I let myself believe it.

Then the question escaped before I could stop it, that restless thought chewing through the walls of my throat for days:

“What will you tell them, Keifer?
Who am I to you?”

He looked at me like I was a miracle.
Like I was made from fire and moonlight.
Like I was a ghost he’d carved out of bone and begged to stay.

And then he said it.

Without hesitation. Without blinking.

“My world,” he said.
“The only world I want to exist.”

POV-KEIFER

I shouldn’t have taken her out.

Not yet.