The Petal and the Thorn

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From the Desk of Lord Northwood

June 11th, Some friendships bloom. Others strangle.

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It began with ink and mischief.

I was thirteen, the air still thick with the scent of adolescence, when I encountered Cassandra Kerris in a sun-dappled park. She was seated with Jasper Castrel and Margot Hemlock, engaged in the delicate art of penmanship, composing letters to distant acquaintances with a seriousness far beyond our years. Struggling with what to say, Cassandra set down her quill. I, ever the meddler, picked it up and penned something absurd in her name—an impish letter that somehow made its way to its recipient. From that moment, we were inseparable, our lives entangled like ivy on old stone.

Our friendship was steadfast and sincere, never romantic in nature—Cassandra and I loved one another as only the truest of friends do… or so I thought. For if that had truly been the case, I would have no cause to write these words now. It felt like some quiet trick of fate that our mothers had once been dear friends—an old thread spun long before we met, now pulling us together in the most unexpected way. They had drifted apart over time, not out of scandal or quarrel, but simply because they were too different. Cassandra’s mother was headstrong, unafraid to speak her mind even when silence might have served her better. My own mother was more patient, the sort who preferred to observe, to listen, to understand the room before offering her voice. Eventually, their paths diverged, as so many do. But the fact of their friendship lingered like a half-remembered melody, curious and uncanny when Cassandra and I found ourselves colliding in the same corner of the world. Her father, Edgar Kerris, was a man of measured silence and unspoken power—the kind whose name surfaced often but whose occupation remained ever evasive, cloaked in implication rather than fact. He fashioned himself a pillar of the community, though in truth he was little more than a well-dressed gossip, forever inserting himself where he wasn’t wanted, offering unsolicited opinions as though they were sacred truths. He was obsessed with perception, perpetually seeking approval, and lived high on the fumes of his own imagined importance. His wife, a woman of spirit and warmth, eventually tired of the cold performance. There was no scandal in her departure—only the quiet rebellion of someone who longed for passion after years of coexisting with a man who mistook control for connection. When she left, Edgar declared their separation like a town crier in the square, eager to control the narrative. The irony was not lost on Cassandra, who first learned of her parents’ parting not from her father, but from a passing remark at the market. In the years that followed, Edgar’s hunger for validation only deepened. By the end, it had become almost routine: each weekend, a different woman of the night slipped through the iron gate, cloaked in mystery and cheap perfume. He was a faithful customer, indulging in fantasy as a balm for pride. He lived far above his means, crafting the illusion of wealth through borrowed splendor and careful deception. I do not doubt his fortune might have reached the lofty heights he implied—had he been even slightly more frugal, and not squandered it on sycophants, weekend brothels, and the women he paid to forget him by morning. Jasper Castrel, once the heir to a charming estate with a crumbling stone wall and a scandalously neglected greenhouse, abandoned it all for the starving-artist fantasy. He ran off to Prague, painting nudes and scribbling nonsense poetry while surviving on wine and the affection of temporary muses. After his departure, the Castrel estate was quietly sold off—auctioned away piece by piece until even the ivy seemed to retreat. Jasper fancied himself a modern-day Rimbaud, though he often resembled more a pampered cat napping beside a spilled inkpot than a true Rimbaud. Margot Hemlock, for a time, was Cassandra’s closest friend. But as new alliances formed and priorities shifted, she was slowly edged out. I remember one winter gala where Margot, uninvited, arrived simply to deliver a gift to Cassandra. I remember the way the ribbon trembled in her hand as she placed the gift on the table, then left without a word. Once she departed, the room filled with cruel laughter. It was a moment that made me wince—even then, the elegance of her gesture clashed bitterly with the callousness of our circle.

Eventually, Margot and I had our own falling out, prompted by an offhand joke she deemed offensive. She accused me of aligning myself with people who were "rotten," and severed the friendship with a theatrical letter. For all her sharpness and scorn, I admired her backbone. Margot had long since grown tired of being the side character in someone else’s narrative. But in their absence, new loyalties formed. With Margot Hemlock no longer at her side, Lilith Marlow ascended to Cassandra's inner sanctum, assuming the role of closest confidante, though it was a position she had always seemed to covet. Perhaps too devoted for her own good, Lilith harbored affections for Cassandra that often skirted the edge of romantic obsession. She was brooding, sharp-tongued, and drawn to chaos like a moth to flame.

Lilith and I shared a brief and ill-fated romance, forged in one of those languid summers where everything feels more meaningful than it is. I’ve never fully understood why people gravitated toward me, only that they did. It’s always been this way. Strangers tell me their secrets. Friends confess things they swore they’d never say aloud. And Lilith was no exception, spilling forth like wine from a cracked decanter—rich, uncontained, and staining everything in her wake. At the time, I believed I had a gift—a curse, really—for coaxing others into loving me. In truth, I was just charming enough, just attentive enough, to make people feel seen. And when you’re young, that’s often all it takes. Lilith didn’t stand a chance. Our kiss came in October, on a beach beneath a cathedral of stars. It was the sort of moment young lovers dream of—salt air, starlight, the hush of waves at our feet. And yet, as she looked at me with all the reverence of a girl in love, I felt nothing. That kiss confirmed what I hadn’t yet admitted to myself: I did not love her. We might have continued as friends had I not recoiled from her intensity—or, more delicately, her rather persistent scent. I tried to hint—cologne recommendations, idle talk of favorite perfumes—but she remained blissfully immune to suggestion. The romance wilted; the friendship followed, albeit more slowly. Edward O’Callan was one of my earliest friends, and perhaps the most grounded among us. He began with little—no title, no inheritance—but what he lacked in pedigree, he more than made up for in grit. While the rest of us floated on family names or idle schemes, Edward worked—first as a fisherman, rising with the tides while we were still dreaming. He had a brief, whisper-soft fling with Lilith Marlow before leaving town, the kind of dalliance that vanishes almost as quickly as it begins. When he departed, it was to visit his mother, who had joined a convent—not out of disgrace, but in search of her own path. She had always stayed in steady contact with him, and her strength had never wavered. That visit changed something in him. He returned with a steadier heart and a quiet hunger to rebuild. By sheer will—and a modest inheritance from an eccentric aunt—he came into possession of a crumbling estate in Ireland. He repaired it with his own hands and carved out a name for himself, slowly and stubbornly, with the kind of dignity the rest of us only mimicked. It was at a rustic country fair—of all improbable venues—that Cassandra and I crossed paths with him once more. She was instantly taken with him, though she masked it in her usual manner: teasing, coy remarks, a mockery of disinterest that fooled no one. She was always quick to laugh at his jokes and quicker still to cast suspicious glances at any girl who lingered too long in his orbit. Whether or not he noticed, I never dared ask. Though it has been some time since I last saw him in person, he still returns now and then to visit his grandmother, and we continue to exchange regular correspondence. His letters arrive smelling faintly of salt and peat, filled with keen observations, sketches of sea cliffs, and moss-softened walls. He is a quieter man now—soon to be married, I’m told—but no less noble for it. Though I departed for university, I remained steadfastly bound to my circle from home—our correspondence never waned, and we spoke weekly, sometimes more, as though proximity could be conjured through devotion alone. They were my tether, my ballast. But university has a way of rewriting one’s allegiances, and the world beyond our village green held its own brand of temptation.

Enter Ezra DelRose. He was golden, clever, and devastatingly composed—the sort of man whose smile could make you forget your better judgment. The moment I laid eyes on him, I felt something ancient stir in me. It was love at first sight, or at least what I believed love to be at the time: an overwhelming sense of recognition, as though some celestial hand had whispered, There—there he is. The one you’ve been waiting for.

He insisted our affair remain private. At first, I mistook this secrecy for romance, for some mythic bond too delicate for the vulgar gaze of the world. But what began as sacred quickly curdled into sordid concealment. He fancied himself a god, truly—a delusion he voiced more than once, claiming this world as his stage and the rest of us merely actors in his great divine drama.

Then came the girlfriend. A revelation. She was grace incarnate—charming, luminous, utterly undeserving of the deceit entwined around her like a serpent in bloom. I felt honoured to meet her. That momentary warmth, however, was promptly extinguished. He ordered me to behave as though I were a stranger to her. To offer no kindness, no familiarity. To preserve his illusion at her expense. I obeyed, ashamed of how deeply I had fallen under his spell.

There was one night—fevered, electric—when he pressed a knife to my heart and asked, “Do you trust me?” My breath caught, and heat surged low in my belly. The blade kissed my skin with a lover’s precision—cool metal against the frantic pulse beneath my ribs—and I was undone. The danger thrilled me. The control aroused me. I was his, in that moment, body and breath, willing and wanting. I could feel how much he wanted me, not despite the risk but because of it—and I met that hunger with my own. It wasn’t just foreplay; it was worship. Carnal. Unholy. Perfect.

I had once given him an amulet—a token of mine that had belonged to Cassandra. When he first learned of its origin, he tried to hand it back, saying it wasn’t his to wear. But I insisted. And so he accepted, reluctantly, as if donning something holy he had no business touching. I’d draped it over his neck like a coronation. At the time, it felt like fate—two souls, bound by fire and myth. In truth, it was a quiet surrender. The first of many. And he, the beautiful tyrant that he was, received each offering like a god grown bored of prayers. To this day, I don’t know if he still possesses it—or if he knew, even then, that it was cursed.

As cruel as he was, Ezra ignited something inside me I hadn’t even known was there—a dark, hungry flame that scorched through my skin and left me breathless. His eyes didn’t worship me; they claimed me, devouring every inch with a fierce hunger that made me ache in ways I couldn’t name. With him, desire was a battlefield—rough, reckless, and utterly consuming. He pulled out a wild, dangerous part of me that craved both surrender and control, pleasure laced with pain, love tangled with fire. Though his touch left scars, I drank the venom willingly—because for a fleeting moment, I felt alive in a way no one else had ever made me feel. A part of me knows he saw my light, but only as something to possess, to bend to his will, like a treasure glimpsed through fog—precious, but unreachable. When I stumbled back home, raw and unraveling, the whispers had already spread like wildfire. Cassandra had been spinning poison about me for months, accusing me of neglect, of abandoning her like I was some cruel ghost in her life. Her father, Edgar, stormed into my world, words sharp and reckless—some lifted directly from Cassandra’s venomous mouth. Cornered and desperate, I lied—said I’d been drowning in drink. I wasn’t. But what else could I say? How else explain the void where I’d once been? The final knife twisted deeper. She’d outed me before I’d even breathed the truth to my own mother. Quietly, without ceremony. Lilith—ever faithful to Cassandra’s cause—slipped away from my life soon after, her allegiance unshakable. Not long before her departure, she launched a cruel little performance in front of my university acquaintances, dismissing the nature of my affections with biting disbelief. Thankfully, they either did not catch her venom or chose to disregard it—though in truth, it mattered little. When the truth finally came to light, their loyalty was unwavering. Still, that moment revealed just how disgustingly spiteful she could be. It wasn’t the cruelty that surprised me most—it was how easily they rewrote me into a villain in a story I had authored. And when my grandfather lay dying, I asked Cassandra—more than politely—for a childhood self-portrait, a fragile fragment of my past I had entrusted to her. She ignored my requests entirely. Later, I learned from one of Edward’s correspondences that Cassandra claimed I had not asked “nicely” enough—a blatant falsehood. Only after my temper flared did she finally relent, leaving the portrait carelessly on the steps of her father’s estate. A petty slight, perhaps, but one that cut deeper than I wished to admit. Some wounds, I realized, are beyond repair. How I had spent so many years treating one like family, only to be met with such coldness in return, still leaves me in quiet, bitter awe. Some nights, when the wine loosens my tongue and memory sharpens its claws, I find myself thinking of her. I confess, I miss the friend who once glimpsed my soul as if it were their own reflection. But then the truth settles, cold and undeniable: had her love for me been genuine, unyielding, she would still be here. I have reached out since—only to be met with silence. Yes, I admit it stings, and at times, I feel the sting of pathetic hope. But I fought for us. She did not. If she claims otherwise, it is a lie. And yes, there are moments I question myself. I wonder if I could have reached out more, tried harder, been softer, louder, something else entirely. But then I think of the friends I hold dear now — the ones who don’t measure love by frequency or formality. We drift and return, never losing the thread. If a friendship demands daily upkeep to survive, is it a connection — or merely a contract? I gave what I had. I showed up. I would again. But I will not chase a ghost through a maze of my own making. And so, I leave the matter at rest. You will not hear from me again. Not because I am angry, or bitter, or lost in some wounded spiral — but because I have finally chosen myself. I have learned to live in the quiet without needing your voice to fill it. I have laughed again, loved again, dreamed again — and none of it required your return.

I remember everything. But let there be no mistake: I will always look back on what we had fondly, even if the pieces of our lives no longer fit together.

This is not a door left open, nor one slammed shut. It is simply a chapter closed — with care, with grace, and without regret.

You were loved. Truly. And that will always be true. Faithfully,

Lord Nicholas Northwood