Page 2 of Freed By Wrath

When I was younger, Halloween wasn’t about looking pretty. It was about becoming someone else. And I fucking loved it.

I’d spend months sketching ideas in cheap notebooks, haunting fabric stores, covering my bedroom floor with paint, feathers, fake blood, glitter, anything I could glue, sew, or staple together. The costumes were always ridiculous. Always overdone. But always unmistakably mine.

For the last couple of weeks, I’d imagined doing that again. Maybe that’s why I felt a bit more excited about this Serena party compared to the others. Because I thought I could actually enjoy Halloween again. Like I did before.

I swallow the thought before it settles too deeply.

Not tonight.

Tonight is supposed to be fun, and I should make it fun.

I drift through the crowd, my glass dangling loosely between my fingers as I nod at faces I’ve seen at fundraisers, charity galas, engagement parties, product launches. Serena’s world and Daniel’s overlap in the peculiar way Greenbrook’s upper circles always do.

Everyone knows everyone. Everyone owes everyone. Everyone smiles as though happiness were another expensive accessory.

I’ve spent years learning to smile exactly the same way.

At first, it felt like pretending. Now I can’t remember when pretending became second nature.

Daniel is somewhere inside the house. He disappeared nearly half an hour ago after recognizing someone near the entrance. One hand landed effortlessly on the man’s shoulder before I even caught his name, followed by that practiced laugh of Daniel’s, warm enough to make people feel important while also polished enough to belong in every room he enters.

Before walking away, he’d squeezed my waist, a sign I learned as advice: “Don’t wander too far.”

I wander anyway. Just far enough for the music to soften into a distant pulse.

Near the edge of the garden, the amber lights thin beneath old maple trees. The laughter fades into scattered echoes. October greets me properly here, crisp air carrying damp earth, woodsmoke, and the brittle scent of fallen leaves.

Somewhere beyond the garden walls, kids are still trick-or-treating. I can hear them—distant shrieks of laughter, a parent calling someone’s name, the particular chaos of sugar and costumes and the dark. It sounds like freedom and… memories. Because most of all, it sounds like the kind of Halloween I used to have, before I started attending events where the pumpkins are professionally carved, and nobody actually eats the candy.

I close my eyes and, for one slow breath, I let the quiet settle around me.

When did I become this person?

Halloween used to be my favorite day of the year.

Somewhere between becoming an adult and becoming someone’s fiancée… I stopped noticing when October arrived and became… this.

I search my memory for the last Halloween that actually felt like mine.

Was it in college?

No…

It was later than that. Much later.

My stomach tightens before the memory fully forms.

No. I can’t go there.

Nothing good comes from digging that up.

Yet it’s just one harmless memory.

That’s all.

So I let myself indulge in it and can almost… taste it.

The sky turning pale with dawn. My cheeks aching from laughing so hard they felt bruised. Face paint smeared across all four of us until none of us resembled our costumes anymore. The after-party stretching into sunrise while cheap whiskey passed from hand to hand and cigarettes disappeared between whoever reached for the pack first. Music crackling through a dying speaker. Conversations flowing without direction. Laughter filling my chest until breathing almost hurt. For one single night, life felt impossibly light.