Roxie watched Dianna walk away, she had just been about to say something important. Roxie had felt it! But then they called up Violet. And Roxie had expected her to just walk up and sing but no! Something shifted in the air. The way the rest of the table, heck the whole bar, seemed to shift in recognition. Ashley and Emily howled! It startled Roxie enough to tear her eyes away from Dianna for a split second. Then, when she looked back, Roxie's breath stopped.
For lo—between one step and the next, the Australian girl was gone.
No—not gone.
Transfigured.
She—Dianna? Violet? The creature now ascending the platform like a sovereign returning to her seat of power—she had become other. Her limbs were the same, her shape unchanged, and yet every movement unfurled with the certainty of myth. The swing of her hips held the rhythm of some long-forgotten rite. The arch of her spine whispered of gallows dances and candlelit altars.
Roxie could not look away.
She felt, in that moment, as though she were not seated in a booth surrounded by half-finished drinks and mozzarella sticks but instead kneeling at the precipice of something unholy and terrible.
A cathedral of shadow.
For this was no mere girl.
This was a creature of dark glamour, a Ravnos-blooded succubus drawn from the ink-drenched pages of theatre and sin. Her soul, Roxie was now sure, bled shadow like oil—slick and iridescent, impossible to cleanse. And her hunger, though veiled behind fishnet and fang, was the hunger of something that did not consume food but rather attention. Adoration. Surrender.
And when she turned—ah, God, when she turned—
Those eyes, red as wet poppies, pierced the haze of stage light.
And she smiled.
Not sweetly. Not kindly.
But with the practiced flourish of a predator who knew exactly how many inches of fang to show. And when she spoke, her voice silken and cruel, it wrapped around the bar like incense.
The crowd roared.
And Roxie—Roxanna Paraveesh Shapiro, child of sea and silence, touched by light and soaked in war—felt herself tremble.
What have I done, she thought. What angel have I awakened? What beast have I dared cradle in my lap?
"Good evening, mortals…"
Violet let the words simmer on her tongue like wine turned blood. The crowd howled, shrieked, drank it in like smoke and velvet. Violet did not stand still. No, she moved, a long, slow stalk across the lip of the stage, her boots clicking with the rhythm of a countdown. The stage lights caught her cheekbone, her tongue against a fang, the glint of mischief sharpened into something dangerous.
"I had no intention of performing for you tonight," she purred, each syllable dragging its nails down the collective spine of the room. "But when my cattle beg so sweetly…"
She paused, licking her teeth with a flourish so sinfully timed it made a bachelorette party near the back shriek in delighted horror. One girl threw a napkin. Another fell off her chair.
"How," Violet asked, voice trembling with indulgence, "could I refuse?"
A cruel smile curled her lips. She turned, cape of attitude and eyeliner, sweeping to center stage. And then her voice dropped—not in volume, but in gravity. In weight. In warning.
"One of you…" she said, gaze sweeping past the lights to the booth where Roxie sat frozen, a charcoal stain still smudged on her fingertips. "You know who you are. Did something tonight. Something dangerous."
She brought her hand to her chest and splayed her fingers as if she could claw through the mesh and flesh to reach something deeper.
"You reached into my ribcage and pulled forth something I thought long dead."
A beat. The room seemed to sway in the silence between breaths.
"So."
And here her voice darkened like the drop of a curtain.
"This will go out to the one who dared to stake me in charcoal."
She turned slowly to face the booth, her eyes aflame.
"Watch closely, little hunter."
She lifted the mic with slow, reverent malice.
"See if, by the end, your prey is still worthy of the chase…"
The speakers behind her struck the first brutal note of Diary of Jane.
And Violet bared her fangs.
And Roxie... Roxie spiraled into her thoughts...
For lo—
Did she not rise from the smoke and din like a specter made flesh? A creature of ink and hunger, all razored lines and lithe command, pacing upon the planks of that low stage as though it were a throne room she had once burned and claimed anew.
Not Dianna, no. Violet. Violet of the Veins. Violet the Dread. The Prince of Shadow and Smoke, whose voice poured not from throat but from some hollower place—a well dug deep within sorrow, joy, and the holy flame of yearning.
And when she sang—
O, when she sang—
The heavens themselves might've bowed their heads in envy. Her voice, too rich for any one body to hold, did not belong to mortal nor fragile frame, but to something older. Some primordial pulse of need and fire, channeled through crimson lips and sharpened tongue.
It struck Roxie like a bell strikes the marrow. Her body trembled—not in fear, not in desire—but in recognition. This was the voice of the storm that spoke to saints. The hymn of the saint that cursed the storm.
Each word a psalm. Each lyric a liturgy.
And when Tiny did rise and scream—uncalled, unsummoned save by his demanded role in hellish lyric — it was not interruption but exaltation. The cry of the congregation. The cries of the damned answering their sovereign.
And Violet, unshaken, drank deep of the sound and returned it double-fold.
Here stood she, this Prince of Wounds. Not clothed in glory, but wrapped in mesh and shadow, her presence no less sacred. And Roxie—poor pilgrim that she was—felt her soul fall prostrate.
There were saints, yes.
But this one sang in screaming and infernal choirs.
And in that moment, Roxanna Paraveesh Shapiro did not think of love or lust or future. She simply witnessed.
And in the witnessing, she worshipped.
And Dianna sang...
Violet bled.
And in the first notes, sweet and sorrowed as they rose from her lips, there was no longer a girl—there was only the herald of a greater truth. That which had been cloaked in mesh and swagger now stood uncloaked and sanctified by the scream of steel chords and the dreadful beat of war drums. The crowd was swept up, yes—but Roxanna was not swept.
She was seized.
"If I had to, I would put myself right beside you..."
The words came not as melody, but as invocation. And her voice—aye, her voice—rich as poured wine and sharp as blade tip, rang through Roxie's trembling ribs like a church bell tolling across a battlefield.
"So let me ask—would you like that? Would you like that?"
Yea, she asked it of the crowd, of the booth, of the drunkards and sinners and darlings all... but her eyes, ringed in crimson fire, found only one. Her fangs bared in the mirror of a smile, and all the world blurred behind her.
And Roxie?
She sat still. For what other posture could one adopt when in the presence of a god made from wounds?
"Desperate, I will crawl... Waiting for so long..."
A lie and also the truth. This visage was forged in ash and fury, her warmth not the sun's gentle kiss but the flaring heat of a star gone nova and the darkness that of the new moon. This was Violet, yes—but it was also every ache Dianna had not spoken aloud. The bruise that never faded. The doubt curled behind every sharp word. The velvet hunger that refused to be choked down. It was all of her. Laid bare.
"There's no looove, there's no looove.."
The sound crashed like waves against the walls of the bar, and still Violet stood firm, pacing like a caged queen, daring all to look away. She bared her throat and her past alike.
"Do you like that?"
Roxie did not know when her hand had come to her mouth. She did not know when her eyes had filled. She was unmade and made again with each breath that Violet breathed into the mic.
"I will try to find my place in the diary of Jane..."
O saints preserve her. She was drowning in her. In them. The girl who watched Ghibli movies curled in her arms and whispered about wishing to matter. And the dread creature on that stage now—who snarled each lyric like it had been tattooed on her heart with needle and grief.
"As I burn another page..."
Roxie's artist eye saw it all. The bar fights. The body that had been offered to too many who gave too little. The nights on sidewalks. The wrong turns. The tears shed behind locked doors. And yet this—this creature on stage dared to wear it all as regalia. This wasn't shame. This wasn't sorrow. This was sovereignty.
"As I look the other way..."
Could she love both? Could she love the soft thing that joked over pancakes and the monster in mesh and rage? Could she love a girl who might drink her soul in three swallows and beg forgiveness with bleeding hands?
The question cracked open Roxie's ribs. The answer—
"I still try to find my place..."
—was yes. A thousand times yes.
"In the diary of Jane."