I hold it up to the light, watching the tiny bubbles shift. My hand trembles, and I curl it into a fist before the past can win.
Juliet made me weak once. She licked the sweat off my chest after I killed a man for her, told me I was beautiful when I bled. And then she left me gutted, made me feel things I didn’t want to feel.
And I let her.
That won’t happen again.
I push the case aside and pull my phone from the drawer. Tap the encrypted icon. Bring up the file marked RAVEN.
Dozens of recordings. Photos. Transcripts.
The one from last Tuesday plays automatically:
RAVEN (laughing):“I don’t know, maybe I’m just meant to be alone. Like… no one ever sees the real me. Not really.”
BARISTA (offscreen):“You’re just picky.”
RAVEN:“No. I’m just done giving pieces of myself to people who don’t know how to hold them.”
I rewound that line three times. I’ve memorised the cadence of her voice. I know when she’s lying. I know when she’s deflecting. I know she looks out the window when she talks about loneliness, like she’s trying not to cry.
“But I see you,” I murmur to the screen. “I see every fractured piece. Every place they dropped you. Every place I want to fill with something that only I can give.”
I grab my lighter and flick it open, the flame dancing. The photos on the wall—the ones of Juliet—curl and blacken. I let them burn.
She’s in the past.
Raven is the reason I survived it.
Raven was the first one, it was always her. I just wasn’t ready for her. I didn’t want to break her, not really. I wanted to bend her but I had to know how to hold her right without breaking her.
I sit back down in front of Vex’s tank, watching her shift across the sand with silent elegance. She’s patient. She waits. Just like me.
“You remember Juliet, don’t you?” I whisper. “You remember what I did after she ran. I let it ruin me.”
Vex crawls across the glass.
“But Raven will not run. You know why?”
I reach for the hidden switch under my desk. The monitor view flips—from Raven’s bedroom cam to the one I just installed in the floorboards beneath it. Infrared. Night vision. Movement tracking.
“Because this time, I’m not leaving the door unlocked.”
I press my fingers to the screen, tracing her outline like she’s already mine.
Because in my mind?
She is.
“You’ll love her, too,” I murmur to Vex. “She’s just like us. Hungry. Alone. Waiting for someone to come along and cage her right.”
I smile—slow and cruel and calm.
Because I’m done playing pretend.
The next time Raven sees me?
There won’t be any warnings.
