The light in the room has shifted again, though I don’t remember when. The corners have turned to ash, shadows blooming like bruises across the floor, swallowing the gold trim and velvet luxury until everything feels… wrong. Like I don’t belong here. Like I never did.
The necklace clinks softly as I drag it across the floor beside me. I trail it like a weapon. A promise. I picture wrapping it around his throat. Picture the way it would dig into that perfect, arrogant jawline. I want to hear him beg with blood in his mouth. I want to make him feel the way I do now.
But then I think of his eyes.
The way they didn’t match the rest of him. Cold, yes—but there was something just beneath. Not kindness. Not mercy.
Loneliness.
Like he wasn’t just trying to destroy me.
He was trying to drag me into the grave he already lives in.
That thought clings to me like smoke. I hate it. I hate him.
And yet my chest aches in this silence. In this absence.
Because at least when he’s here, I know what game I’m playing.
Now?
Now I don’t know if I’m the prey… or if I’ve already become the monster he wanted me to be.
I rise slowly from the floor, my joints stiff, every muscle aching in protest. I step over the shattered edge of the mirror, barefoot, uncaring. A sliver slices my heel, blood blooming on the expensive rug like a kiss. I don’t flinch. I barely even register it.
Pain feels like a choice now.
And I’m done letting him make all of them.
I cross the room and drag the heavy velvet curtain back, but there’s no window behind it. Just stone. Seamless, cold, and blank. I laugh again, but there’s no humour in it this time.
He’s built this place like a tomb.
And I’m the corpse still breathing.
I turn to the bookshelf next—if only to destroy something. I want to rip pages from spines. Want to see the bindings split. But as I reach for one, I freeze.
Because the titles are all familiar.
Every book he’s stocked this room with—my favourite authors, my favourite editions, annotated in a hand that isn’t mine but might as well be.
He knew.
He always knew.
And that breaks me more than any chain.
I sink back against the wall and press the necklace to my lips, the charm biting into my skin like penance. A single thought crashes through my skull, impossible to ignore.
He owns me.
Not because he stole me.
But because he saw me first.
And now I don’t know who I’m trying to escape more—Hook… or myself.
I sit on the floor like I’m not real. Like I’m a painting that got smudged, something that was once pretty but now just looks wrong—colours bled in the wrong places, lines too harsh, edges too sharp. My knees curl to my chest, the necklace still looped around my fingers like I don’t know how to let go.
