She’s a sickness beneath my skin, a fever I don’t want cured. I thought taking her would be enough—that the containment of her, the ownership, would satisfy the rot blooming behind my ribs.
But it hasn’t. It never will.
My hands curl around the edge of the desk until my knuckles crack, jaw ticking as she does it again—tilts her head like she’s listening. To what, exactly? Herself? The silence? Me?
She doesn’t cry anymore. Not since the last time.
Not since I broke her open and left her sobbing, ruined, and furious in the sheets I bled her onto.
She should hate me. I’ve made sure of it.
And yet—something’s changing. In her. In me.
That’s the part I can’t tolerate. That flicker in her eyes that isn’t just loathing anymore. That tremor in my chest when she presses her palms to the mirror and looks straight ahead, as if she knows I’m there. Watching. Breathing. Wanting.
Needing.
I grind my teeth and force myself to stand, walking away from the monitors like it takes everything I have not to crawl through the screen and into her.
I won’t go to her tonight.
I won’t go to her tonight.
I say it again, like a prayer or a curse. A lie I’m trying to make true.
But I can still smell her—clinging to the air like sin. I can still feel her breath on my neck, the ghost of her voice in the cracks of my bones.
She’s in everything now.
And if I go to her, I won’t leave without carving that truth into her skin.
I should walk away.
The rational part of me—the one that speaks in the voice of men I’ve long since buried—whispers that this isn’t strategy anymore. That this isn’t control. That this isn’t anything resembling a game.
But my hands don’t stop shaking.
Not from fear. No. Hook has never feared a thing that bleeds. But from the bone-deep ache that coils in my stomach like a sickness, a hunger that has nothing to do with flesh and everything to do with her. With the way she screamed at me and then cried into the floor. With the way she hurled that necklace like a curse. With the way she’s quiet now—too quiet—and I’ve memorised the patterns of her stillness like I’ve memorised the scars on my hands.
I’m not watching her.
Not anymore.
And yet, I still see her. Every time I blink. She lives behind my eyelids now, stitched into the darkness with threads made of ash and gold and violence. She is the bruise blooming behind my ribs, the itch I can’t scratch without drawing blood.
And God help me, I want to bleed.
I want to shatter that door, take her face in my hand, and make her look at me. Make her see the man she’s unravelling thread by thread. Make her say my name like it means nothing. And then ruin her until it means everything.
But I don’t move.
Because she hasn’t earned my touch today.
She’s pushed. And I want to push back. I want to destroy her without laying a single finger on her—want to starve her of everything until she begs for the poison only I can give.
My smile, when it comes, is sharp and wrong.
“Little fairy,” I murmur to no one. “You’re going to wish you’d broken the mirror with your face instead.”
