Not the kind they write in sonnets, but the kind that digs its nails into your ribs and stays—a sickness that blooms in your marrow, a religion forged in sweat and submission.
She’s wearing the nightgown I left her.
Did she know I’d be watching?
Of course she did.
The little defiant lift of her chin, the venom behind her stare even when she’s alone—she knows. And still, she performs. Rage turned ritual. Loneliness turned theatre. She doesn’t beg anymore, not with her voice. But her body begs. The arch of her spine when she thinks I’m not looking. The way she grips the sheets like she’s punishing them for not being me.
I want to touch her so badly my hands shake.
I won’t.
Not yet.
Let her feel the burn of absence.
Let her wonder if this time, she really went too far.
Let her crave me with the same desperation that’s driving me insane.
My eyes flicker to the small cut on her palm from the glass. I should’ve stitched it. I should’ve punished her harder for that little stunt. But the tear on her cheek when I ripped the shard from her hand… it undid me. Made something animal in me crawl up and howl behind my teeth.
She thinks she wants freedom.
She doesn’t.
She wants me.
Even if she doesn’t know it yet.
I lean forward, breath fogging the edge of the screen as her fingers twitch in sleep.
And I whisper to no one, to everything, to her?—
“You don’t get to fall apart without me, Tahlia. If you shatter, I want to be the one who makes you bleed.”
The screen flickers with static for half a second, a glitch I’ve been meaning to fix, but never do. Because watching herthrough that imperfection feels truer somehow—fractured, like the thing I’ve taken from her.
She’s still on the floor.
Her hair’s tangled around her like a halo made of thorns, and her eyes are red-rimmed and distant, as if she’s staring through the walls instead of at them. But I know better. Tahlia Fernwynd doesn’t stare into nothing. She stares at ghosts. At memory. At rage she doesn’t know how to carry. At me, even when I’m not in the room.
I shift forward in the chair, fingers steepled under my chin, elbows on the desk. The angle catches her lip trembling. She flinches when the mirror light glances off the broken frame like a blade. The necklace is still on the floor. The one she threw, not at me—at the version of herself she can’t stomach anymore.
Good.
Let her unravel. Let her break. Let her claw the walls and curse my name and spit blood into her own hands if it gets her closer to the truth.
The truth is this: she was always mine.
Not when I dragged her into this estate. Not when I took her voice and locked it in silence. But before. Long before. She just didn’t see the line until now—until it wrapped around her neck like a leash disguised as lace.
She screams something wordless, just a throat-tearing sound that doesn’t even make it to the monitor with volume. But I feel it. It tears through me. My blood thickens at the noise. My hand flexes involuntarily, a phantom grip around her wrist that I haven’t earned yet tonight.
I hate her for that.
Hate her for what she makes me become. For how she keeps proving she’s still alive, when I’ve done everything to strip that from her.
