She’ll wish I hadn’t.
Part Four
The Paper Cage
She was never lost.
She was placed.
Bought like property.
Signed over in a room she doesn’t remember.
She thinks she’s unbreakable?—
but she never saw the contract.
The one with her name written in ink.
And mine written in blood.
Let her rage.
Let her hate me.
The truth isn’t supposed to feel good.
It’s supposed to feel real.
—J.H.
Tahlia
The silence is a liar.
It pretends to be empty, but I can feel the weight of it pressing into my ribs, crawling down my throat until every breath tastes like ink and chains.
I trace the crack in the mirror with my fingertip, the line splitting my reflection into two halves of a girl I don’t recognise anymore. One side hollow-eyed and trembling, the other sharp with rage that won’t go out no matter how many times he tries to smother it.
There’s paper on the desk. Always paper. Books he stocked, pages annotated in a hand that isn’t mine. At first, I thought it was just part of the cage—something to remind me what I’d lost. But tonight, the edges feel heavier. Like contracts. Like confessions. Like proof that I was never lost at all.
I pick one up. The handwriting slants cruel, confident. Not his—older. Unfamiliar. The words blur in the dim firelight, but my name is there, written clean across the margin, sharp as a blade: Tahlia Fernwynd.
Signed. Dated. Placed.
My pulse scrapes the inside of my throat raw. This isn’t coincidence. This isn’t obsession. This is transaction.
Bought.
My knees press into the floor as I clutch the paper, nails digging crescents through the margin like I can scratch myself out of it, tear my name from the record, unwrite the sentence that sold me. But the ink doesn’t move. It stares back, dark and permanent.
The necklace glints on the rug where I left it, twisted metal that smells like him. The mirror cuts my reflection into ribbons. And suddenly I realise—every piece of this room is a document. Every object a signature. The bed, the books, the fire, the silence. All proof of ownership.
I was never stolen.
I was placed.
The thought rips through me like a blade through soft skin, jagged and final. My stomach clenches. My throat closes. I want to scream, but the sound sticks, thick with bile and betrayal.
