I press my lips to her temple, slow, almost reverent. “Sleep, little star. Dream of freedom if you want. You’ll wake and find me instead.”
Her lashes flutter once, twice, then close. Her body jerks faintly, a twitch of nerves, before sagging heavy into the mattress. Her breaths even out, ragged but steady, each one a thread tying her back to me.
I stay there, stretched across her, the blood-signed page tucked safe in my coat, my hook resting against her belly like a blade waiting for its cue. I don’t move. I don’t leave.
I just watch her sleep.
And I smile.
Because even in unconsciousness, she twitches like she knows I’m here. Like she can’t escape me even in her dreams.
And that’s exactly the way it should be.
Her breath evens into shallow rhythm, lashes resting against bruised cheeks, but her body never fully relaxes. Even in sleep she twitches, fingers curling like she’s clutching at glass, jaw tightening like she’s still fighting me inside her dreams.
I lean close, mouth against her ear, my words sliding straight into the dark she can’t escape.
“You think this was the worst of it?” I whisper, soft as a prayer, sharp as a knife. “I haven’t even started. I’ll take every dream from you, every memory, every piece you thought was safe. I’ll crawl inside your blood until you don’t know where you end and I begin.”
The hook rests flat on her belly, cold steel rising and falling with her breath. My thumb strokes her cheek almost gently, smearing a streak of dried blood across her sleeping face.
“When you wake,” I murmur, “you’ll beg for the cage you thought you hated. You’ll beg for me to break you again. And I’ll give it. I’ll give you everything. Pain. Pleasure. Chains. Ruin. Until the only word your body knows is mine.”
Her lips part faintly, a breath catching in her sleep like she heard me, like she’s already obeying.
I press a kiss to her mouth, slow, possessive, stealing the air she doesn’t even know she’s offering.
Then I lean back, hook gleaming in the firelight, and smile at her sleeping ruin.
Part Five
The Resurrection
He bought me.
Owned me.
Used me.
And I still want him.
Does that make me weak?
Or just real?
I screamed the truth into a silence that didn’t care.
I shattered, and he applauded.
So I rebuilt.
Sharper. Louder.
Worse.
He wanted a possession.
But he made a monster.
