The camera blinks, reflecting her frozen image back at me. She’s asleep now, curled bloody and raw on the mattress, but her vow still rings louder than any scream she’s ever given.
If she wants a war, she’ll get one.
And I’ll make sure it ends the only way it can—with both of us buried in the same cage.
The monitor flickers faintly, the hum of the feed steady in the silence. She sleeps in ruin, hair tangled, skin streaked in blood and sweat, curled into herself like something feral nursing its wounds.
I can still see it—the performance burned into me.
Her body smeared in her own blood.
Her hand between her thighs.
Her voice hissing at me through the camera, you’ll never hear the word.
She thinks that vow makes her untouchable.
She thinks silence is her weapon.
But silence is what made me.
And I can outlast her.
My fingers drum against the folder on the desk. Every page inside is stained, shredded, useless. Contracts, signatures, blood—none of it cages her anymore. She’s smarter than paper. She’s sharper than chains.
She isn’t sharper than me.
The hook taps the desk, a steady rhythm that matches the pulse in my jaw. I watch the way her chest rises and falls, her lips parting with shallow breaths, her body twitching from dreams she can’t escape. She looks innocent when she sleeps. Almost.
I want to wake her with the hook pressed to her throat. I want to whisper that I’ll gut her if she tries to smile at me like that again. I want to fuck her until her new scars bleed open, until the word she refuses is carved into her tongue.
But more than all of that—I want her to mean it.
I want her to choke out I love you and hate herself for every syllable. I want her to beg for forever and know I’ll give it to her as a curse.
My hand fists in my hair, pulling, dragging pain down to keep me tethered. She’s infected me, crawling under my skin like a virus. Every time she bleeds, I feel it in my chest. Every time she gasps, I come apart.
She thinks she’s turning into a monster.
She doesn’t understand—monsters don’t share the throne.
I lean closer to the screen, the smile that spreads across my face sharp and broken.
“I’ll let you keep your silence,” I whisper to her sleeping form. “But when the cage closes for the last time, it won’t be you begging for release.”
The red light blinks.
The hook taps.
And I already know how this ends.
Not with her love.
With our ruin.
Tahlia
Iwake to the taste of iron on my tongue.
