There’s no winner.
Only wreckage.
And in the wreckage, I hear my own voice whispering—broken, filthy, undeniable:
“Forever.”
Hook
She whispered it.
Not loud. Not clear. Barely more than breath. But I heard it.
Forever.
The word thrums through me like a second heartbeat, louder than her sobs, louder than the glass grinding under our bodies, louder than the blood dripping steady from my arm.
She gave it to me.
And she thinks it means freedom.
I press my forehead to hers, both of us slick and shaking, my smile splitting through blood. “Say it again,” I rasp, voice raw, hungry, vicious.
Her eyes flare, wet and furious, but her lips don’t move. Silent. Defiant.
It doesn’t matter. Once is enough. Once is everything.
I drag the hook up her body, tracing the fresh cuts across her chest, smearing our blood into her scars. “You think you cursed yourself,” I whisper, licking the word from her silence. “But you bound us tighter than any paper ever could. You said forever—and now you’ll bleed in it.”
She twists beneath me, trying to shove me off, but she’s too weak, trembling, her skin clammy from blood loss. I catch her wrists again, slam them back into the wreckage, pin her there like the butterfly she’s always been.
“I told you the cage wasn’t walls,” I growl. “It was a vow. And you just sealed it.”
Her scream rips up, raw, furious, shaking the shrine walls. Photographs flutter loose, raining down around us like ashes.
I laugh through my own blood, through the fire in my chest, through the ruin of us both.
She thinks she fought me. She thinks she broke me.
But she gave me the only word I ever wanted.
Forever.
And now I’ll show her what it really means.
Her scream tears the air apart, but it only makes me smile wider. Her voice has always been a hymn, but now it’s a confession. Every sound she makes after this is laced with the word she tried to hide.
Forever.
I press the hook against her throat, not cutting—yet—but letting her feel the weight of it, the cold curve that could open her in an instant. Her pulse hammers wild against steel, faster than mine, desperate, furious.
“You thought it was a slip,” I rasp, voice raw with blood and hunger. “A moment. A mistake.” My lips brush her ear, my breath shaking. “But it wasn’t. It was truth. And truth is sharper than any blade.”
She thrashes beneath me, wrists grinding against my grip, eyes blazing. She hates me, and it’s beautiful. Hate is love in sharper teeth.
I drag the hook lower, slow, deliberate, down her chest, circling a fresh scar. She gasps, tears spilling. I lick one from her cheek, copper-salt on my tongue.
“You sealed yourself to me,” I murmur, my voice cracking with the force of it. “No more contracts. No more cages. Just the vow you made with your own mouth. Do you feel it?”
