“She’ll love you to death. She’ll consume every bit of you, make you hers. It’s the only way she can be. She can only eat you alive.”
He’s not wrong. For those who capture her attention, who dare to get under her skin, she does exactly that. She consumes, she obsesses, she takes, leaving nothing behind but the echo of what was.
Estella is not a regular psychopath, as Jason likes to call her. She pretends to feel—until she doesn’t, until the emotions surge out of her faster than she can process. She can be impulsive and unpredictable, while typical psychopaths usually maintain a composed mask at all times.
And the flashes behind her eyes—the slightest slips in her usual expression—are so subtle, so unlike the monotone, glassy gleams found in regular psychopaths.
While Cane thinks his words will make me recoil, make me question my own pull toward her, they do the exact opposite.
She is a wildfire, untamed, bright and defiant, flaring in the dense, suffocating darkness of the forest. The shadows coil and twist, but she shines through, relentless and blinding.
And I can’t look away. I can’t resist being drawn to her, pulled in by a gravity that refuses to be denied.
Ipry my eyes open, a gasp catching in my throat, sharp and shallow. A faint headache blooms behind my temples, sending a dull, insistent throb through my skull. My palm slaps against my forehead, and I flinch at the clammy stickiness of sweat clinging to my skin.
It takes a moment to inhale fully, to realize that my silk robe is glued to me, damp and heavy with perspiration, molding to every curve, every tense muscle.
A creak of the floor ripples through the dark room. I freeze, eyes widening, straining to pierce the shadows.
Someone is here.
I can feel it—an invisible weight pressing down, a pulse of unease curling through my veins, sending shivers cascadingalong my spine. I shift, trying to orient myself, to outline the shapes around me, but nothing jumps out.
Another slow creak vibrates across the floor. My heart stutters, stalls, then bursts forward, hammering in my throat as a dark silhouette slides closer.
Through the fog clouding my brain, I move faster than reason should allow. I slide off the couch, the thud of my knees echoing across the room, sharp pain shooting through me. The dull ache spreads, pooling in my bones, as my eyes catch the movement across the couch where I had been just a second ago—a swing of something before the sound dulls, a tear of fabric ripping through the space.
A knife.
It gets pulled out the same second, and instinct snaps, panic curling through my chest as my hands fly up to shield my face.
A sharp slice rakes across my arm. Fire blossoms along my skin, and in that instant, I locate his hand. My leg lifts, striking hard, and he growls, letting go of the knife as it clatters across the floor—metal on tile, loud and definitive—igniting a spark of hope that flickers weakly through my rising hysteria.
I just had to fall asleep in the living room, on the shadowed side of the apartment, where no light penetrates, where danger can hide in plain fucking sight.
Gasping, I twist, trying to scramble to my feet, but a hand fists in my hair before I can rise. The grip is vicious, yanking my head back so hard a shock of tingling pain detonates across my scalp, a million electric sparks exploding beneath my skin. I yelp, the last wisps of sleep burning away as adrenaline tears through the fog in my skull.
The light brush of his arm grazes my skin before it grinds hard against me, scraping, dragging, hurting.
“Get the fuck off me,” I hiss, fury sharpening every syllable as I slam my elbow backward, feeling it connect. He growls again,a sound fueled by his rising anger, but his hand only tightens, and the pain spirals, sharp enough to send a white-hot bloom straight into my brain.
I thrash against him, panic clawing its way up my throat. My gaze darts wildly around the room, desperate to make out shapes, edges, anything that could anchor me—but the darkness is a suffocating void. My eyes still feel swollen from sleep, refusing to focus, and the room keeps tilting, slipping, blurring.
His arm cinches around my neck. The pressure, like a python slowly coiling around its helpless prey. I choke, my palms sliding over the floor, the couch, his forearm—searching for leverage, a weapon, a weakness.
Nothing works. Every attempt feels small, sluggish, useless.
Thoughts flash through my mind, fast and frantic, each one darker than the last. I can feel myself dimming, the edges of my consciousness fraying. Concern sparks within me, fragile at first, then erupting violently.
This isn’t how I’m supposed to die.
Not half-conscious on a couch. Not strangled by a stranger whose face I can’t even see.
He could be anyone—a relative of a man I’ve killed, someone powerful, someone unhinged, someone with nothing left to lose.
And right now, he has everything, my life balanced between his fingers.
One thing I know for certain is that he is overpowering me, and there is nothing I can do to stop it.
