I stopped breathing halfway through.
It wasn’t sweet.
It wasn’t romantic.
It was a dossier.
Like I was a subject under surveillance. A case study in how to dismantle someone and call it devotion.
I dropped the page. It fluttered to the floor like something dead.
This wasn’t obsession masked as love.
This was control, quantified and catalogued.
This was a manual.
My throat closed around a scream I didn’t let out.
Because now I knew.
I wasn’t being courted.
I was being conditioned.
I needed air.
The walls were pressing in again—too tight, too loud, filled with the ghost of Hades’ voice, the echo of that letter in my hand, that list. My name scrawled on an envelope like it belonged to him.
I couldn’t breathe.
I took the stairs fast, feet light but heart pounding like it wanted to rip through my ribs and throw itself off the edge first.
The door to the balcony creaked as I pushed it open. The cold night hit me like a slap—and hell, I needed it. My skin prickled, and for the first time in hours, I felt something that didn’t belong to him.
The city sprawled beneath me, golden and glittering.
Distant.
Untouchable.
I leaned over the railing, fingers curling around the iron like they could anchor me. But the panic was still there, coiled tight in my chest, slithering up my throat. I blinked hard against the sting in my eyes.
No tears. Not for him. Not since that night my father handed me off like property.
Not since the moment I stopped being a person and became a transaction.
The stars were swallowed by city glow. All that beauty. All that light. And none of it mine.
He wants to own me.
The thought came bitter and sharp. I hated how true it felt.
But worse?
What if I don’t know who I am without being owned?
What if I was always just the girl in someone else’s story? The obedient daughter. The quiet shadow. The prize to be traded. The wife in white silk, claimed before she ever got to choose.
