But more than that, I hated how my skin missed his hands once he walked away.
The gown was gone. The silk pooled on the floor like a discarded memory—quiet, damning, final. With it went the last sliver of defiance I thought I had left.
The night was too still.
Every creak in the house echoed like an accusation. The shadows leaned in from the corners, heavy and unmoving, mocking me with their silence.
I sat on the edge of the bed, robe clutched tight around me like a shield—thin, useless, laughable. My heart beat too loudly, racing to fill the space he’d left behind. His words replayed in my mind with cruel clarity.
“You’ll beg, Persephone.”
He’d said it like prophecy. Like law.
The chill that crawled across my skin wasn’t from the air.
What kind of man could twist a woman’s fury into longing?
What kind of monster made you ache without even touching you?
His presence still lingered in the room—warm and thick and unbearable. It wrapped around me like a ghost I hadn’t invited, a haunting stitched into the seams of the robe on my shoulders.
I wanted to scream.
To tear him from my mind.
To curse the way he’d sunk into me without permission.
And yet…
I sat there.
Still.
Caught in a war of my own making.
Every second stretched like silk pulled tight over bone. My thoughts twisted themselves into knots I didn’t want to untangle.
Did I want him to take me?
To press past the edge I kept drawing and redrawing in my mind?
Did I want to crack open the armor he wore like scripture and see what lived beneath it?
My skin still hummed where he touched me—ankle, calf, the ghost of his breath on my throat.
No.
I shook my head. Hard. As if I could physically shake him loose.
But the question still sat there, unanswered.
What does it mean when you can’t trust your own body anymore?
Where does that leave you—when your enemy touches you like a lover and your soul starts to splinter?
My body had become a battlefield.
And I was already losing.
