I vow to be the wall that keeps the world out,his voice echoes in my skull.I vow to burn every bridge you ever thought about crossing.
I shake my head, a sob breaking out of my chest so hard it aches. “It’s not love,” I choke out, the words disappearing into the smoke. “It’s not love. That’s not why I’m crying. I’m just scared. I’m just a girl in a fire again.”
I reach out with my right hand, my fingers trembling as they touch the cold, diamond-encrusted band. The moment my skin brushes the metal, the pins embedded in my finger thrum, a sharp, stinging reminder that I am physically tethered to his soul.
More tears fall, splashing onto the ruby, making the red light fracture and bleed across my skin.
I tell myself I’m crying because I’m shackled. I tell myself I’m crying because I’m cold and traumatised and covered inthe scent of a man who just took me against a railing while his world burned. I tell myself I hate him. I repeat it like a mantra, a prayer to a God who abandoned this house a long time ago.
I hate him. I hate him. I hate him.
But then, a thought—sharp and cold as a shard of the shattered chandelier—slices through the denial. It strikes me with such force that I stop breathing.
What if he doesn’t come back?
The air leaves my lungs. The thought doesn’t bring relief. It doesn’t bring the taste of freedom. It brings a hollow, cavernous vacuum that threatens to swallow me whole. If he dies in there, the leash doesn’t break. It just stays attached to a corpse, and I’m left alone in the dark, wearing his name and his blood, waiting for the next monster to find the balcony.
What if the last thing I ever felt was his hand on my heart? What if the last thing he ever said was that I was his favourite sin?
“Peter,” I whisper, and this time, it’s not a protest. It’s a plea.
I touch the ring again, burying my face in my bound hands, the gold chains biting into my forehead. I’m a Queen in a ruined palace, a bride in a blood-stained gown, and as the house groans under the weight of the assault, I realise the most terrifying thing of all.
I’m not crying because I’m his prisoner. I’m crying because I don’t know how to exist in a world where he isn’t the one holding the keys.
Wendy
The cold marble against my skin is no longer a sanctuary; it’s a tombstone.
I force myself up. My legs are leaden, trembling beneath the weight of a thousand yards of blood-flecked tulle.
The gold chain between my wrists drags against my thighs, a heavy, rhythmic clink-clink-clink that sounds like a clock counting down to zero. I grip the cold steel of the gun he shoved into my hands—the weight of it is foreign, disgusting, and the only thing keeping me upright.
I step through the shattered remains of the French doors.
The ballroom is no longer a place of floating candles and silk. It is a slaughterhouse draped in gold leaf. The air is a thick, choking fog of gunpowder, expensive cologne, and the metallic, copper stench of fresh death. My lungs burn with every breath.
I see a man—one of the Council’s guards—slumped against a white pillar, his throat opened like a second mouth,his blood painting the marble in a grotesque, crimson fan. I keep walking, my heels crunching over the shards of a billion-dollar chandelier.
Then I see him.
In the centre of the ruins, Peter is a god of carnage. He isn’t using his gun anymore. He’s hovering over a man from the North End, his charcoal suit shredded, his white shirt soaked a deep, horrific violet. He has the man by the hair, slamming his head into the edge of the long marble table with a rhythmic, sickening thud-crack, thud-crack.
The violence is visceral. It’s raw. It’s the kind of cruelty that makes your soul want to exit your body. There is bone white and brain matter smeared across the caviar plates. Peter’s face is a mask of splattered blood, his eyes glowing with an unhinged light that suggests he’s forgotten he’s a man.
I freeze. My heart stops. The gun in my hand feels like it weighs a ton. I’m a ghost in a white dress, watching the devil claim his tithe.
Peter senses me. He always senses me.
He drops the limp, broken body of the assassin and spins around. His chest is heaving, his muscles twitching with the high of the kill. For a split second, he doesn’t recognise me. He looks at me like I’m just another target, another thing to be broken and buried. The predatory void in his gaze is so cold it makes the winter air outside feel like a summer breeze.
Then, his pupils snap back into focus. He sees the blood on my dress, the gold on my wrists, the terror in my eyes.
“WENDY!”
His voice isn’t a whisperanymore. It’s a guttural, earth-shaking roar that rips through the sound of the distant fires. It’s a command that vibrates in my very marrow, snapping the paralysis that held me.
“GET DOWN!”
