He’s beautiful. In the way a forest fire is beautiful. In the way the moment before a car crash is beautiful.
He doesn’t rush. He walks toward the slab with a slow, agonising deliberation, his boots clicking against the tiles. Step. Step. Step. Each sound is a hammer blow to my chest. He stops just inches from the edge of my bed, looming over me, his shadow swallowing my broken body.
I look up at him, my breath hitching in my throat. Up close, he’s even more devastating. He has a jawline that could cut glass and a throat that moves as he swallows, his eyes raking over me with an intensity so fierce I feel like I’m being stripped naked. He doesn’t look at me like a doctor looks at a patient. He looks at me like a starving man looks at a feast.
“You’re not real,” I whisper, my voice a dry, papery rasp.
He leans down, his face descending toward mine until I can feel the heat radiating off his skin. He smells of peppermint, gunpowder, and something dark and primal that makes the hair on my arms stand up. His hand, gloved in purple leather, reaches out and traces the line of my jaw. His touch is electric—a jolt of pure, unadulterated life that makes the leather restraints feel like they’re made of paper.
“Oh, I’m very real, Hallow,” he purrs. His voice is a low, gravelly cello, a sound that vibrates in the pit of my stomach. “And you… you’re even more magnificent in the flesh than you were in the files.”
His thumb brushes over my lower lip, his eyes darkening. There’s a smudge of blood on his cheek, a stray drop from the art gallery he left in the hall. He looks at me with a terrifying, obsessive hunger that makes my blood run hot and cold at the same time.
I should be screaming. I should be fighting. But as he looms over me, the master of this chaotic, bleeding world, I feel a spark of something I haven’t felt in two hundred and fifteen days.
Defiance.
I don’t look away. I stare back into those emerald eyes, watching the way the light catches the madness dancing within them. He’s the monster they warned me about. He’s the one who deals in cards and last breaths. And right now, he’s the only thing in the universe that matters.
“Who… are you?” I breathe.
He tilts his head, a lopsided, jagged grin spreading across his face. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a single card. The Joker. He slides it into the neckline of mytattered gown, the cold paper resting against my heart.
“I’m the guy who’s going to burn this world down just to see you dance in the ashes,” he whispers.
He reaches for the heavy leather strap across my chest, his fingers lingering on the buckle. He doesn’t pull it yet. He just looks at me, waiting, his presence so thick and dominating that the room feels like it’s shrinking.
The ghost is gone. The dancer is dead. But as the Dealer leans in to kiss the pulse point in my neck, I realise that whatever is waking up in me is far, far worse.
The smell of him is what undoes me. It isn’t the sterile, sharp scent of the hospital; it’s the smell of a revolution. Rain-soaked pavement, expensive tobacco, and the warm, metallic stench of the man he just slaughtered outside my door.
He lingers over me, his presence a physical weight, his shadow pinning me to the slab more effectively than the leather ever could. He doesn’t look at my scars with pity. He looks at them like they’re brushstrokes on a masterpiece he finally gets to own.
“You’re shaking, Hallow,” he murmurs, his thumb tracing the jagged line of my collarbone. His voice is a low, vibrating velvet that makes the raw skin beneath my restraints prickle. “Is it the cold? Or are you just realisingthat the monsters in your head are nothing compared to the one standing in front of you?”
“I’m dreaming,” I rasp, my voice cracking like dry earth. I pull against the wrist straps, the leather groaning, the bolts in the floor rattling a frantic rhythm. “Aris… he finally fried my brain. You’re just the static.”
He lets out a soft, dark chuckle that vibrates in the air between our lips. He leans closer, his nose brushing against mine, his emerald eyes boring into my soul with a terrifying, predatory clarity.
“If I’m static, sweetheart, I’m the loudest goddamn thing you’ve ever heard.”
He reaches for the heavy strap across my chest, his fingers ghosting over the buckle, but he doesn’t release it. He just watches me struggle, his gaze flicking down to the way my breasts heave against the restraint. He likes it. He likes that I’m trapped. He likes the desperation bleeding out of my pores.
“Please,” I whisper. The word feels like a sin on my tongue. I hate myself for saying it, but the need to be out of this skin, out of this room, is a fire that’s consuming me. “Let me go.”
He tilts his head, a lopsided, wicked grin pulling at the corner of his mouth. “Is that any way to talk to a saviour? You have to do better than that. A girl like you? A girl who bit a guard’s ear off just to taste the freedom? You don’t ask for things, Hallow. You beg.”
I glare at him, the old fire—the blue and red fire—flickering in my eyes. “Go to hell.”
“I’ve been there,” he whispers, his hand sliding up to grip my throat, not to choke me, but to claim me. His palm is hot, his grip possessive. “The devil sent me backbecause I was making the other residents uncomfortable. Now… tell me what you want. Say the words.”
I swallow hard, my pulse thudding against his hand. I look at the door, at the green fog, at the bloody silhouette of the man who used to be my tormentor lying in pieces in the hall. This stranger just unmade my world. He’s chaos in a purple coat, and he’s the only hand reaching into the dark.
“Please,” I choke out, my eyes stinging with a rage so pure it feels like grief. “Unstrap me. I’ll do anything. I’ll be anything. Just get me off this fucking slab.”
He leans in so close I can feel the dampness of his breath on my ear. He’s a nightmare I never want to wake up from.
“Anything is a dangerous word to give a man like me, Hallow. I don’t want your gratitude. I don’t want your soul.” He bites down softly on my earlobe, a sharp, electric sting of pain that makes my toes curl. “I want your havoc. I want to see what happens when the girl they tried to break finally decides to break the world back.”
