Chapter 27 Estella #2
He has no idea she knows—or that she asked for this.
There’s a singular thrill in this—carrying a plan in your pocket while they stumble around blind in their own arrogance. Knowing exactly how the story ends while they still believe they’re untouchable.
We eat the last bites of our food and toss the empty boxes into a nearby trash can.
The sound barely fades before a chorus of shrill screams erupts ahead.
A group of women bolts out of the haunted house, hair flying, faces contorted in theatrical fear.
A performer dressed as a broken porcelain doll lurches after them, emitting a guttural, unnatural growl.
My smile stretches wider.
Soon, these harmless little screams will twist into something that doesn’t stop when the lights go out.
Soft giggles drift through the labyrinth, brushing against my ear like tiny ripples of sound bouncing off the warped walls.
I steady my hand, easing the knife free with a quiet click that barely disturbs the darkness.
Hidden in a shadowed corner, I watch the woman enter and run around the place, a hopeful shimmer sparking in her eyes.
He gave her a head start—thirty full seconds to run and hide before he hunts her down and delivers exactly the fantasy she wants.
She spins in place, trying to decode the labyrinth.
In here, sound shifts in strange ways, like the room itself is holding its breath.
Every wall reflects her, but none of them tell the truth.
One mirror stretches her into a spindly, long-limbed creature; the next crushes her midsection into a toy-like stub; another chops the top half of her head off unless she angles herself just right.
Nothing is stable. Nothing is real.
Slowly, she drifts toward my corner. The light doesn’t reach here.
The LED strips angle away, leaving this space washed in charcoal gray.
Even the mirrors here differ: the reflections look muted, dim, as if the silver beneath the glass is decaying.
These panels don’t distort for fun—they obscure, like memories trying to fade.
She leans forward, listening for footsteps. She expects him to cheat, to chase early, to break his own rules just to prove he wants her. I can almost feel her pulse quicken at the thought, her nerves crackling with anticipation.
All of them are painfully predictable. A labyrinth full of distorted reflections, and still, she is easier to read than a picture book.
My lips twitch when she finally crosses the threshold of my corner. I shift to the side, creating just enough space for her to step inside. She stretches a hand outward before following with her body, another bubbly giggle spilling from her chest.
My movement is clean, instinctive, and practiced through years of repetition.
My arm snakes around her throat, dragging her back against my chest, pinning her with a grip that leaves no room for questions.
She sucks in a startled breath, but it cuts off when the cold line of my blade kisses her skin.
“Try to scream, and I’ll slice your neck before you can even make it,” I whisper.
A violent shudder courses through her. The arousal he sparked in her—the staged fear, the playful dread from their little chase—vanishes in an instant.
Real fear takes hold, bright and sharp, surging through her like electricity.
Her heartbeat slams against my blade, a frantic rhythm begging for mercy, begging not to be stopped.
“Please, don’t hurt me,” she manages, her voice thick with tears. One falls onto my hand, cold against my heated skin. “I’ll do anything you want.”
“There’s a spare exit near here. Walk straight ahead, then turn left. One of the mirrors sticks out slightly—black frame surrounding it. Go through that door. Leave and don’t come back. Understand?”
She isn’t our target. Normally, I don’t bother with sparing anyone who wanders into my path, but tonight I’m in the mood to be generous.
Let this be her warning for the rest of her life: do not follow charming strangers into unknown places.
“Okay,” she whispers, swallowing hard. I feel the motion travel down her throat, and something sharp flicks through me, an urge I have to force myself to choke down before it becomes a cut I can’t take back.
I pull the blade from her skin and shove her forward. She hesitates for a heartbeat, then moves. The moment her heels hit the glass floor, they start clicking loudly, a frantic staccato racing toward the exit without once daring to look behind her.
I sigh softly and drag the back of my hand across my forehead, clearing away the thin sheen of sweat.
A door opens and closes somewhere deeper in the maze. A smile sharpens across my face the instant I catch the cheap cologne that floods in after him.
“Lylaaaa,” he drawls, his voice booming through the space, bouncing off glass like an ugly echo.
I could have let Dante handle all of this alone, but the thought makes me laugh. How would I possibly sit outside eating snacks while he got to have all the fun in here?
From my shadowed vantage point, I watch him scan the room.
His confidence flickers as a ripple of unease twists inside him.
He takes in the chaos of the reflections around him, and the smug smile he wore so proudly at the entrance slips away, peeled off by the disorientation that swallows him whole.
He pivots and moves to the opposite corridor. I slip out from my corner and drift silently along the left passage, letting a cold rush of air trail behind me. It washes over his back exactly as intended.
His clothes rustle as he spins, and a dim-witted laugh bursts out of him. “Lyla, you little menace. The harder you make it for me, the rougher your punishment will be.”
The urge to leap out and sink my blade straight through his mouth strikes me like a reflex, but I manage to suppress it.
He picks up speed, his boots squeaking sharply against the mirrored floor. He licks his lips, eyes roaming, before dipping his gaze downward. This funhouse ruins his pretty-boy illusion with every reflection, revealing the truth of him with brutal clarity.
I toy with him, slipping briefly into view behind him before vanishing into another corridor.
He never catches the full shape of me, only fragments, and his disorientation grows deliciously frantic.
A childlike thrill flares inside my chest as I move faster, more playfully, drifting from frame to frame, corner to corner, haunting him with half-visions of myself while my breathy laughs bounce off the walls and floor.
The light here is cold and metallic, almost clinical. Every angle slices him with sharp, sterile highlights. His reflection keeps appearing where logic says it shouldn’t—bending around corners before his body arrives or standing behind him even when the space is empty.
“Lyla, sweetie, come out to Daddy,” he calls, forced confidence tightening his voice.
That is my final drop of patience. I step out from the intersecting corridors with deliberate slowness, letting the moment stretch. He stands with his back to me, and when one of the mirrors catches a fuller sliver of my presence, his head turns until he is facing me.
I close the distance with calm, graceful steps, a faint smirk lifting my lips. My hands stay hidden behind my back. Each mirror I pass fractures the world around me into a thousand ghostly versions. Every copy of me moves a fraction off-beat, warped into strange, uncanny shapes.
Bodies shaped from the countless masks I have worn over the years, all dancing in broken rhythm as I walk toward him.
“You’re… not Lyla,” he mutters, shaking his head before slapping a palm against his cheek, as if trying to knock the dizziness out of his skull. Poor idiot has no idea the disorientation wasn’t an accident.
“Would you like Lyla better?” I ask. A pointless question, a baited trap. I already know the answer, and I cage the urge to roll my eyes.
A flimsy smile crawls across his face. His gaze drags down the length of me, lingering on the sweep of black wings before dipping to the corset-tight dress hugging my torso. He stops at my cleavage, and his grin stretches wider.
Painfully predictable.
And boring beyond reason.
“Nope,” he says, popping the P as if he thinks it makes him charming.
He licks his lips again, aiming for predatory but landing somewhere between pathetic and a medical emergency.
“You’re an angel sent to save me, aren’t you?
” he asks, voice thick and drowsy, like he’s drunk on the fantasy he built in his head.
“Do you want to come with me, Noah?” I ask, letting my voice wrap around his name in something slow and sultry.
His eyes widen, but instead of sobering, he laughs, smiling like a fool. “Fuck yes, I want to come with you, my mysterious angel.”
He starts toward me, then freezes as his gaze drops to the mirrored floor. There, behind him, another silhouette forms, causing his smile to dim. His hand rakes through his dirty-blonde hair as he wheels around.
“Didn’t know there’d be company,” he says, words coated in surprise.
His gaze locks onto Dante, a seed of panic blooming in the depths of his eyes. “Are you two together or something?” he asks. “Look, I didn’t know she was yours, man. She told me to follow—that’s why I did it.”
A laugh shudders through me as Dante and I begin to circle him. Cornered, he shifts from side to side, sweat breaking across his forehead. He tugs at the collar of his shirt and starts to hyperventilate.
“I wanted it. I did,” I say, letting my voice fall into something patronizing and cruel. Hunger glints in my eyes as I glance at Dante, and his smirk answers mine perfectly.
“Can you let me go?” he asks, voice cracking, hands shooting up in surrender. “I just… I don’t feel good.”
“Ow, poor little thing,” I coo, mocking him with sugary venom. “Too scared?”
His mouth twitches as Dante and I step closer, a tremor bolting through his body. Then, something in him breaks, and with a hissed curse, he darts toward Dante, attempting to sprint past him.
He never makes it.
Dante’s knife whips through the air in a single elegant arc, slicing into the back of Noah’s lower leg. A raw scream tears from him as his body collapses, skidding across the mirrored floor, his cheek scraping harshly against the glass.
Blood splatters in bright, violent streaks. It stains the pristine panels with dark red droplets that patter like soft rain.
I inhale deeply. The thrill spikes hard and fast through my chest as he starts crawling, palms smearing the floor in frantic streaks.
“You’re no fun, Noah,” I say, frustration soaking every word. “A goddamn disappointment.”
“Fuck, fuck, what the fuck,” he mutters, every word strangled by the pain ripping through him.
Dante steps in, calm as a surgeon, and drives his blade across Noah’s arm to keep him from dragging himself farther. The cut opens with a wet sound, and a harsher scream bursts out of him before his body collapses sideways.
His shoulder slams the glass floor with a dull crack. He groans, rolling onto his back, clutching his shredded arm like he’s trying to hold himself together. His eyes, wide and glossy with terror, dart around the labyrinth in frantic sweeps, searching for something to save him.
“What did you plan to do with her?” Dante asks, raising his voice to overpower the noise. Noah stares without comprehension, panting, so Dante jerks his chin in my direction. “What did you plan to do to my woman, Noah?”
A pathetic sob tears from him as he shakes his head. Dante’s palm cracks against his cheek, the slap swallowed quickly by the echoing chambers of glass.
“Don’t deflect. Say it. And we’ll end this quickly, I promise.”
“I swear—” he croaks, spit flicking from his lips. “I just wanted to watch.”
My attention locks on Dante. I see the muscle along his jaw tighten, a dark gleam flooding into his eyes, something feral and sharpened. It steals the air from the space between us.
A ripple slides up my spine, delicious and precise, and my thighs tighten as I drink in the sight of him.
I know what’s coming. I can feel it humming off him.
Dante nods once, reaches out, fists a hand in Noah’s short hair, and yanks him upward. Noah screams as he’s dragged to his knees, but Dante doesn’t pause. He pulls him across the glass floor, smearing a streak of blood behind them like a red comet tail, and slams his face toward the nearest mirror.
“Then watch this,” he says, lowering the blade to Noah’s throat and slicing it.
The cut opens clean. A crimson waterfall erupts across the mirror, dripping in thick, glossy rivulets down the warped reflection. I inhale, my eyes glowing as I watch the life drain from Noah. The gleam in Dante’s gaze shifts from raw jealousy to something more controlled, more aligned with mine.
The same gleam I carry. The same hunger. The same thrill.
Dante doesn’t blink. He watches the life flee Noah’s body with the calm of a man who no longer questions what he is. Blood pools beneath the corpse in wide, rippling sheets, staining the pristine glass with violent beauty.
The air grows thick, settling over the space like a fog of iron.
It feels like a long, stretched-out eternity before Dante lets go. Noah’s body drops with a resonant thud, a final punctuation to his pointless existence. I part my lips as Dante wipes the knife on Noah’s shirt, unhurried, composed, before he slowly turns toward me.
Our eyes meet, and for an instant, it feels like he drains the breath from my lungs. Something ancient, consuming, pulses from him to me.
Just before panic can bloom, I see it—the glint in his stare shifting, reforging from jealousy and blood-hunger into challenge.
“Run.”