Tahlia
The silence is a trick, a weapon disguised as absence.
It stretches long and thin, like piano wire pulled taut, wrapping around my lungs and tugging every time I breathe wrong—which is all the time now, has been since he locked that door. Even the air feels infected, contaminated.
Like it’s been through him first. Tasted his mouth. Picked up his scent—that dark spice and something metallic underneath. Learnt how to sink inside me before I realise I’m already full of it, drowning in his presence even when he’s not here.
I fucking hate this with every cell in my body.
The room’s colder today, or at least it feels that way.
Or maybe it’s me. Maybe this is what happens when the screaming finally stops—when the fire dulls into embers that just burn low and steady under your ribs, constant and inescapable.
No crackle. No spark. Just heat that eats you alive from the inside, consuming you by slow degrees.
I sit on the edge of the mattress, the frame still crooked from where I kicked it in a fit of rage hours ago. One of the legs gave out, splintered wood testament to my fury.
I’m proud of that small victory. It’s not a win, not really, but it’s something—a reminder that I exist outside of his hands, outside of his control. That there’s still part of me sharp enough to break something, even if it’s just furniture.
Even if it’s just a bed that he’ll probably replace tomorrow.
The camera above the door blinks red with mechanical indifference.
It used to make my blood boil, that invasive eye watching my every movement.
Now it just makes me tired, the anger exhausting itself into numbness.
I haven’t cried yet.
I won’t, refuse to give him that.
Tears are soft and I’m not soft, can’t afford to be.
I’m the girl who survived men with fists for mouths and hands that didn’t know the difference between holding and owning.
I’m the girl who turned herself into glass so she couldn’t be touched without consequences, so sharp she’d cut anyone who tried. I’m the girl who—
I don’t know who I am anymore, and that terrifies me more than anything he’s done.
Not since he started talking like he’d already named me before I ever told him my fucking name, like he knew me before we met.
My eyes drift to the mirror on the far wall, the one that’s warped at the corners like it’s been replaced too many times by girls who came before me.
My reflection looks wrong, alien. Like it’s wearing me instead of being me, like I’m a costume someone else has put on.
The pink smudged lipstick I haven’t bothered to fix.
The shadows under my eyes like bruises painted by insomnia.
The marks that aren’t on my skin but still ache somewhere deeper, in places I can’t reach.
He told me to wear red tomorrow.
It should’ve been a joke, should’ve made me laugh at the absurdity but somehow it felt like a promise, like a threat wrapped in preference.
My hands shake as I pull the blanket tighter around my body, trying to trap warmth that isn’t there.
I tell myself it’s just cold, just the temperature of this room.
That I’m not scared. That the phantom of his voice in my head isn’t real, isn’t actually echoing in the empty spaces.
That I’m not already counting the hours until I see him again—not because I want to, not because I need to—but because the not knowing is worse than anything he’s actually done to me.
I don’t want to want anything from him. Not touch. Not mercy. Not even answers.
But I do want something, and I hate myself for it.
God help me, I do.
The knock isn’t a knock in any conventional sense.
It’s one heavy thud—just enough to warn me before the lock clicks with mechanical finality and the door swings open on well-oiled hinges.
I don’t move from my perch.
I don’t flinch or scramble back.
I sit there on the edge of the ruined bed, spine straight despite everything, mouth sealed shut, heart crawling somewhere behind my ribs like it’s trying to hide. Because if I show him fear, he’ll taste it in the air. And if he tastes it, he’ll feed on it, will use it against me.
I don’t know if I can survive another bite, another piece of me consumed.
His shadow hits the floor first—long and bent like a monster crawling in behind him, distorted by the angle of light from the corridor.
Then his boots against the hardwood, expensive leather making no sound. Then the dark slant of his suit that probably costs more than I used to make in a year. And then… his eyes. Those eyes that don’t just look at me like other men do. They dig beneath the surface, excavating things I’ve buried.
“You’ve been quiet, Tink,” he says, and the nickname makes my skin crawl. Like he’s concerned about my wellbeing. Like he isn’t the reason my silence tastes like blood and glass and swallowed screams.
I meet his stare deliberately, refusing to look away first. I make it hurt, put all my remaining defiance into my gaze.
“If I scream, will you come faster next time?”
There’s the flicker I was looking for. That sharp glint in his eye, like violence dressed in a tuxedo, like brutality wearing civility as a mask. The corner of his mouth twitches—not a smile exactly. Something crueller, more predatory. Like he’s glad I still bite, like my resistance pleases him.
He steps inside the room, movements slow and controlled. The kind of movement that tells me he could lunge—but doesn’t need to, doesn’t have to rush. Not yet. He’s already won the room just by breathing in it, just by existing here.
“I prefer when you whisper,” he says, voice like silk dragged across a blade’s edge. “You say prettier things when you think I’m not listening.”
My stomach coils tight with dread. My fists clench in the folds of the blanket until my knuckles ache. He’s bluffing, has to be. I haven’t said anything out loud. Not where he could hear.
But his eyes say otherwise, glittering with knowledge I didn’t give him.
He walks to the mirror with deliberate casualness.
Straightens it with one hand, adjusting the angle like he’s fixing something sacred, something that matters.
The mirror shows me both of us now—him behind me, tall and still and utterly in control, and me in the foreground looking smaller than I want to admit, looking like prey.
“You broke my bed,” he says conversationally, as if we’re discussing the weather.
“You kidnapped me,” I shoot back without hesitation.
He hums low in his throat. A sound so deep it almost vibrates the floor beneath my feet. “I bought you, Tahlia. Fair and square. Don’t flatter yourself into thinking this was anything dramatic.”
My breath stalls in my lungs, catches there.
Because it doesn’t sound like a threat designed to frighten me.
It sounds like the truth, stated plainly.
I don’t blink, refuse to give him the satisfaction because blinking would mean I believe him, would mean accepting his words as reality.
If I believe him, I might never breathe the same again, might never be free.
The silence between us thickens—molasses and venom and the kind of dread that sinks in slow, that seeps into your bones gradually. I try to swallow it down, but my throat is dry, scraped raw by questions I don’t know how to form, by accusations that would sound insane if spoken aloud.
“What the fuck did you just say?”
The words come out cracked, stitched together by disbelief and growing horror. By fury that’s starting to burn through the shock. By the echo of something I thought I buried years ago—the girl who still believed she had a say in her own life, who thought she had autonomy.
He leans against the dresser like we’re just having a casual conversation, like I’m not chained to this moment by the weight of what he just said.
“I bought you,” he repeats, slowly, deliberately, making sure every word lands. “Legally. Quietly. Expensively.”
I rise to my feet, legs unsteady but determined. Not out of strength—out of survival instinct kicking in. Rage is the only armour I have left, the only protection against the implications of his words.
“You’re lying,” I accuse, desperate for it to be true.
He shrugs one shoulder, the gesture elegant and dismissive. “I don’t lie, Tink. I manipulate. I distort. I devastate. But I don’t lie—lying is beneath me.”
I walk towards him, every step trembling but firm, bare feet hitting the hardwood with sharp, angry slaps that echo in the stillness.
My bare feet hit the floor like accusations.
He doesn’t move, doesn’t retreat or brace himself.
Just watches with that infuriating patience.
As if he’s curious how far I’ll go before I break myself against him again, before I shatter.
“What does that even mean?” I hiss, voice shaking. “What the hell are you talking about? Bought me? From who?”
A smirk unfurls on his lips—lazy and lethal, satisfied.
“I think you already know,” he says quietly. “You’ve spent your whole life being sold in pieces, haven’t you? I’m just the first one who wanted the whole thing, who saw value in all of you.”
My stomach twists so violently I think I might be sick, might actually vomit because he’s not wrong about that assessment.
I’ve seen the way people look at girls like me, have felt those calculating stares. Like I’m a transaction. A service. A body, wrapped in the thin illusion of choice and agency.
And now… I’m his property.
Not because he dragged me here against my will.
But because someone else handed me over like goods, like merchandise.
“Why?” I whisper, the word barely audible.
He steps forward towards me, just once.
And then again, closing the distance.
I back up instinctively, but he keeps coming, slow and controlled, until the backs of my legs hit the edge of the broken bed frame and I have nowhere left to go. His hand lifts—not to touch me, but to curl a single strand of my hair between his fingers, examining it like it’s precious.
“Because I collect rare things,” he says softly, voice almost gentle. “And you, Tahlia Fernwynd… you’re the last of your kind.”
I don’t move, frozen in place.
I don’t breathe, lungs refusing to work.
His words crawl across my skin like insects with knives for legs—sharp, deliberate, leaving no part of me untouched or unscarred.
He doesn’t blink when he says it, doesn’t waver.
Doesn’t smile now, either. Just stands there with that look in his eyes that makes my blood run cold.
That look that says he knows everything about me.
Not just about where I come from or who sold me, but what I am when no one’s watching, what happens in the dark.
What I would’ve become even if he hadn’t taken me, what trajectory my life was on.
As if I was always meant for a cage, predestined for captivity, and he just happened to be the one holding the fucking key.
I try to laugh at the absurdity.
It comes out broken, hollow, a sound scraped from somewhere under my ribs where everything hurts.
“You think you own me?” I whisper, trying to make it sound defiant.
His eyes don’t waver, don’t show doubt. “No. I do own you.”
There’s no heat in it, no passion. No rage. Just fact. Cold, brutal, matter-of-fact domination that slips under my skin like poison disguised as logic, like truth wrapped in horror.
I shake my head in denial, backing up until there’s nowhere left to go. My body brushes against the broken headboard—the one I shattered in a storm of fury and desperation—and the irony makes my stomach turn, makes me want to scream.
“You don’t get to decide who I am,” I bite out, clinging to that last scrap of identity.
He steps forward again, and I flinch before I can stop myself, body betraying me.
That’s what pisses me off most—that tiny, involuntary twitch that I can’t control. That fear I’ve tried so fucking hard to keep buried beneath anger and defiance.
“I didn’t decide who you are,” he says quietly, voice almost reasonable. “But I’m the only one who sees it, who really looks.”
My throat goes tight with emotion I refuse to name.
His voice is too soft now, too steady. Like he’s trying to thread something through me carefully. A seed of belief. A sickness that takes root and spreads from the inside out, corrupting everything.
“I see what they did to you,” he murmurs, voice gentle in a way that makes it worse. “The masks you wear to survive. The way you walk like you’re not prey, even when your heart’s racing. I know the girl who had to carve herself out of glass just to survive another day.”
He leans closer, invading my space.
“And I know exactly how to make her shatter into something new.”
Something hot rises in my chest, burning. Not lust. Not hate.
Grief, raw and unexpected.
It hits like a fist to the solar plexus, so sudden and raw that I can’t stop the way my vision blurs with moisture I refuse to let fall.
No one’s ever said those things to me before, ever seen that deep. Not even me. I’ve spent years pretending there’s no wreckage under my skin, pretending I’m whole. Years trying to glue it all together with lipstick and silence and carefully constructed walls.
Now he’s peeling it open like a wound, exposing it to air, like it’s something beautiful instead of shameful.
Like he wants to wear my pain.
“Why me?” I rasp, the words almost choked by the tightness in my throat. “Why this?”
He smiles again—but this one’s quieter, more contained. Almost reverent in its intensity.
“Because monsters don’t fall in love, Tahlia,” he says, and the certainty in his voice is absolute. “We choose. And I chose you.”