Hook
She looks smaller on the monitor tonight.
Not because she’s curled up—that’s nothing new, a position I’ve catalogued countless times—but because something inside her has folded, fractured, frayed in a way that feels final.
The way she pressed her forehead to the mirror like she wanted to crawl through it, like she was begging the reflection to shatter so she wouldn’t have to, made something cold and cavernous in me ache.
I don’t look away.
I can’t.
I sit in the dark, fingers steepled, elbows resting on the arms of the chair like a throne carved from my own derangement, and I watch her unravel inch by inch, like a present I wrapped too tightly, ribbon cutting into soft skin, bow laced with blood.
She doesn’t know it, but I’ve stopped sleeping. Every blink is a missed moment. Every breath without her voice in it feels like theft.
This is devotion in its purest form.
Not the kind they write in sonnets, but the kind that digs its nails into your ribs and stays—a sickness that blooms in your marrow, a religion forged in sweat and submission.
She’s wearing the nightgown I left her.
Did she know I’d be watching?
Of course she did.
The little defiant lift of her chin, the venom behind her stare even when she’s alone—she knows.
And still, she performs. Rage turned ritual.
Loneliness turned theatre. She doesn’t beg anymore, not with her voice.
But her body begs. The arch of her spine when she thinks I’m not looking.
The way she grips the sheets like she’s punishing them for not being me.
I want to touch her so badly my hands shake.
I won’t.
Not yet.
Let her feel the burn of absence.
Let her wonder if this time, she really went too far.
Let her crave me with the same desperation that’s driving me insane.
My eyes flicker to the small cut on her palm from the glass. I should’ve stitched it. I should’ve punished her harder for that little stunt. But the tear on her cheek when I ripped the shard from her hand… it undid me. Made something animal in me crawl up and howl behind my teeth.
She thinks she wants freedom.
She doesn’t.
She wants me.
Even if she doesn’t know it yet.
I lean forward, breath fogging the edge of the screen as her fingers twitch in sleep.
And I whisper to no one, to everything, to her—
“You don’t get to fall apart without me, Tahlia. If you shatter, I want to be the one who makes you bleed.”
The screen flickers with static for half a second, a glitch I’ve been meaning to fix, but never do. Because watching her through that imperfection feels truer somehow—fractured, like the thing I’ve taken from her.
She’s still on the floor.
Her hair’s tangled around her like a halo made of thorns, and her eyes are red-rimmed and distant, as if she’s staring through the walls instead of at them.
But I know better. Tahlia Fernwynd doesn’t stare into nothing.
She stares at ghosts. At memory. At rage she doesn’t know how to carry. At me, even when I’m not in the room.
I shift forward in the chair, fingers steepled under my chin, elbows on the desk.
The angle catches her lip trembling. She flinches when the mirror light glances off the broken frame like a blade.
The necklace is still on the floor. The one she threw, not at me—at the version of herself she can’t stomach anymore.
Good.
Let her unravel. Let her break. Let her claw the walls and curse my name and spit blood into her own hands if it gets her closer to the truth.
The truth is this: she was always mine.
Not when I dragged her into this estate. Not when I took her voice and locked it in silence. But before. Long before. She just didn’t see the line until now—until it wrapped around her neck like a leash disguised as lace.
She screams something wordless, just a throat-tearing sound that doesn’t even make it to the monitor with volume. But I feel it. It tears through me. My blood thickens at the noise. My hand flexes involuntarily, a phantom grip around her wrist that I haven’t earned yet tonight.
I hate her for that.
Hate her for what she makes me become. For how she keeps proving she’s still alive, when I’ve done everything to strip that from her.
And worse?
I want her even more for it.
I lean back in the chair, spine curving like a slow descent into madness, and whisper to no one, “You don’t get to die, little star. Not until I say you can fade.”
Then I smile.
And wait.
Because the longer she thinks I’m not coming…
The sweeter it’ll be when I do.
The screen flickers, but my focus never wavers.
Not when she paces.
Not when she crumbles.
Not even when she starts to put on a show that should bring me to my knees.
I don’t blink. I don’t move. I just watch.
She’s performing for the cameras now—her rebellion in ribbons, her shame weaponised. And it works. God, it works too well. She doesn’t know what she does to me, how deep she claws beneath my skin, how feral the ache becomes when she writhes not for me, but because of me.
Her mouth opens in a gasp I can’t hear, and I swear I feel it in my fucking spine.
My knuckles whiten against the edge of the monitor desk, the cool wood digging into my skin. I could go to her. I could break the door down and bury myself in the chaos she made.
But I don’t.
Because this—watching her break herself down, just to spite me—feeds something darker than hunger. It’s not just arousal anymore. It’s ownership. It’s obsession. It’s the slow, delicious knowledge that she’s not just in my house. She’s in my world now, and that world rewrites the rules.
She’s taunting me, sure. But there’s something else beneath her defiance—something fragile.
Her mask slips when she thinks I’m not watching.
That little lip tremble. The twitch of her fingers as she pauses, like she almost forgets what she’s doing.
The way her eyes search the room for a shadow that isn’t mine.
She’s unravelling.
And I am thriving on every thread she pulls loose.
My mouth curves into a grin that holds no warmth. Just teeth.
She wants my attention?
She’s got it.
But she doesn’t get my touch.
Not yet.
Let her squirm. Let her wonder. Let her tear herself apart trying to figure out what I’ll do next.
I want her to ache with the not-knowing.
I want her to beg, not for pleasure—
But for clarity.
And when I do go to her?
She’ll wish I hadn’t.