Tahlia
Iwake to the smell of iron.
It coats my tongue, thick and sour, seeping into my teeth, my throat, my lungs. The sheets are stiff with blood, dried into ridges that scrape against my thighs. Paper clings to my skin where sweat welded it in place, the ink blurred into bruises.
The mirror is gone, reduced to dust and shards. The girl in the glass is dead.
I touch my face and feel dried streaks of tears crusted against my cheeks. My fingers shake, split open and swollen from the glass, but I don’t flinch. Pain doesn’t scare me anymore. Pain is clean.
It’s him I should fear. The hook. The contract. The way he whispered into me even as I slept. I should be trembling. I should be begging for freedom.
When I press my palm flat against my stomach where his weight crushed me into the bed, my lips twist into something I don’t recognise.
A smile.
Small. Crooked. Sharp.
He thinks he owns me in ink and blood. He thinks the contract is complete but what he doesn’t understand is that I signed something else in the dark. Not with him. With myself.
A vow.
That I will outlast him.
That I will burn hotter than the cage he locked me in.
That I will make ruin my resurrection.
I drag myself upright, every muscle screaming, my body still slick with his claim, but I don’t crumble. I plant my feet on the glass-strewn floor, shards biting deep, and I welcome the sting. Each cut is another line in the new scripture I’m writing across my skin.
No mirror. No pages. No signatures.
Just me.
And the war I’m about to become.
The room stinks of him. Smoke. Sweat. Blood. My body aches with it, filled and emptied, claimed and ruined. For a moment, I think about curling back into the sheets, letting it swallow me whole. Letting him win.
I don’t.
I rise instead, slow, deliberate, each breath scraped raw through my throat. The glass cuts deeper with every step, shards grinding into the soles of my feet until I’m bleeding fresh across the floor. The pain sharpens me. Wakes me.
I crouch and sift through the wreckage of the mirror, picking a jagged piece of glass from the mess. My reflection stares back—fractured, wild-eyed, lips cracked. Not a girl. Not prey. Something else. Something with blood in her teeth.
I curl my hand around the shard until it bites into my palm, red dripping fast. I don’t let go. I let it brand me.
This isn’t his lesson anymore. It’s mine.
The cage was meant to silence me, to strip me down into obedience. But silence isn’t emptiness—it’s space. Space to think. To sharpen. To become something he can’t predict.
I move through the room, leaving bloody prints across the papers, across the bed frame, across the walls. My mark, not his. My body may be bound, but the room is mine now.
The necklace lies tangled in the sheets where I dropped it last night. I lift it, chain sticky with blood, charm bent and sharp. It cuts my fingers as I wind it around my wrist, tighter, tighter, until it bites deep.
A weapon disguised as jewellery. A collar disguised as choice.
Let him see it and think I’ve surrendered. Let him believe I’ve folded. He’ll never notice the moment I bite back until it’s already too late.
I press the glass shard against my thigh, just enough to slice a thin line, fresh blood welling fast. I smear it down the wall in a crooked streak, dark and wet, a message he won’t understand.
Not a plea. Not a curse.
A vow.
The girl he bought is gone.
The thing that takes her place will make him choke on every page of his contract.
I sink onto the bed again, my body humming with pain and defiance, and stare straight into the red blink of the camera.
“Watch me,” I whisper. My lips curve sharp, feral, blood smeared across my teeth.
And for the first time, I hope he’s listening.
Because resurrection isn’t survival.
It’s war.
The glass fits my hand like it was made for me. Sharp. Honest. A sliver of myself carved from the wreckage.
I sit on the bed, spine straight, hair wild, blood dripping down my arm. I tilt my head, fix my gaze on the red blink in the corner, and smile. Not broken. Not begging. A smile sharp enough to cut.
And I wait.
The silence hums, thick and alive, until I hear it—the steady echo of boots in the corridor. My pulse quickens, not with fear but anticipation. He thinks he’s coming to inspect his property, to bask in the aftermath of his “lesson.”
The lock clicks. The door groans open. He steps in, shadow filling the room, black coat brushing the frame, hook gleaming faint in the dying firelight. His eyes find me instantly, sprawled across the bed like bait.
I don’t move.
I let him think he’s won.
He crosses the floor slow, deliberate, boots crunching glass, the sound like a verdict. His mouth curves, sharp and certain, like he already knows what he’ll take from me tonight.
And that’s when I move.
I lunge forward, fast, bloodied palm gripping the shard tight. My body collides with his, and I press the glass hard against his throat before he can raise his hook.
His breath catches. His body goes still.
For the first time since he locked me in this cage, I have him.
His pulse beats fast against the jagged edge, a thrumming rhythm under the blade. One slip, one push, and I could open him from throat to spine.
My face is inches from his, eyes burning, lips curved in a smile that tastes of blood and defiance.
“Not paper,” I whisper, my voice low and shaking, “not ink, not your fucking hook. This is mine. My choice. My blood. My blade.”
His smile doesn’t falter. It deepens. His eyes blaze with something feral—surprise, hunger, pride.
“Good girl,” he rasps, voice thick, steady even with death pressed to his throat. “Finally.”
I press harder, the edge biting, a thin line of red welling beneath it. His blood. His turn to bleed.
His eyes never leave mine.
Neither of us moves.
The silence hums electric between us, more dangerous than any scream.
For a moment, it’s real—power in my hands, his life balanced on a shard I pulled from the wreckage.
In that moment, I know the truth.
I don’t want to kill him.
I want to make him bleed and live.
I want him to feel what he made me.
Resurrection isn’t about escaping the monster.
It’s about becoming one.
The glass bites deeper, a bead of his blood sliding slow down his throat. I expect him to grab me, to slam me into the wall, to remind me who owns the cage.
But he doesn’t.
He steps back instead, slow, deliberate, hands loose at his sides, that maddening half-smile still carved across his face. His boots crunch through glass as he retreats toward the bed, never breaking eye contact.
My pulse thrums hot in my ears. I follow, every muscle shaking but steady, shard pressed firm to his throat.
He doesn’t resist. He lowers himself onto the mattress, sprawls across the ruin of papers and blood like a king taking his throne.
The firelight licks at his face, his chest, the gleam of the hook resting against the sheets.
“Go on then,” he murmurs, voice low, inviting, taunting. “Show me what you’ve learned.”
I climb after him, straddling his hips, my knees digging into the mattress, glass still poised at his neck. His cock twitches under me, arrogant even in surrender. I press harder with the shard, dragging it just enough to open a thin line, watching red bloom against his skin.
His breath hitches but he doesn’t move. His eyes lock on mine, dark, burning, daring.
The power hums through me, hot and dizzying. For the first time, he’s beneath me, body pinned by mine, blood at my mercy.
I lean down, lips grazing his ear, voice breaking into a whisper:
“Go on, little fairy.”
The words taste dangerous, foreign, electric. I spit them back at him, the name he branded me with, twisting it sharp, making it mine.
His laugh rumbles low in his chest, vibrating against my thighs where I pin him. “There she is.”
I dig the shard harder against his throat, drawing more blood, the scent of iron filling the air between us. He doesn’t flinch. He tips his head back, bares his neck to me, a king surrendering to his executioner.
And I realise—this is what he wanted all along.
Not obedience. Not submission.
A monster to match him.
My hips press down against his instinctively, rubbing against the hardness straining beneath his trousers, glass trembling in my hand as I grind into him.
His blood stains my fingers. My blood still streaks his chest. The papers crumple under us, every thrust of my hips grinding his proof into nothing.
I press the shard harder, watching him bleed for me, and smile.
“Your move, Hook.”
The shard shakes in my hand, pressed so deep into his throat now that another bead of blood trickles down, sliding into the hollow of his collarbone. He doesn’t fight me. He doesn’t lift the hook. He just lies there, body stretched beneath mine, eyes lit like he’s been starving for this moment.
His smile curves cruel and sure. His voice breaks low, ragged, guttural:
“Oh, little fairy… I’ve been fucking waiting a long time for you.”
The words crawl under my skin, set fire to my chest. My grip tightens, pressing the shard deeper until his breath hitches, until I feel the edge tremble against the thrum of his pulse.
And then I freeze.
Because his hand move.
Slow, steady, inevitable—he grips my waist, fingers digging hard into my hips, bruising me all over again. His strength is casual, terrifying, absolute. He drags me down against him, grinding my cunt over the thick line of his cock still straining beneath his trousers.
The shard bites deeper when my body jolts, my hand slipping. A brighter line of blood blooms across his throat, but he doesn’t care. He laughs—low, dark, hungry—his head tipped back like he’s offering himself to the blade and me both.
“Look at you,” he rasps, his grip bruising tighter, forcing me to ride him slow, filthy, through the ruin of glass and paper. “Threatening me with a sliver while your body begs for the blade I’ve had buried in you all along.”