Tahlia
His words hang in the air like chains I can’t shake off. You’ll never leave me. Not alive. Not whole. Not even in death.
The cage is my grave. My temple. My home.
Forever.
I can still feel the press of the hook over my heart, the sting where he dragged steel across my skin. My body aches everywhere—cuts, bruises, the deep burn between my thighs—and yet none of it hurts as much as what he left me with.
Hope.
That single spark he dangled before snuffing it out with his vow. When you finally admit you love me, I’ll open the door.
I want to laugh. I want to spit in his face.
But my throat closes instead, my chest seizing, because the thought coils sharp inside me—what if that’s the only way out?
My wrists still ache from his grip. My skin burns where his mouth sealed the scars he carved. And my cunt throbs, traitorous, remembering how he broke me apart until I confessed what my body already knew.
I curl onto my side after he finally leaves, the sheets ruined with blood and spit and him. The walls feel closer, heavier, as if they’re leaning in to whisper the same thing he did: Forever.
I should hate him more. Hate should be enough to keep me sharp, to keep me alive, to keep me, me.
When I close my eyes, I see the cut on his throat from when I held the shard to him. I see the way his blood slid down, the way his lips curved when I pressed it deeper. And the fire that sparked in his eyes when I straddled him, when I fought him, when I nearly cut him open.
I thought I saw fear.
It wasn’t fear.
It was love.
And now I’m terrified—because some twisted part of me wants to see it again.
The room smells like iron and sweat, like the inside of a wound that never closes.
My blood is on the sheets, his seed inside me, my breath still ragged and uneven.
I drag the blanket up around me, but it doesn’t cover anything—not the cuts, not the bruises, not the heat low in my belly that makes me sick with shame.
I stare at the door.
The one he swore would only open when I said it.
Love.
My stomach knots. My throat burns. Because what if he’s right? What if he’s carved me down so far there’s nothing left to fight with? What if the only way out of here isn’t escape—it’s surrender?
My hands curl into fists. The glass in the sheets cuts my palms again, reopening wounds that never had time to close. Pain grounds me. Pain is the only thing I know is mine.
I press harder, blood slicking my fingers, letting it drip down my wrist, onto the pages scattered around me. His contracts. His proof. His cage written in ink and signed in blood.
I whisper, broken, trembling:
“I will never say it.”
The walls don’t answer. The camera’s red light blinks steady, watching. Always watching.
But the silence betrays me because even as I whisper, I feel it rising in my chest, traitorous, sharp as glass and hot as fire. The word he wants. The word I swore I’d never give.
I press my bleeding hand against my mouth, biting down until copper floods my tongue, choking it back and yet it hums louder, a heartbeat I can’t silence.
Love.
I squeeze my eyes shut, curl tighter into myself, and pray for hate to drown it. But hate feels thin now, fraying around the edges. Every cut he made sings. Every bruise burns. Every mark whispers the same vow he branded into me.
Not alive. Not whole. Not even in death.
Forever.
For the first time, I don’t know if that’s a promise or a prayer.
The silence is heavier than his hands ever were.
It presses against me, suffocates me, louder than his voice, louder than his thrusts, louder than the hook when it carved across my chest.
I try to curl tighter, to make myself smaller, to fold into a space where he can’t reach me. But the cage has no corners. The walls bleed into me. The sheets stink of him. Even the mirror reflects me as something I don’t recognise—bloodied, branded, marked.
My pulse won’t slow. It stutters, frantic, desperate, as if it knows there’s no safe rhythm left.
The word he wants hums louder.
Love.
It rattles against my ribs like a bird trying to escape.
I slam my bleeding hand against my chest, press it down hard over my heart as if I can crush it, as if I can bleed it out. My nails dig crescents into my skin, pain searing sharp, and for a breath I almost believe I’m winning.
Then his face floods the darkness behind my eyes—the curve of his mouth when I nearly cut his throat, the wild hunger when I ground down on him, the raw rasp of his voice when he said he’d loved me from the moment he wanted to kill me.
The fire flares again.
I hate him. I hate him.
My body betrays me even here, clenched and aching, slick and shivering, as if it’s starving for the monster I swore I’d never need.
I sob into the mattress, muffled, pathetic, shaking until my throat feels raw and my lungs scrape for air. The cage answers back with silence, with the blink of the camera’s red eye, with the endless echo of the vow he branded into my skin.
Forever.
The word swallows me whole. Hate collapses in on itself. Love twists sharp in the wreckage.
Somewhere between the two, I break again.
My body finally gives out. The sobs fade into shallow gasps, my limbs trembling, heavy, leaden. My eyes sting, blur, burn, until exhaustion claws me under.
Even as sleep drags me down, the silence doesn’t loosen.
It whispers the word he wants.
The word I’ll never say.
The word I’m terrified I already feel.
Love.