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“I brought you here to lock you up,” he said. “You’re meant to be here. With me. Forever.”

The silence pressed hard against my ears.

Then—

Laughter.

Sharp, familiar, from under the sheet across the room. My stepmother’s voice, cackling like this was all a joke she already knew the punchline to.

I had forgotten they were still there.

Stillwatching.

Stillbreathing.

I turned my face into the blanket to swallow the scream I didn’t want to give them.

“You belong to me, little stepsister,” he said, voice thicker now, like even he could hear how monstrous it sounded. “Only to me.”

Something inside me cracked.

Not from surprise. Not even betrayal.

From recognition.

Because I knew it was true.

And I hated it.

How could I be so stupid?

How could I look into those eyes and not see the iron bars hiding in them?

How could I want him, still, when I could taste the cage in every breath?

That’s what you get, Lenore. For falling for a beautifully wrapped nightmare.

Now you’re locked up, all alone, while the woman who hated you from the moment she saw you laughs behind your back.

And the worst part?

My body stillachedfor him.

Still pulsed with the memory of his hands, his breath, his darkness pressed so deep inside me it felt like it lived there now. My thighs were sticky. My lips are swollen. My heart cracked wide open and somehow still reaching for him like a fool.

He didn’t look back.

He just stood, turned, and walked away, like he hadn’t just destroyed me.

Like I wasn’t still trembling from the ghost of his touch. The door shut behind him locking me inside of my tomb.

I used to think I meant something to him.

The way his eyes sparkled for me, the way his fingers brushed my cheek like I might shatter, it felt like love. Like I belonged in his world. Like I was safe there.

But real love doesn’t do this to you.

It doesn’t leave bruises. It doesn’t lace hope into every harsh word and call it tenderness. It doesn’t turn silence into a weapon.