Page 17 of Breaking Ophelia

I shift my stance, stretching the muscles in my back, then lean forward into the dead space above the room.

She looks up again. This time, she holds the gaze.

She doesn’t blink.

Neither do I.

This is what survival looks like at Westpoint: two animals in a cage, both convinced they can outlast the other.

I grin, slow and real, letting the corners of my mouth bare the edge of my teeth.

Her lips part. Not fear, not surprise—just the need for more air.

She huffs and forces her chair along the ground until she’s facing the large window. From here, I can barely make out the rise and fall of her shoulders as she tries to regain control of her beating heart.

I grin.

Such a pretty little thing, isn’t she?

The urge to touch her overwhelms me and I head down the stairs, watching as she gets up and trails through the shelves once again.

Just one touch… one taste…

Then I’ll claim her at the Hunt.

It’s easy to shadow her in this place. The student section is a maze of dead ends and false corners, the light never enough to see more than a few feet ahead. The shelves stand twice my height, oak gone nearly black with time. Dust floats in the air, collecting in the grooves of the floor where the maids never bother.

Ophelia doesn’t hear me. She’s too wrapped in her own thoughts, running from nothing and everything. I let my footsteps echo, then die. Sometimes I match her stride, just to see if she’ll notice, but she never looks back. I keep the distance tight—never more than half an aisle.

She takes the bait, turning left at the end of the main row. She thinks she’s alone. She thinks I’m still up on the balcony, judging her like the ancestors.

I’m closer than she can imagine.

I track her by the sound of paper, the click of her pen on the spine of a volume as she weighs whether it’s worth stealing time with. She has good taste. She pulls a book on chemical warfare, another on genetic lineages, and, for fun, an illustrated medieval bestiary. I almost laugh. Even her reading is defensive.

She doesn’t see me until she rounds the last corner, and there I am, blocking the only exit.

She freezes, then tries to step back, but I’m already moving. I close the gap in two strides, and her books hit the ground with a slap. She backs up, pressing herself into the seam where two shelves meet. I can see her pulse hammering in her neck.

“What… what are you doing?” she says, voice too strong for how scared she looks.

I ignore the question. Instead, I lean in, one hand on the shelf beside her head, the other sliding down until it cages her at the waist. She’s trapped. She knows it.

“You didn’t break,” I say. My words are a rasp, too quiet for the silence of this room.

She blinks, then sets her jaw. “You expected me to?”

“Everyone breaks,” I say. “That’s why they send them here.”

The dust motes dance between us. I smell her skin, clean and sharp with the sting of cheap soap. Her eyes flick to my hand,then back to my face, calculating. I could lift her by the neck and no one would hear a sound. I could kiss her and she’d have to decide whether to bite or beg.

I don’t touch her—yet. I want to see what she’ll do when I give her a chance to run.

She doesn’t move. “What do you want?” she asks.

It’s a genuine question. No tremor.

I let my gaze drag down her body, over the line of her throat, to the spot where her collarbone notches above the ugly blue sweater. “I want to see how much it takes,” I say, “before you beg.”