I caught the dagger before I even had the chance to think about it, my hand snapping up with the ease of soone plucking an apple from a branch.
One mont the blade was kissing the hollow of my throat, the next it was twisting neatly into my grip as though it had always been mine, its cold weight balanced perfectly against my palm.
My lips curled into a grin — not the kind that cos from joy, not even the dry humor I usually lean on when things get complicated, but sothing nastier, sharper, sothing that said, really, this is the ga you want to play?
I tilted my head at her, twirling the dagger once between my fingers before holding it casually at my side, as if the whole affair had been nothing more than a child wrestling a toy from an older sibling.
"Well then," I humd, letting the smugness drip thick off my tongue. "If you’re going to stab in the throat, at least put so muscle into it. Or better yet, aim for sowhere interesting — I’ve always wondered what it would feel like to be gutted from the left kidney." I leaned a little closer, grin widening as if I were sharing a secret. "Spoiler: you wouldn’t be the first to try, but you’d definitely be the first to look this adorable while failing miserably."
I expected her usual reaction — a laugh, maybe a teasing quip, perhaps a roll of her eyes at my mockery. Instead, sothing in her cracked.
It was subtle at first, a tremor running through her fingers, a hitch in her breath, but then her entire composure unraveled all at once, like a dress tugged loose at every seam. Her fiery eyes, once so mischievous and sharp, clouded over with sothing rawer, darker — not lust this ti, not playful hunger, but fear. Real fear.
Her body trembled with sothing akin to fragility, and before I could speak again I saw the sheen of tears spilling down her cheeks, carving pale streaks through the gri and sweat.
That was the first mont I realized I might not be in control of this scene after all.
The dagger in my hand suddenly felt a little heavier, as though the steel itself were asking what kind of bastard I truly was, grinning over the tears of a girl who had just tried to kill .
My smile faltered, but only just — I refused to give her, or the world, that satisfaction. Instead, I let my gaze sharpen and slide lower, studying her face, her posture, her trembling hands until my eyes caught sothing else, sothing wrong, sothing too perfect to be natural.
At the back of her neck, just visible where her hair had fallen away, were faint, circular indentations. Too precise. Too deliberate. Not the random bite of a wild animal, not the ssy mark of a scrape or scar, but the clean geotry of intent.
Well. That complicated things.
I let the silence stretch a beat too long, savoring the tension the way one might savor the bitter rind of a fruit just to prove they could. Then I tilted the dagger in my hand until the tip pressed lightly under her chin, forcing her to et my eyes.
"You’re shaking like a leaf in a storm. Care to tell why? Or should I connect the dots for you?" My voice sharpened, cold now, the humor stripped to reveal the steel beneath. "Those marks — they’re not decoration. Soone’s sunk their teeth into you, haven’t they? Soone’s got their claws deeper than you’d like to admit."
Her lips parted, sound stamring out of her in fragnts, like she had to fight each word past a barricade. "I... I didn’t... I didn’t want to..." Her throat bobbed, tears sliding faster now as she tried to breathe between words. "She—she’s using . I didn’t want to hurt you, I swear, I didn’t—" Her hands curled into fists, trembling with a mixture of sha and helpless fury. "I’m bound. I’m bound to her."
And there it was — the naless pronoun, the shadow hanging behind the curtain. Her. I wanted to push, gods I wanted to rip the na from her throat with questions sharp enough to cut. My tongue was ready, my suspicion sharpened to a razor’s edge. But then the marks along her neck pulsed.
It was grotesque, almost beautiful in its precision — a violent ripple that spread outward like ink bleeding through paper, black veins crawling from the bite-mark down the pale column of her throat, across her shoulders, down her arms.
Her breath hitched, her body convulsed, and the fear on her face twisted into sothing else entirely, sothing feral. Her ears flattened against her head, her eyes went bloodshot and wild, her nails elongated into claws that scraped sparks against the concrete as she hunched low like an animal preparing to pounce.
And then she lunged.
I barely had ti to twist aside, her claws whistling past my cheek close enough to sting. The factory rang with the scrape of tal under her nails as she tore gouges into the wall where my head had been.
I cursed, staggered back, heart hamring not just from the dodge but from the sheer unpredictability radiating off her now. This wasn’t Nara the teasing, Nara the irritatingly charming, Nara the rabbit girl with too much energy for her own good.
This was a creature unhinged, a puppet whose strings were being pulled by soone else, a beast wearing the skin of a girl I’d just barely begun to trust.
"Fantastic," I muttered under my breath as she ca at again, claws flashing in the dim light. "Can’t even flirt with soone without them trying to skin alive. My standards are either too low or far, far too high."
The next few minutes blurred into a brutal dance of motion and instinct. She moved fast — faster than she had any right to. Every lunge forced to weave, duck, roll across the cracked floor of the factory, my boots slipping in patches of oil and dust.
She flipped from wall to wall with animalistic grace, bounding from broken machinery to dangling chains, striking from angles I couldn’t predict. My wit — usually so sharp, so ready — frayed under the sheer onslaught, my arrogance thinning each ti her claws ca within an inch of peeling open like a fruit.
Still, I adapted. I always do.
I let her overcommit, ducking low when she dove high, twisting my body so her claws glanced off instead of finding purchase. I felt the sting of shallow cuts along my arms, the hot bite of torn fabric against my ribs, but I kept moving, kept smirking even when it faltered at the edges. If I stopped, even for a breath, she’d gut .
And then, in a surge of clarity, I rembered Salem’s gift — the coil of rope hanging uselessly at my belt, the so-called "consolation prize." My hand shot for it between dodges, fingers fumbling until the coarse weight of it fell into my grip. I let her lunge one final ti, sidestepping with a dancer’s spin, and whipped the rope around her arm as she passed. The montum was mine now.
I pulled, hard, the rope uncoiling like a serpent, snapping around her shoulders, her waist, her wrists. She screeched, half-human, half-animal, thrashing against the binds as I planted my boots and yanked her to the ground.
The impact rattled through us both, the floor groaning under her feral spasms, but I held on, muscles straining as I dragged her tight against the coil.
For one breathless second, it seed over.
And then the shadows moved.
They poured from the corners of the factory like smoke solidifying into form, dozens upon dozens of tiny, white bodies skittering forward with impossible speed.
The rabbits. Her kin. Their red eyes glead in the dark, their teeth bared in miniature snarls, and with a horrific synchronicity they converged on the rope, gnawing with savage precision. Fibers split, strands tore, the sound a rapid-fire buzz of destruction.
"Oh, for fuck’s sake," I hissed, bracing myself as they turned toward next, teeth dripping with shredded hemp, bodies trembling with hunger. "Death by rabbit swarm. Exactly the kind of legacy I was hoping for."
I squared myself, dagger raised, mind racing for so ridiculous plan that wouldn’t end with reduced to bones. But then the world above answered before I could.
The ceiling erupted.
A deafening crash split the air, beams, dust, and rusted chains collapsing in a rain of debris as sothing plumted from above. The floor shook under the impact, a shockwave rippling outward that sent both rabbits and rabbit-girl sprawling.
I staggered back, coughing against the haze, my vision swimming as I tried to parse the silhouette rising from the crater.
He was pale, unnervingly pale, his skin carved in lines of muscle that looked more sculpted than grown, like marble given breath.
The thing that caught my eye the most, however, was the fact that he was nude. Completely and utterly bare save for the gleaming silver helt that crowned his head, a crimson tassel swaying from it like a banner of war. The grotesque juxtaposition was paralyzing — majesty and indecency entwined, dread and absurdity clasped together like lovers.
And when his faceless gaze turned toward , I felt the kind of chill that had nothing to do with fear of death and everything to do with the suspicion that the world itself had decided to laugh at .
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