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The words blurred for a second before sharpening again.

He didn’t love gently.

He didn’t feel gently.

Everything about him was possession. Hunger. Obsession that didn’t soften with time—it sharpened instead. It carved and turned something beautiful into something that couldn’t survive without it.

I swallowed.

That’s not love.

But the book didn’t agree with me.

The more I read, the more it twisted the idea. Bent it. Made it something raw and unrelenting. Two people bound together so tightly that separation didn’t free them—it destroyed them.

Not hearts breaking.

Something deeper.

Identity.

I didn’t realise how fast I was turning the pages until my hand started to ache. Hours slipped. The light shifted across the floor, dragging gold into shadow, and still I didn’t move.

I couldn’t.

Because somewhere between the storm and the silence, between the cruelty and the need, I felt it⁠—

That pull.

That terrible, undeniable pull toward something that’d ruin you…

…and still be worth it.

My fingers stilled on the page. A slow, creeping awareness slid through me.

This wasn’t just a story.

It was a warning.

Or worse⁠—

A mirror.

My eyes lifted from the book before I could stop them, drawn—instinctively, stupidly—to the door.

To him.

My pulse thudded once. Hard.

Because for the first time since I’d entered this place…

I understood something I wasn’t supposed to.

Not about the book.

About him.

And I didn’t know it that gave me power⁠—