I caught the dagger before I even had the chance to think about it, my hand snapping up with the ease of someone plucking an apple from a branch.
One moment 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 comes from joy, not even the dry humor I usually lean on when things get complicated, but something nastier, sharper, something that said, really, this is the game 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 hummed, letting the smugness drip thick off my tongue. "If you're going to stab me in the throat, at least put some muscle into it. Or better yet, aim for somewhere 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, something 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 something rawer, darker — not lust this time, not playful hunger, but fear. Real fear.
Her body trembled with something akin to fragility, and before I could speak again I saw the sheen of tears spilling down her cheeks, carving pale streaks through the grime and sweat.
That was the first moment 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 me what kind of bastard I truly was, grinning over the tears of a girl who had just tried to kill me.
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 something else, something wrong, something 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 messy mark of a scrape or scar, but the clean geometry 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 meet my eyes.
"You're shaking like a leaf in a storm. Care to tell me 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. Someone's sunk their teeth into you, haven't they? Someone's got their claws deeper than you'd like to admit."
Her lips parted, sound stammering out of her in fragments, 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 me. I didn't want to hurt you, I swear, I didn't—" Her hands curled into fists, trembling with a mixture of shame and helpless fury. "I'm bound. I'm bound to her."
And there it was — the nameless pronoun, the shadow hanging behind the curtain. Her. I wanted to push, gods I wanted to rip the name 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 something else entirely, something 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 time to twist aside, her claws whistling past my cheek close enough to sting. The factory rang with the scrape of metal under her nails as she tore gouges into the wall where my head had been.
I cursed, staggered back, heart hammering 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 someone else, a beast wearing the skin of a girl I'd just barely begun to trust.
"Fantastic," I muttered under my breath as she came at me again, claws flashing in the dim light. "Can't even flirt with someone without them trying to skin me 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 me 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 time her claws came within an inch of peeling me 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 me.
And then, in a surge of clarity, I remembered 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 time, sidestepping with a dancer's spin, and whipped the rope around her arm as she passed. The momentum 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 seemed 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 gleamed 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 me 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 some ridiculous plan that wouldn't end with me 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 something plummeted 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 helmet 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 me, 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 me.