Prologue – She Was Never Yours
> I once believed people couldn't be owned. Then I met her.
Now I know the truth: Some people were made to be possessed.
And some people were made to burn you alive while they let you believe it was love.
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The rain hadn't stopped for three days.
Not the soft kind of rain that whispers on windows — no, this was the kind that gnawed at the bones of the town, turning light into haze and sky into something metallic and heavy.
And she stood in the middle of it, head bare, eyes half-lidded, like it didn't touch her at all.
From the library window, Adrian Vale watched.
She had arrived three weeks ago with a forged name and a transfer letter no one dared to question. No parents. No files. Just a pale face and a crimson ribbon around her wrist she never took off. A ribbon he now stared at like it held some kind of code.
She didn't laugh with the others. She didn't speak unless she had to. She sat at the back of the classroom like she didn't exist — until she did. When the teacher called on her, she answered perfectly. When she wrote, it was in clean, straight lines. But when she looked at you — and she had, once, briefly — it was like being dissected.
He had everything. Wealth. Control. A school of pawns who smiled when he told them to, who feared the sharpness of his words and the cruelty behind his charm.
And yet.
She didn't flinch when he spoke. She didn't turn when he passed. She didn't care. And that made her… unacceptable.
He had spent seventeen years building a world where nothing slipped through his fingers.
And then she walked in.
Her name was Rhea.
But even that might've been a lie.
That night, when the storm was at its loudest, Adrian stepped outside. He didn't care that his shoes soaked in seconds or that the wind lashed at his coat. He just needed to see her again — to prove to himself that she bled like everyone else.
She was there, just outside the art hall. Standing under the streetlight like she'd been waiting for him. Raindrops clung to her lashes. Her hands were bare now — no gloves. Pale fingers. Scratches on her wrist.
"You're going to catch cold," he said, voice careful.
She didn't answer. Just looked at him for the first time in days. Looked through him.
"You've been following me."
His lips parted. He wasn't used to being caught.
She stepped closer, slow, deliberate. "You don't want to know who I am."
He smiled — because control was slipping, and that terrified and thrilled him.
"I don't care who you are," he whispered.
"I want you."
A faint curve touched her lips. Not quite a smile.
"You'll regret that."
He didn't.
Not that night.
Not the next.
Not even when the first body turned up.
Not even when the lies began to peel.
But he would.
Oh, he would.
Because Rhea was not someone you fell in love with.
She was someone you survived — if she let you.