Like Hellfire in Her Lungs. The air was still. Thick with tension. Thicker with unsaid truths. A shiver slid down her spine, not from cold, not from fear, but from the irony that wrapped around her like a noose. Because once again, she stood trapped in the storm. Once again, her wrists were pinned in his grip, her body trembling not from helplessness-but from something far more painful.

That same unbearable certainty she had felt, the one that whispered, you are not free. The one that laughed in her face every time she imagined the word escape. She was a bird who'd once dared to fly, and he-he was the one who had clipped her wings so beautifully.
But this time... this time, something inside her cracked. Splintered. Snapped like a brittle thread pulled too tight for too long. And in that split second, she didn't feel powerless anymore. She felt rage. Hot, blinding rage that drowned out the pounding of her heart and burned beneath her skin like wildfire. The kind of rage that didn't beg for mercy-it promised war.