A DOOR OPENED

Through the walls, I could hear the crowd—muffled roars, the occasional crash of bodies, the hiss of a mic too close to a speaker. CU:LT always pulsed like that. Even when you were alone, the noise found you.

I was already dressed when the message came through.

A quiet buzz in the low light. I had muted everything else—team comms, alerts, location sync. But I forgot about her. Was it a simple mistake? Or was there some part of me that refused to quiet her.

Halsey.

Even now, the name aches.

Not sharply—just enough to remind me of what I once had.

I barely knew her when we first spoke. It started as a stray collision—something small, something digital. A moment on social media that should’ve meant nothing. But one private conversation became a faultline. It reshaped me from the woman I thought I was into the one I had to become.

And I nearly ruined it from the start.

Tarot readings were the topic, so I sent her one privately. The woman I was then was still too sharp to touch without being cut. The reading I gave her was honest. Honest enough to hurt.

Here I thought you were gonna do something cute like the lovers. No, that was Just surprisingly accurate.

Panic flooded my brain, clouding every thought. I didn’t understand what I had done wrong. I was too inexperienced in the language of love. Trauma had forged me into a spear—sharp, direct, but useless for softness. I had never been on a proper date. I had never kissed anyone outside of meaningless sex.

I racked my brain for something else to send.

Something sweeter.

Kinder.

Normal.

if i had to deal your cards…
you would be four queens at once.

♠ queen of spades: clever. sharper than you let them see.
danger wrapped in a pretty tilt of head.

♥ queen of hearts: heart too soft to kill.
strong enough to bleed for what you love anyway.

♣ queen of clubs: wild pulse.
voice that could spark fire just by daring someone to get closer.

♦ queen of diamonds: shine impossible to steal.
no one ever really holds it—just hopes to be near enough when it burns.

you are not one card.
you are full hand.
and i would not fold.

I waited.

Breath bated.

Hoping.

Aawww, see that is adorable and flirty.

The bench outside the locker room welcomed me. The backstage hallway buzzed with activity, but to me, it was empty. In that moment, there were only two people in the world—me and her. Separated by distance, connected by more than signal.

The conversation continued.

I typed faster than I should have.

I didn’t care.

I could feel her anxiety between the lines—skittish, retreating. Her hesitance wasn’t because of me, despite the blunt, fumbling way I spoke back then. It was her own life. The weight she carried. The way the world had taught her to question whether anything soft could survive.

I could feel the weight she carried.

She thought she was broken.

She believed herself a burden.

Not to me.

As we spoke, she opened up more. Our words shifted—toward wants, toward possibilities. She wanted to meet properly, but she didn’t lie. Her life was complicated. There were no promises she could make, no timetables she could offer.

Then I heard it—a whisper. Not in my ear, but deeper. In that dark corner of the mind where only one voice speaks.

And it told me: It is time.

I typed my final message quickly.

you beautiful thing
worth waiting for.

i am not going anywhere.
unless you ask.

And I prayed she never would.

I smiled. Just a little.

And in that moment—before the violence, before Donnie Harris opened his mouth to scream or pray—

I felt warm.

I remember thinking: this is not good.

Because softness is the first thing to rot.

I will not lie about her.

Halsey made my role nearly impossible.

She was a sliver of heat in the architecture of my coldness. Unnecessary. Dangerous. Beautiful. As controllable as wildfire.

But Vorazd is skilled at finding use in people.

And It saw the use in her.

Where I saw weakness in my feelings, It saw leverage.

Where I felt fear, It sensed potential.

It did not forbid me from loving her.

It allowed it.

I was permitted to be weak around her.

I was permitted to be Emilia.

There was something about Halsey—old, radiant, buried deep. I did not yet know what. Only that Vorazd took interest. And Vorazd did not take interest lightly.

And so I cherished her in the only way I knew how:

By holding her name in the cage of my ribs like a holy breath.

But by refusing to let the world define what we were.

By loving her in the quiet places where even gods dare not reach.

She made me dangerous in ways even I didn’t understand.

That night, I would open the gate for Donnie Harris.

But I had already opened a door for her.

Only one of them was meant to enjoy what came next.

I rose from the bench.

From both ends, they emerged—Unity’s newest class, soft pink and silent. Their faces were slack, eyes swirling with black spiral. They did not speak. They did not blink. They did not need to. They were not there to reason. They were there to close the gate behind me.

Ahead, I heard the locker door unlatch.

Donnie Harris stepped out, duffel bag slung over one shoulder, favoring the leg Angel had focused on during their match, a match he was lucky to escape with a win. He wore a black t-shirt and loose court shorts, the uniform of a man ready to collapse into bed and forget everything he’d seen.

He didn’t see me yet.

But he felt it. That pull in the gut. That flicker in the spine when you realize you are not alone.

He turned.

“What the hell do you want?” he asked.

I did not answer at first.

The overhead fluorescents flickered above me, half-dying. My silhouette split against the hum, shadow warping across the wall like something trying to step out of me.

“To finish job,” I said.

He saw the bottle then.

Teardrop-shaped. Black. Catching the little light that remained.

His breath stuttered. Not from recognition—he didn’t understand what he was looking at. But the dread was already blooming. His body recognized the danger his mind could not.

Two of my men stepped forward behind me.

“Yeah, I’m not playing your trippy games again, sweetheart,” he said. “I’d rather not have to see my dead fiancée again, thank you very much.”

He turned.

Straight into two more.

The men blocked the hallway with folded arms. Their faces were blank. Perfect. Made to be obeyed.

“Alright,” he said, shifting his weight. “We dance, then.”

He lunged forward. A strike to the knee, clean. Another body moved to grab him—he drove his head into the bridge of that one’s nose. Clever. He slipped between them. Almost free.

But the door opened behind him.

Two more stepped out. Hands like vines.

“Dammit!” he snapped.

He fought.

They always did.

But I had already measured the outcome.

More arms found him. Hands at his shoulders, his waist, his knees. The rubber of his sneakers shrieked as they dragged him across the floor. I followed.

He was slammed to the tile hard enough to knock the air from his lungs.

Hands pinned him. Ankles. Wrists. Sternum. Skull.

I stepped forward. Over his chest. Then down—straddling his torso with the precision of someone mounting a ritual, not a man.

His eyes were wide. Mine were wider.

I leaned forward.

“Okay, yup, now I know. Okay, this isn’t cool! Bitch, stop poking me!”

He was trying to make a joke.

A penis joke, no less.

I didn’t laugh. I didn’t even blink.

Humor is what men reach for when fear catches up with them.

And he was already caught. He just didn’t know it yet.

My mouth opened.

It wasn’t red inside.

It was black.

Dripping.

“If you weren’t so creepy, you’d be so hot,” he choked. “But nope, you’re like one of Lady Dimitrescu’s daughters instead! I’m not joining your—fucking DAMMIT!”

He bucked beneath me. I didn’t move. I had no need to. The leverage belonged to me now. His strength was performance. My stillness, terminal.

Eyes shut or not, it didn’t matter.

I didn’t need him to see. I only needed him to receive.

I opened wider.

My jaw cracked. Unnatural. Serpentine.

And then I poured it into him.

Consecration.

Black. Caustic. Alive.

He screamed as it hit—face, eyes, mouth, throat. He tried to twist free. Tried to exhale it out of his nose like venom. But it clung. It burned. It nested.

I stood in a single motion. My skirt fell like a curtain around my knees.

Team Unity released him.

He gasped. Twitching. Vision breaking apart in color. The first kaleidoscope seizure always came fast.

I looked down at him one final time.

“The only thing I would poke you with is stiletto,” I said. “Straight into your heart.”

And then I walked away.

He shouted behind me. Cursed. Promised vengeance.

I didn’t turn.

But I heard the moment it began.

The hallucination.

His voice.

The pounding fists on the inside of a door no one else saw.

Donnie Harris was not lost.

He had been opened.