They told her ambition was unbecoming,

a stigma stitched into her dress

by hands that never wore it.

The boardroom smiled politely, men in cufflinks of wealth and inheritance

polished into arrogance.

Who spoke of merit the way priests

speak of miracles:

a mystery that always arrived

in their own sons’ hands.

She watched promotions float upward

like helium balloons,

the strings cut when she rea...

The first time she met him, his laughter had been a balm. His words, smooth as wine, had melted her defenses. He knew exactly how to look at her, how to touch her hand at the right moment. A gentleman, she thought. At last, a man who wasn’t cruel.

But the charm had worn thin like cheap paint. Beneath the smile was something ravenous. She saw it in how his eyes lingered too long, not with love, b...

The chamber smelled faintly of polished wood and old arguments. The committee sat in a half-circle, eyes glassy from too many testimonies, too many hours pretending to listen. Cameras lined the walls. Their red lights blinked like indifferent stars.

Maya adjusted the microphone. It screeched, then settled into silence. She looked at the rows of suited officials, each one shuffling papers, checki...

He sets them down,

a dozen roses.

Red as warning lights.

The room?

It chokes on their perfume.

And everyone says:

How lucky you are.

How tender.

How generous.

What a man.

But overnight

the petals blacken.

Curl into bruises.

Edges dark as the marks

on my skin.

The stems drown in cloudy water.

And I know.

I know how beauty rots in silence,

how sweetness

smothers like a pillow

pressed to my fac...

Not divine,

not sky-born, not holy.

The raw, unshaken guardians

that keep us breathing.

The voice that breaks through static.

Whispering please stay,

when your own mind

turns against you.

The fury that rises in your chest

and refuses

to let cruelty be the final word.

The tenderness that slips, trembling,

a hand into yours,

wordless, but enough.

They are made of contradictions:

grief that scalds ...

Rain slicked the cobblestones like a polished mirror, and the city smelled of smoke, wet iron, and secrets. That’s when she walked into my office. Well, not an office exactly, more like a crooked attic I called headquarters. But it had a desk and a whiskey bottle, so it passed.

She was small, hood pulled low, cloak the colour of spilled blood.

“They say you find missing people,” she said. Her vo...

It isn’t the blaze of lightning

or the thunderous shout of heaven.

It’s quieter,

a lantern in the ribs

that flares when your eyes pause

and don’t skim,

but settle.

I thought I was all hidden corners,

a house with rooms

I had locked from myself,

yet somehow you move through them

without a key,

touching the furniture gently,

dusting off my long-forgotten names.

There is a terror to it.

Being seen ...

The night had a way of swallowing sound. Only the gentle hum of the wind remained, curling through the broken stones of the old garden wall. Elara sat there, her legs dangling, toes brushing cool moss. The air smelled faintly of lilac and something stranger, like rain that had fallen in another season.

Beside her, a black cat perched as still as carved obsidian, tail wrapped neatly around its paw...

The room smelled faintly of oil and ozone, the kind of scent that clung to the walls of the lab no matter how many ventilation cycles ran. Kiran stood frozen, hands still hovering over the console. The red warning light above the vault door pulsed like a heartbeat, casting the metal walls in alternating flashes of danger and shadow.

On the other side of that door, something shifted. A scrape, a m...

Her hands shook as she clutched his coat, knuckles white against the fabric.

“You’ve carved yourself into me,” she whispered, voice cracking. “Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t scrape you out.”

The carriage door slammed between them, but her gaze clung to him through the glass, as if sight alone could anchor him in her chest....