The door was already open when she arrived.
Not halfway.
Wide.
An invitation.
Or a trap.
There was no servant to lead her in.
No voice to command.
No Damián waiting at the window with veiled threats and poetic cruelty.
Just a chair.
Placed dead center in a room made entirely of quiet.
No windows. No music. No mirror.
Just air thick with implication.
And a note, folded neatly on the seat.
She picked it up.
> "Today, there are no instructions.
> The room is yours.
> Your silence is your lesson."
She stared at the words for a long time.
Then sat.
---
Minutes passed.
Or maybe hours.
Time twisted in the stillness, coiling around her spine.
There were no guards. No chains.
She could leave.
The door was open. Always open.
But she didn't move.
Because she knew.
He was watching.
---
She couldn't hear him.
She couldn't see him.
But her skin burned under invisible eyes.
Not paranoid.
Certain.
He wanted to know what she would do without him.
If she would sit there, rigid with pride.
Or if she would pace.
Or kneel.
Or call his name.
---
She did none of it.
At first.
But then something inside her began to flicker.
Not submission.
Not weakness.
Need.
The need to be seen.
The need to be acknowledged.
The need to know that her stillness… meant something.
---
So she stood.
Walked to the center of the room.
And without saying a word—without instruction—she undid the clasp of her collar.
The softest click echoed like thunder in the silence.
She let it fall into her palm.
Not discarded.
Not rejected.
Held.
Like a question.
Like a threat.
---
"I am still yours," she whispered aloud, voice soft, daring. "But I choose when."
---
The door creaked.
She turned slowly.
He was there.
In the shadows.
Watching.
As she knew he had been the whole time.
He didn't speak.
Didn't move.
But his expression—
God.
It was hunger.
Ravaging. Silent. Proud.
Like a king watching his fiercest warrior finally bleed by choice.
And when she held the collar up toward him, offering it—not as surrender, but as a line she allowed him to cross—
He didn't take it.
He just said, voice deep, dark, and low:
"Put it back on."
---
And she did.
With shaking hands and burning skin, she refastened the collar around her own throat.
Eyes locked on his.
Not afraid.
Not broken.
Ready.
---