Sinners Anonymous

"Don't open the door, Ruhi," Bianca warned me. "You'll let the monsters in." I should have listened. God, I should have listened. But my humanity was louder than my fear. And when the knocking came, I answered. I didn't just open the door to a stranger.

I opened it to my own destruction. He didn't steal my heart. He stole my soul and the last piece of my sanity. And he wasn't the only one waiting in the dark.

Pain blurred into silence. Tears blurred into surrender. In the end, it wasn't about love. It wasn't even about survival. It was about who could take more from me and how much of myself I was willing to lose before I stopped fighting.

"You look beautiful when you bleed." He ran the blade down my hip. "Aarohi, my Ruhi. Isn't that what your name means? My beautiful soul. I will turn your soul so dark, you will forget what light feels like." He pressed it further, but I didn't hiss. I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of pain.

"How long will you hold on, Ruh? The prouder you are, the harder the fall will be." He grazed his teeth down to my hip bone, where the wound just opened, and he bit down hard so my hips bled more. That was what Acheron Delatore was. A soul sucking demon from the depths of hell and I was his lifeline.