The First Cut
1097 Words
---
There was something ancient about silence when it lingered too long—something that clung to skin like humidity before a storm. Lilith sat in the center of it, in the velvet hush of the east wing library, surrounded by stacks of unmarked volumes and secrets she didn’t ask to understand.
The contract had started as a deal. Paper and ink. A transaction sealed with precision and cruelty.
But now, something had shifted.
She could feel it in the way Ronan looked at her—calculated, unreadable, like a chess player realizing the queen had moved of her own volition. And she could see it in Alec’s unraveling smiles—how they curled now, brittle and bitter, as if held together by the remains of his pride.
Lilith was tired of being chosen. So, for once, she would choose.
Even if what she chose hurt all three of them.
---
She arrived at class late that day.
On purpose.
Literature was already underway when she pushed open the oak doors. The teacher barely glanced at her. No one spoke.
But all eyes followed her—across the room, past the window’s golden light, to the empty seat beside Ronan Vale.
She sat down silently. Pulled out her worn leather notebook. Opened it, wrote a single word:
Cut.
She tore the page out, folded it, and passed it to him without a glance.
Ronan unfolded the note carefully. His eyes scanned the word, then lingered on the edge of the page where she'd smeared a drop of red ink. He turned his head just slightly toward her.
"You’re provoking him," he whispered, low enough only she could hear.
Lilith didn’t look up. “Am I provoking him, or you?”
She didn't wait for an answer. She turned the page.
Ronan smiled—but it was a smile laced with something dangerous. Not joy. Not humor.
Possession.
---
That afternoon, Alec watched from the courtyard as she walked beside Ronan. No smiles. No contact. Just proximity that screamed.
Ronan held her bag.
Lilith let him.
Alec’s knuckles went white around the stem of the cigarette he wasn’t smoking.
That night, he left something in her locker: a single red rose, crushed, tied with a note.
> “I told you once, you were real.
Now you're a mask that even he doesn’t believe.”
Lilith crumpled it without reading it a second time. But her hands trembled when she did.
---
They met in the observatory after curfew.
It had become a ritual now—unspoken, unbroken. Every Thursday. Midnight. No words necessary.
Ronan was already there, sitting at the edge of the planetarium dome with a flask in one hand and a manila folder in the other. When she entered, he didn’t greet her.
Instead, he held up the folder.
“Your father,” he said calmly, “had another bankruptcy notice filed against him. Third this year.”
She froze.
Her voice came out in a whisper. “How did you—”
“I make it my business to know everything about what I own.”
Silence.
Lilith walked to the window, pressed her palm to the cold glass. Her reflection stared back, thinner than she remembered.
“Do you?” she asked. “Own me?”
Ronan didn’t move.
“I don’t need to,” he said. “Because you’ve already started choosing me.”
She turned. “I kissed him last week. Did you know that?”
Ronan’s expression didn’t change. But something behind his eyes did.
“You wanted to see if it still felt like control,” he said.
She blinked.
“And did it?”
“No.” Her voice cracked. “It felt like weakness.”
---
The next morning, Alec found her waiting by the stairs of the fencing hall. Her arms crossed. Eyes hard.
“You followed me last night,” she said.
Alec didn’t deny it.
“You’re playing a game that’ll break you before it breaks us, Lilith.”
She stepped closer. Her voice was quiet. Calculated.
“I’m not playing a game. I’m changing the rules.”
Alec grabbed her wrist. Not hard. Not gentle either. “You think he cares about you? Ronan Vale collects damage. He hoards it. You’re just the newest artifact on his shelf.”
She didn’t flinch.
Instead, she leaned in, brushed her lips against his cheek, and whispered, “Then maybe I’ll let him put me behind glass—so you can’t touch me again.”
And she walked away.
Alec stared after her, heart pounding. He didn’t realize his nails had dug so deep into his palm they’d drawn blood.
---
In the dead of night, Lilith’s dorm door creaked open. She rose from her bed slowly, expecting Ronan.
It wasn’t.
It was Alec.
Drunk. Eyes bloodshot. Tie loosened. His voice, slurred silk.
“I made you,” he said.
“No,” she replied. “You noticed me. That’s not the same thing.”
“You were soft. Beautiful. Before him.”
Lilith looked at him. Really looked.
“No,” she said again. “I was invisible before him. You loved what you imagined I was. Ronan saw what I could become.”
Alec laughed. “What, his little monster?”
She didn’t answer.
He took a step forward. She stepped back.
“I miss you,” he said.
“I don’t care,” she said.
He tried to touch her cheek. She slapped his hand away.
He stared at her. For a moment, she thought he might cry. For a moment, she wanted him to.
But he turned, stumbled out the door.
She didn’t sleep again that night.
---
Ronan didn’t ask about the bruise on her wrist.
But he did hold her hand differently the next day. Firmer. Protective. Possessive.
He walked her to class without speaking, but when they reached the door, he paused.
“Say the word,” he said, “and I’ll bury him.”
She looked up at him. “Not yet.”
“But you want to,” he said, eyes glinting.
She didn’t deny it.
---
Later that week, Alec’s locker was broken into. His phone stolen. His private messages leaked to the student server.
Conversations. Photos. Secrets.
All posted. All traceable to a dummy account.
Alec’s social persona shattered overnight.
He didn’t come to school the next day.
But Lilith did.
And when she passed Ronan in the hallway, she slipped something into his pocket.
A single piece of paper.
> “One down.”
- Writer
