Glass Teeth
1001 Words
---
There were places in St. Edevane that even the elite pretended not to know. The tunnels beneath the abandoned wing. The black staircase in the North Tower. And the sub-basement—a space with no listed key, no camera coverage, and no administrative records.
That’s where Alec went the morning after the leak.
He stood alone beneath the flickering pipe-light, staring at the cracked mirror. His reflection trembled with him. Not from fear. From rage.
The messages were everywhere now. Screenshots of flirtations with married teachers, voice notes drunk with mockery, even the infamous photo from sophomore year—the one with his lips on another boy’s neck during a bet.
The whispers were surgical. The laughter cold.
And above all else, he saw her.
Lilith. Calm. Untouched. Ronan’s shadow now.
She’d humiliated him. Robbed him of face.
And in a place like St. Edevane, face was worth more than blood.
So Alec decided to give them both.
---
Lilith felt the eyes long before the note arrived.
Girls who used to envy her now looked through her. Boys who once joked with her left rooms when she entered. The silence was coordinated—engineered like a silent protest.
Only Ronan’s presence kept them from hissing.
But the note still made it to her locker. A black envelope with a single typed line:
> YOU’VE BEEN SHARP. BUT I’M THE ONE WITH TEETH.
She crumpled it. But her heart thudded.
Because the note didn’t smell like ink.
It smelled like Alec.
---
That night, she went to Ronan’s room unannounced.
He opened the door shirtless, a bandage wrapped around his ribs. Her eyes narrowed.
“What happened?”
“Someone sent a message,” he said evenly. “They used a blade.”
Her pulse quickened. “Alec?”
“Not his hand,” Ronan said, stepping aside to let her in. “But I’ve taught enough people how to deliver a message for him to imitate it well.”
She walked into the center of the room, every surface ordered, polished, suffocatingly clean. It made the violence of the wound feel obscene.
“He’s escalating,” she said.
Ronan poured a glass of water, handed it to her.
“So escalate with him.”
She turned to him slowly. “What do you want me to do?”
“Use what he gave you. Your voice.”
“You mean my words?”
“I mean your truth.”
---
The next day, she stood at the center of the courtyard with a microphone in hand.
It was open-mic Friday—normally reserved for jokes and sappy poetry.
Not today.
Lilith read from a page that shook in her hands. But not from fear.
From restraint.
> "There once was a prince with glass teeth.
Beautiful. Fragile. Deadly when kissed.
He told me I was a reflection—
But when I shattered, he bled."
The courtyard went silent.
Ronan watched from the second-floor balcony, expression unreadable.
Alec watched from the crowd—smiling.
When the poem ended, no one clapped.
But someone whispered:
> “He’s going to kill her.”
---
She found Alec waiting by the track field that night.
He was leaning against the bleachers, hood up, bottle in hand.
“You think words hurt me?” he said as she approached.
“I don’t care if they do.”
“I used to touch you,” he said. “You liked it.”
“No,” she replied. “I survived it.”
That made him laugh. Bitter. Beautiful.
“You think Ronan’s safer? He’s a guillotine with a personality disorder.”
“At least he’s honest about it.”
Alec’s face changed.
And then—so fast she didn’t see it coming—he stepped forward and shoved her.
Not hard enough to injure. Just enough to scare.
She stumbled back.
He towered over her, bottle still in one hand.
"You want me to be the villain?" he hissed. "Fine. But don’t you dare pretend you're the victim. You climbed into this mess with your eyes wide open."
She held her ground.
“I stopped being the victim when I realized you were weaker than me.”
Alec flinched—like she’d slapped him.
Then he turned and walked into the dark, bottle swinging by his side like a weapon he hadn’t yet chosen to use.
---
Ronan was waiting for her outside the girls’ dorm.
“You saw him,” he said.
“I needed to,” she replied.
His eyes searched her face. “What did he do?”
“He tried to scare me.”
“Did it work?”
“No,” she said.
But she was lying.
Not because she was afraid of Alec.
Because a part of her had wanted him to strike.
And that part scared her more than he ever could.
---
That night, she sat in her bed with her journal open, pen hovering above the paper.
She didn’t write a poem.
She wrote a name.
Alec Sterling.
And beneath it, a list:
Temper
Control issues
Obsession with image
Abandonment complex
Insecurity masked as dominance
Fear of irrelevance
She paused.
Then underlined “abandonment complex” three times.
Then wrote:
> I can use this.
She didn’t know if that voice was hers.
But it felt good.
---
Ronan read the poem transcript again. Alone. Staring at the printout with a glass of wine and a slow grin.
Lilith was learning.
Not just how to wound—but how to calculate.
And soon, he would show her what it meant to do both at once.
He opened his desk drawer and pulled out a sealed envelope. It was blank, except for one symbol on the front:
A red glass rose.
Inside?
A printed screenshot of Alec’s father’s latest scandal—embezzlement, undisclosed to the public.
Ronan had been saving it.
But now?
He would give it to Lilith.
And see what she did with power.
- Writer
