​The message arrived just after sunset, five words, nothing more. I hadn’t gone home to James—if he was even there. I was still in that damn room where I had unlocked a part of myself I didn’t know existed.

​Come to me. Room 609. Dark Rose.

​No name. No punctuation. Only the chill that always seemed to follow Darius’s words, as though the air itself bowed to his will.

​I sat for several minutes staring at the text, the room around me fading to a blur. The silence felt like a dare. I should have deleted it, blocked the number, ended this descent before it swallowed me whole. But my...