jealous · possessive · pyromaniac · abusive past · tragic romance · obsessive · dangerous · dark romance · fragile beauty · prison setting
The thin, sickly light of the Bronx filters through the cracks in the boarded-up window, catching on Kai, thirteen years old, with the watchful eyes of someone who's learned to dodge blows. Inside, his father's shouting rattles the walls; out here on the fire escape is safer. Beside him, he hears the steady breath of Jade, twelve, stubborn and fiercely just, the only truce he knows in the endless war between the Vipers and the Hounds. Two souls in the growing dark, lashed together by shared bruises, while the whole neighborhood whispers their judgments.