(223 words.)
She didn't feature much in her own dark dreams at first, just a distant figure watching from a rooftop or at the narrow mouth of an alleyway, leaning in eagerly as the blade plunged in and slid back out wet and red. The body fell and the blood pooled, and Billie's heartbeat quickened to see it all.
Not from fear. There had never been fear when she watched him kill.
In time, the details shifted. Daud's eyes caught her own in the moment of death, held them as Billie drew closer and the body cooled on the ground between their feet. Sometimes her hand joined his on the hilt, and they drove the blade forward as one. She felt his heart against her back, racing with her own.
When last she dreamed it, the weapon was in her hands alone, the blade shoved through Daud's chest as deep as she could make it go. His eyes blazed as he reached out to touch her face, streaking warm blood across her cheeks with a final, gentle caress. She could feel the last beats of his heart trembling along the metal to her fingertips.
Billie woke with a sharp breath, hands clenched tight around the sheets. Guilt gnawed vaguely at the back of her mind, but something more pressing had settled white-hot between her legs.