I’ve always known it really.
He has forever been a god in my eyes.
In my heart.
And I, nothing more than a lowly worshipper.
I am nothing.
Unworthy to be his Pair.
Billy lifts me from the tub, wraps me in the towel, staying quiet whilst he dries me, tears continuing to slip down my cheeks. He dresses me quietly, on his knees, threading underwear up my legs, followed by loose jogging bottoms, a Pair of his slouchy white socks. When he stands, an oversized sweatshirt rolled up in his hands, he places it over my head, lifting my arms one at a time to run them through the sleeves,the cuffs covering my healing hands, which miraculously don’t have any lasting damage to them, despite the savagery that was done to them.
And when he lays me back down in bed, pulling the sheets up to my chin, my hands folded like a prayer beneath my cheek, he kisses my temple, his lips barely a brush.
“You’re just a strong person looking for someone stronger. To keep you safe, protect you, let you rest without being left vulnerable. I am that for you, Little Lamb.Letme be that for you,” he whispers, his voice so un-Billy-like it grips me around the throat like a noose. “I’m sorry,” he swallows, still leaning over me, his nose in my hair, his lips to my ear. “I should have prepared you better. I should have explained things. I should have-” he sighs, this stuttering in his breath that only tightens that phantom rope around my neck. “I never should have come for you.”
Regret.
My throat feels like it’s swelling, growing tighter and tighter as I keep my eyes closed, trying not to react, to cry, to die.
But when he finally leaves once more, no more words spoken, the room too big, the fire too hot, but the room too cold, it’s what I think of.
Dying.
And I force myself up into sitting, lifting the gold heart-shaped locket that hangs heavily around my neck up into my fingers. I bring it closer to my face, analysing it. How the once carved filigree pattern is no more, having worn away over the thirteen long years I've had it. Never once taking it off, never once opening it. Our bloodied fingerprints trapped inside.
Hesitantly, I open it with trembling fingers, the old hinge protesting before giving way, a tiny metallic sigh that feels too close to my own.
Inside are the dried remnants of the promise we made to each other. But the moment my thumb touches it, the prints dissolving into dust that clings to my skin before falling soundlessly to the crinkled sheets beneath me. I watch as they disintegrate, helpless, and all I can think is how fitting it is, how the life I once imagined with Billy has frayed the same way, breaking apart under the weight of blood we spilled and vows we never should have made. I know he will never leave The Obsidian. I know I can’t, not without destroying him, not without dooming myself. And as the last of the blood disperses into nothing, I feel something inside of me collapse too, a quiet, hollow breaking that tells me the future I once saw with him has vanished like dust in my palm, leaving me staring into the dark with no path left to follow.
It makes me think of death again.
How that's what we promised each other, even all those years ago we knew that was the only thing we'd ever allow to separate us.
Death.
How maybe, all along, that’s all we were ever meant to do.
Chapter 25
BILLY
“She doesn’t respond.”
“Do something to snap her out of it.”
That’s Rune’s advice, full of such detailed explanation, his green-flecked brown eyes locked on mine from across the large round table.
My eyes roll of their own accord, the huff I’m desperate to exhale through my nose staying stuck in the back of my throat as Gore finishes reading the papers in front of him at the head of the table. Pricking his finger with the end of a fountain pen before signing his name in blood across the bottom. He looks up, his expression giving away nothing, but still, the blank look he gives Rune says so much more than words ever could.
“Are you still fucking?” Tolly asks, my eyes narrowing in a pinch as I slowly turn my attention towards him.
Head tilted, leaning far back in his chair across from me, he rocks it on the two back legs, his silver eyes on mine, brightened with curiosity, vape still in hand, he brings it up towards his lips, inhaling deeply.
“Yes,” I answer with a sniff, thinking of fucking Nellie a few days ago, how cold it was, mechanical, clinical.
I haven’t touched her since, unable to put myself through it again, witnessing the deep pit of emptiness in her eyes.
