“That doesn’t mean your arms aren’t tired.”
He spins, eyes blazing now, and I see it. Not fury. Not menace. Hurt. Real and raw and completely unwelcome in his world.
“You think I’m just some wounded stray you can patch up with therapy and empathy?” he growls. “I’m not broken. I was made for this.”
“I don’t think you’re broken,” I say, voice steady, soft but never patronizing. “I think you were used like a weapon and told that made you one.”
He stares at me for a long moment, and I can tell he doesn’t know whether to shout or walk away. But he doesn’t do either. He just breathes.
“I was thirteen the first time they made me kill,” he says, so quietly I almost don’t hear it.
I don’t blink. I don’t move. I let the weight of it fill the room because anything less would insult the truth he just gave me.
“No boy should be asked to survive what you did,” I say. “And no man should be punished for the armor he built to do it.”
He exhales slowly and finally sits, the chair creaking under his weight.
His elbows go to his knees, hands clasped together, head low. “They all think I like it. That I need the blood. That I wake up craving the next body.”
“And do you?” I ask.
His jaw ticks. “Sometimes. But it’s not about wanting it. It’s about not knowing how to stop it.”
I nod, not because I agree with the violence, but because I understand the rhythm of trauma. The grooves it carves into bone and blood until it becomes a language all its own.
“Then maybe we don’t start by stopping it,” I say. “Maybe we start by understanding what wakes it.”
He looks up at me again. This time, the gold in his eyes is dimmer. Less threat, more question. More wondering whether I might actually be serious.
“You’re not what I expected,” he says finally.
“I get that a lot.”
He doesn’t smile, doesn’t scoff.
He just nods.
Like maybe I can stay.
5
RAFE
She thinks she understands me.
Sits across from me like a goddamn lighthouse in the middle of a war zone, talking in that steady, soft voice like the world hasn’t chewed her up yet. Her hands are still, her spine straight, her eyes too clear. And for some reason, she doesn’t flinch when I get close, doesn’t look for the nearest exit, doesn’t treat me like a rabid dog that might snap if she breathes wrong.
She doesn’t even smell afraid. Not the way most do.
I lean forward slowly, bracing my elbows on my knees, keeping my voice just low enough to keep the tension humming.
“You know what I do when I can’t sleep?” I ask her, eyes on her mouth just to watch if the corners twitch. “I walk through the city until I find the kind of people who want trouble. The ones who push first. The ones who think pain makes them interesting.”
Kaleigh doesn’t answer. Just watches me, not blinking.
“And when they mouth off or put their hands where they don’t belong,” I say, letting my voice slide into something slower, rougher, “I don’t hesitate. I don’t warn. I don’t stop.”
She finally moves. Just a tilt of her head, like she’s listening to something beneath my words.
