My hands hover over her back, fingers twitching uselessly.
I don’t move. I don’t breathe. I don’t dare.
If I do, she might vanish, she might stop, I might never feel her like this again—
“Sai,” she sobs my name like her chest’s breaking open, and I’m no longer frozen. My arms wrap around her waist, desperate to keep her together. “I… I had no idea you... I could never have imagined… I’m so sorry, Sai. I’m so sorry that happened to you.”
The warmth of her tears sinks through my shirt.
Tears that are for me. For what I suffered.
For the boy who will always be trapped in that cage.
I hold her tighter, pulling her even closer, letting my nose bury into the crook of her neck as she cries for me.
I never want to let her go.
We stay like this for a long time, holding each other. The silence is only broken by the distant hum of machines and her quiet sounds, until they finally ease.
“What happened then, Sai?” she asks, still clinging to me. “With you and Julien?”
“I can’t put it into words, Red,” I murmur against her shoulder, wishing it was bare so I could feel even more.
“But, somehow, I knew I could trust him. It’s like something inside me recognised him, knew he was safe.” My fingers brush her spine. “We couldn’t even communicate because we didn’t share a language. I could barely speak Faeish,forgot how to speak at all, but our darknesses knew each other. They called to each other. That was enough.”
Her darkness curls around us.
“He took me away from that broken cage, that realm, and I never looked back.”
Her chin rests over my shoulder, her cheek brushing my ear. “I’m so glad Julien found you, that you felt safe enough to leave with him.”
“When I met you, Red. I felt the same thing.” She tenses. “I felt it with Julien, Ezekial and Kane. But with you… it was so intense. Immediate.” I chew my lip, trying to find the words I want to say—the ones I need her to hear. “I felt safe.Youfeel safe.” My fingers trail up and down her sides. “And it was so fucking selfish of me, to touch you when you didn’t know what we were, but I just—”
How the fuck do I say this? How do I explain?
Julien always said that sometimes simple is best.
“For the first time in forever, I felt whole because of you… I didn’t ache anymore.”
I feel her hands slip away from my hair, from me. I ready myself for her response, her possible rejection, my gut spasming in the tense quiet—
“Tell me she’s dead.”
What?
I loosen my hold so I can lean back to see her. She’s brushing away tears with her hands, but I reach up and hold her face between my palms, stopping her.
“Tell me she’s dead,” she repeats, voice steady, but with a carnal edge and deadly blaze in her eyes. “Tell me she’s already burning in hell. Tell me she suffered, or I’ll go find her, right now, Fae Realm or not.”
“Baby—”
“Is she dead, Sai?”
No more lies.
Slowly, I shake my head, and her darkness explodes, dragging us both into the Dark Realm.
She’s shaking, breathing too hard, too fast, and I know that if I don’t stop her, she’s going to push herself too far, she’ll get trapped in the dark.
