Her voice cracks a little, and she lifts her chin, though she still won’t meet my eyes.
“I know you didn’t want me to do it. To be the Maiden. But that snake mask lady? She said if I didn’t accept the role I’d volunteered for, she’d…”
My heart pounds like thunder in my chest. “She’d what?”
“Kill me and my friend.” She inhales a stuttered breath, her voice trembling with the memories. “Percy… They dragged him out on this pyre, and I said…I said I would do it. I’d participate. I tried to save him.”
Settling back on my heels, I scrub a hand down my face.Tried.
Despair storms across her features, anguish twisting them into tight spirals. She looks down at her hands, opening them slowly, her eyes so wide I think they could fall from the sockets.
“I didn’t…I didn’t want to do it, but I thought they’d let him go if I did. Then she stabbed him anyway.”
“Christ.”
She looks up, and I press my fingers gently to her mouth, swallowing hard when she flinches. “All I could think about was how it was my fault Percy was there in the first place. They knew my name. They threatened my friends. He tried to leave the basement the night we… He wasn’t supposed to get caught up in any of this.”
None of them were.
“But…I d-didn’t want to d-die,” she utters, so broken that listening feels like being stabbed with shards of glass. “I didn’t want to die, so I…I did it.”
My chin lifts. Discomfort wedges between my ribs. “Did what, baby?”
Tears fall freely, splattering across her stained fingers, sluicing through the cuts on her palms. She stares in horror, like she can’t recognize them, and a wet noise of absolute misery rips from her throat.
“I killed that man,” she sobs, trembling now. “I killed him.” There’s a long, pregnant pause. “Ikilledthem. I killed them. I killed them. I killed them.”
At no point do I think to ask her to clarify who exactly she means—her assailant, Percy, Bellamy. It’s likely she means all of them.
The sentence repeats on a loop, a record skipping on the one spot you hate most. I close my eyes, opening them at the exact second she crumples, falling to the floor with the weight of shock and exhaustion, still repeating those words over and over like a compulsion.
“I killed them. I killed them,” she cries, even as I wrap my body around hers, tucking her head into my chest to let my shirt soak up her tears.
We sit there for so long that I convince myself the words are coming directly from me. So long that she tires herself out, eventually falling asleep within the cocoon of my embrace.
Picking her up as gently as possible, I move us to the bedroom. As soon as I set her down on the mattress, her eyes spring open, panic striking those beautiful hazel irises. Her hands whip out, clutching my shirt and dragging me close.
“I’m here, Elle,” I say, pressing my lips to her forehead.
It takes a few more minutes for her to fall back asleep, and when she does, a part of me wishes Death’s Teeth would just end my goddamn life.
Agony colludes with anxiety in my chest, bearing down like a thousand-ton weight, threatening to crush all the organs inside.
This is my fault. I was so dumbfounded by that fucking journal that I didn’t think about how vulnerable I was leaving her by asking for space.
And what the hell kind of space did I need anyway? This girl could shoot me in the chest, and I’d forgive her over and over.
I look down at the bruises scattered across her face and chest, the cuts and abrasions on her knuckles, her cheeks, her jaw. Taking one fist in my hand, I bring it to my mouth, kissing each finger softly.
“I’m sorry.” Closing my eyes, I let the misery mix with pure rage, unable to keep either of them at bay. “I fucked up big-time.”
She stirs, her eyelids peeling open. “I fought back,” she whispers, a glassy look carrying her far away from me. “I won, right? It’s over… I’m… I did it. I’m yours forever now…”
My heart pinches.
“Yeah. You did so good, baby.”
The words taste like acid, even if there is a modicum of truth within them. I didn’t want her to get involved, but if she was going to, I can’t deny the sliver of satisfaction I feel knowing she held her own.
