Trauma, someone had once said.
That was before I chopped off their arm and fed it to them.
They deserved it.
“Ara.”
“Ara,” he repeats, and I nod, swallowing roughly. “It’s a beautiful name.”
My head shakes, my mind filled with white noise. Why would I remember that? Why now? “I don’t know why I remembered it. I don’t know if I even like it.”
His hand stills, and he cups my chin, forcing me to look at him. “You don’t have to. You can hate it.”
My lip quivers.
“You are whoever you want to be. No one name defines you.”
That chokes me up, and I feel confused. That name suddenly appeared before, a whisper in Anthony’s office. But then I heard it again while I slept. A memory, something so familiar. In that moment, I wasn’t hidden below the ground, crawling around, trying to carve my way outside. No. I was in a bright room. Sunlight. Fresh air. Laughter.
Ara.
My beautiful boy.
“What is it?” Georgiy asks. “What do you remember?”
“A woman, her voice…she said my name. Do you think I’m remembering my mom?”
“Did you never know her?”
“I don’t know where I came from.” I sniffle, and Georgiy’s hand moves to the front of my neck, holding onto me gently. “I thought I was born from the earth. Like an orc.”
“You’re much too pretty to be an orc.”
That makes me snort despite the sadness slithering through me. And at the sound, Georgiy’s lips twitch slightly.
“I am pretty nice-looking, I think. Despite the scars.”
His fingers tighten on my throat, and my breath catches. “The scars make you even better. You are perfect.”
I can’t breathe, and not just because he’s choking me.
Because of my heart. It thuds in my ears as my lungs constrict.
“I have something for you,” I finally say, knowing this is the right time.
The perfect time. For us.
“A gift?”
“Mhm.”
I scramble off the bed and move toward my clothes, pulling the carefully carved bone ring from my pocket. I’ve kept it on me, just in case I felt like he deserved it.
I think he deserves it now.
Georgiy watches as I approach, looking like the Grim Reaper sitting on the bed, his eyes pitch dark, his pale skin almost glittering in the early morning light, his black hair slightly mussed and hanging over his forehead.
“What?”
