I feel sick.
“Whispering what.”
He doesn’t want to say it.
I can see that.
But he does anyway.
“My name,” he admits. “And his.”
The floor tilts.
“H-his?”
Damien nods once.
Barely.
“You kept saying the moth boy was coming back,” he says. “They told me it was a delusion. That trauma had split your memory. That you were projecting.”
My vision blurs.
“And you believed them.”
“I wanted to,” he says.
That hurts more than anything else he could’ve said.
“So what did you do,” I ask again, quieter now, steadier, more dangerous.
“What did you do the night I stopped talking.”
Damien steps toward me.
I don’t step back.
“I went looking for him.”
The room goes dead silent.
“I thought if I found him,” Damien continues, voice low, raw, “and proved he wasn’t real… they’d stop drugging you. They’d let you out.”
My throat burns.
“And?”
“And I found something,” he says.
I don’t breathe.
“Not him,” Damien adds. “But proof someone had been there. Records that didn’t match. A name that didn’t belong on any list.”
My heart slams.
“What name.”
He hesitates.
