The words are a mirror. I don’t know who is saying them anymore. Is it her? Is it the boy in the basement?
I drag my thumb over the faint line of her scar like I can press the memory back into her, forcing the skin to remember what the mind chose to lose.
“You told me if I was quiet enough, he wouldn’t pick me.” My throat locks. My chest caves. The air in the room feels like ash. “You told me I’d be safe.”
The chapel burns behind my eyes. I see the orange glow, the flickering shadows on the saints’ faces. The ash. The smoke. The sound of him screaming—a high, thin sound that didn’t sound like worship at all.
Or maybe I was screaming.
Or maybe it was her, standing at the edge of the fire.
“You told me the quiet place would keep us safe.”
But I’m still there. I’m still in the fire. I’m still in the dark. I never left.
The quiet place isn’t a memory. It’s a lock. It’s me. It’s her. It’s both of us, pinned together by a chain that was forged long before I bought this one.
I press my lips to her throat.
“I kept you now.”
I bite down, hard, until she gasps, until she claws at my shoulders, until I know she’s here, tethered to the pain. Until I know she feels me.
“I’ll keep you this time.”
I don’t know if I’m keeping her safe. I don’t know if I’m the hero of this story or the monster under the bed. Or if I’m keeping her caged because I’m too weak to stand alone.
I don’t know if I’m protecting her from him. Or from me. Or from the world that let us both happen.
I don’t know if I saved her. Or if I never did.
But I know I won’t let her leave. Not this time. Not again.
I drag her closer until there’s nothing left but the sound of the chain and the weight of her breath. Until our bodies are a single, tangled knot of muscle and iron.
“You won’t forget me,” I whisper. “You promised.”
Her breath stutters in my lap, her ribs trembling under my hands like a bird with a broken wing. Her pulse is fluttering against my thumb, a frantic, wild thing—not sure if she wants to run or stay.
She’s not sure.
But I am.
She’ll stay. She’ll always stay. She’ll stay because I will make myself the only world she knows. She promised. Even if she forgot. Even if she forgets again.
I drag the chain tighter around my fist, winding her closer until the cold metal bites into her skin, until I can feel the tremble in her legs, until I can feel the weight of her tears even though she hasn’t let them fall yet. I can feel them building behind her eyes like a flood.
“You don’t remember,” I whisper, my voice low, steady, but shaking inside—a hollow reed in a storm.
She shakes her head.
She always does. It’s her only defence.
“You always forget me.”
I press my lips to the scar on her ribs, softer this time, a lingering, aching touch, like I’m apologising for something I’m not sorry for. I’m apologising for the cage, but I’m not sorry for the capture.
“But I don’t forget you.”
