The Confession
My small apartment feels suddenly, suffocatingly tight as the weight of Shadow’s confession presses down on me.
"Imprisoned?" It comes out a whisper.
Something inside me twists so hard it feels like my ribs are trying to crush my heart.
The word hangs heavily in the air between us.
Tendrils of darkness wrap around me, their comforting presence doing little to ease the weight of his admission. A lump rises in my throat as I try to process what he just said.
"Because of what I did for you," he supplies.
Because of that night.
A shudder rolls through me. My hands tremble, my heart stumbles, and my knees threaten to buckle. Shadow is the only thing keeping me upright.
"It is against the law of my land to do what I did. And I paid the price for it."
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. There are prisons where he’s from?
He didn’t abandon me?
He was kept from me?
"And I’d gladly pay it again, but when I felt you—" His monstrous voice turns strained. "When you brought that human here to do things to you?—"
I flinch like he slapped me. Not because of his anger, but because I made him imagine it.
Anger rises in his tone and his eyes. "I couldn’t stay where I was. I had to get to you. I thought you were in danger. I thought... "
Shadow thought exactly what I wanted him to—and it worked. He felt me, and he came. But I didn’t know where he’d been.
"I broke free. And since then, I’ve been hunted."
There’s something terrifying in that simple sentence. Not just the threat chasing him, but the fact that he ran toward me anyway.
I read his darkness like a book. Fear. Trepidation.
My mind reels at the idea that something could be stronger than Shadow.
"No." It seems to be the only word I can manage. I find his shoulders and hang on to the thick, solid muscle there. When my thoughts settle enough to surface, I push him away. "Then you shouldn’t have done it."
My voice comes out crueler than I mean it to, because the thought of him hurting for me shreds something soft inside.
Tears sting my eyes. "You should have let him?—"
"No," Shadow roars, filling the room as he grows even bigger.
Elijah curses and pounds against the thin apartment wall, breaking the silence that follows.
"If I knew it would take you away from me, I would’ve stopped you," I say in a ragged whisper. I touch my cheeks and find them wet with tears I hadn’t noticed falling.
The agony radiating from him has a heat to it as he draws near. "I’d suffer the torture of the Pit for a thousand years if it meant keeping you safe."
He saidPitlike it was a place. A proper noun. A prison carved from nightmares.
The ache in my chest builds and builds until I’m not sure I can stand it.
