My voice is a strangled whisper. “What did you say?”
“I killed her,” Emil replies in a quiet declaration. “I ripped out her heart?—”
The echo cuts him off with a roar so loud that I jump.
“I didn’t kill her! I took her darkness so she could be free. I ripped out the malice so she could be at peace. I died so she could live. She lived while I died. It should have been her. Not me. Not me. Not me?—”
“Stop!” Emil shouts, his head snapping up, his green eyes wide, and his face deathly pale behind his silver hair. “Stop.”
“I cannot stop,” says the echo. “I am the truth.”
My chest is heaving, my exhalations overly loud in my own ears.
I stare from Emil to the room, wishing I could locate this bodiless voice whose truths I don’t understand.
Emil, too, focuses on the room, following the words in the air with his eyes. “You lie.”
“I am the truth.”
“No!” he roars at the room. “I killed her.”
“I didn’t kill her. She was already dying. I took her darkness. I took its burden so she could be free. I took the pain and the malice and the darkness so she could be at peace?—”
“No!” Emil roars, bellowing out the denial so loudly that it’s like a knife in my sensitive hearing.
Yet, a single word comes back at us.
“Yes.”
“No,” he whispers. “I am the darkness?—”
“I am the light.”
His eyes widen.
So do mine.
I don’t understand anything right now, and my stomach is churning, turning into knots of fear and confusion.
He was right. So fucking right.
I shouldn’t have asked for his truths.
He snarls like a predator, “I am the darkness.”
The echo also speaks in a snarl, but this time, its words feel like an accusation. “I was born to the brightest light. My life was stolen. I paid the price for crimes that were not my own. What greater darkness could there be?”
For the life of me, it feels like the echo is demanding a response fromme.
My voice has strangled in my throat. I have no answer to that question. I can’t speak. All I can do is back away.
Emil slumps to the floor, rocking forward, nearly doubled over, his hands pressing to his temples. “I was the dark one. I was the dark one. I was the dark one…”
The echo repeats, over and over, “I was the light.I was stolen. I was the light. I was stolen…”
And then, out of the blue, the echo says, “Vengeance will be mine.”
Emil gives a muffled laugh from beneath his hair that sounds like a growl. “There is no vengeance for me. My fury has no resolution. All those responsible for my cage are already dead.”
