His hands trembled. He released me, like I’d turned to fire.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said, but his voice was so small I almost missed it.
I had no words. My throat was burning, along with the blood pumping through my bones. I couldn’t trust myself to talk without weeping.
He released me, and for a fraction of a second the world hung upside down. Me, gasping, with my hands clawed open, him, an outline of feverish anger sucking in air like a swimmer who just breached the surface after too long underwater.
The dark rushed back in, thick as tar.
We stayed like that, orbiting the same patch of empty space, the only noise the ragged echo of our breathing, until I could finally hear my own heart slowing.
My knees ached from the stone floor. My wrists burned in the ghost of his grip.
“Fine,” he muttered, voice shredded. “You win.”
He fumbled at the wall and, after a scrabble that sounded like he was tearing at his own skin, found the latch.
Light stretched in, bulb-bright and savage, slicing the black into trembling strips. I blinked, eyes watering, face streaked with tears I couldn’t remember making.
He watched me, unreadable, breathinghard. “You want out? Get out.”
His lip curled, but the old pleasure in it was gone. He pointed to the door with a flick of his chin.
I stumbled to my feet, legs numb and shaky, and swept past him without looking up. I leaned into the wall, fighting not to be sick.
He followed, but kept a careful distance, like he was the one afraid to get too close.
I wiped my face with the back of my sleeve, the salt of tears biting the raw skin under my eyes. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
I hated that he’d seen me like that, hated more that I’d made a sound, given him exactly what he’d wanted.
I pressed my shoulder to the cinderblock, clawed breath after breath, but the ghost of his hands still clung to my wrist.
The sensation was so vivid I dug my nails in, leaving red half-moons as proof I could still feel something of my own.
He leaned against the wall across from me, slouched, arms crossed, eyes fixed on the floor. He didn’t gloat. He looked smaller, drained, maybe even ashamed, but I didn’t trust the angle of his mouth.
I watched him through the blurred halo left by light-starved pupils, refusing to blink, waiting for the next punch.
“You done?” he asked.
I wanted to say something venomous, something that would bruise him. Instead, my voice came out flat. “Go to hell.”
His lips twitched, a hint of the old wolfish sneer. “Already there, sweetheart. Thought you’d noticed.” He rolled a shoulder, shrugged, and started down the corridor, boots echoing off the stone like a slow drumbeat. “You coming, or you gonna sit in the dark all day?”
I straightened, wiped my cheeks again, and followed two paces behind, the distance a shield I could cling to.
We emerged into the fort’s central courtyard. The sky above was flat and iron, the sun a bare rumor behind clouds.
Kids in our class milled near the cannon, a little cluster of noise, but their laughter sounded distant, underwater.
Mrs. Grant was at the periphery, her mouth a hard slash, watching the pair of us like she sensed what we carried with us from the dark.
A gust of wind bit through my sweatshirt, cold and vengeful. The taste of the dark still clung to my mouth, copper and rot.
I wondered if the others could see it on me. The stink of freshly-peeled nerves, the way my hands kept closing themselves into little fists, over and over, as if I could squeeze out what he’d put there.
I hunched my shoulders, expecting Caiden to close in, to pick up our war where we’d left it.
