Page 11 of Prince of Wrath

“You thought your dad was about to die. I understand. You did what you could.”

“I should have known it was a trick. I should have done better.”

“When I saw you had left, Ella…” His palm covers his chest. “The ground disappeared under my feet.”

He says it as I keep signing, guilt eating me from the inside out. “I’m so sorry.”

“I’m the one who’s sorry.” Grasping the back of a wooden chair, he moves it closer and sits, forearms on his thighs, watching me like I am the sun and he cannot look away, despite being burned on the spot. Blood vessels have taken home in the white of his eyes, aging him ten years older. Was he as badly affected as me?

“You should resent me, for losing so much-.”

“Don’t.”

“You should.” I wipe a tear, startled that he hasn't signed once since getting here. Backward, always. Looking down at my hand, I sign, “How’s my dad? Is he…” What if he had succumbed to whatever trick Mara was playing in my absence? What if I am now all alone in this world, unable to even say goodbye?

“He’s alive and stabilized,” Tristan says, calm and measured. Thank God. So perhaps all my prayers worked after all. Perhaps someone, somewhere, was listening. “I… Things developed, and I had to take measures, I hope you’ll forgive me for. When I realized what Mara had done, I took it upon myself to move your father into a medical facility in my neighborhood. He’s getting the best care in the city and all his personal belongings have been moved too. I had people, professionals, make sure everything was where it needed to be. I couldn’t afford the risk of him being in harm’s way with your stepmother. I hope…”

“Thank you,” I say, letting out the faintest smile, my first in weeks. “Thank you so much.” Grateful, my heart rises for half a second, an invisible defibrillator bringing it back to life with a shock of hope. Tristan really took care of my dad while I was away. Made sure he was safe and well taken care of. How could I ever thank him?

“I know how important it is to you.”

“Thank you,” I say silently, pulling a strand of hair behind my ear.

“Ella, I…” He starts, looking down at his palm as if observing his lifeline, unable to look at me. “What happened down there?” Neon light. Wake up, little birdy. Stand. Eat with your hands. Dogs barking. More barking. Neon light. Branding. Cold. So cold. Screams. Panic slides under my skin, and I cover my eyes with my palm, humming silently. I am okay. I am at the hospital. With Tristan. Dad is okay too. Everything is perfect, perfect, perfect. I shake my head multiple times, wishing I could disappear. Some nights, I prayed to God. Please, make me invisible. Turn me into nothingness and let me fly away, but please, do not leave me here.

“Ella, it’s all right. I’m sorry. You don’t have to talk about it now. It was stupid to ask so soon.” He runs a hand through his beautiful, disheveled hair. I know he is not used to waiting, to not getting what he wants from the get-go. He waited ten days outside this room because I asked him to, because I could not bear the thought of his eyes landing on my too-thin body. I can see the frustration tracing lines at the corners of his eyes, making him look so much older. A question glows in the room, one I have been waiting to ask ever since the door opened on him in that basement.

“Will you leave me now…?”

“Leave you?”

“Yes, now that I’m…broken.”

“Ella,” he sighs, carrying the weight of the world.

“We’re not… we’re not a couple. We never said…” I keep signing. “You could have any woman you want. Was I worth all the losses you’ve been through? All the pain I’ve forced upon us?” His face shifts to the left, and I see him blink a few times.

Is he… Is he getting emotional?

I want to hold him close to me, run my fingers through his hair, but tremors still inhabit my bones, and I just cannot do it. Every time I want to reach out, I see Cole standing above me on the concrete floor. His chair screeches as he stands, stepping to the window, his back to me, arms crossed, the fabric struggling under the push of his biceps. Filled with unsaid promises, the air thickens by the minute, making me want to curl up under his skin and disappear there. I cry because silence used to be our language, and now it has become a wall between us. I cry because the man I fell for, the man who saved me, is standing a meter away, and still, I cannot touch him or tell him how terrified I was back then, and how picturing him was the only comfort I had. That he was my only hope. My own guardian angel in the dark. And I curse every part of me that has been broken underground, because now, I am not sure if we will ever be who we were supposed to become.

Tristan

Cars drive into the parking lot, looking for a spot. Hundreds of them, all shapes and colors, right there, visible from the fourth-floor hospital window. My girl is behind me, the sound of her tears perforating my chest with knives as I look away, unable to comfort her like I should because something happened down there, and now she will not…

She will not let me touch her, and now…now she’s asking me if she was worth it. If searching for her while she spent twelve days in that hell, hidden from me, while I was losing sleep and sanity, holding it together so I would not trash my home with a hammer and let my wrath win over reason, was…worth it. I wish I could sign to her how it felt. How crushed I was. How devastated I still am. Except something happened to her, and now signing, speaking our language, feels like doing so with a barricade between us. As if we are both trying and failing to connect, the wall is too thick and sturdy for us to destroy and overcome. I want her to know that these last weeks made everything crystal clear.

I had a life before Ella.

And now I have another.

And there will be no going back, even if we have to overcome the worst trauma possible. No matter what happened there. Even if we have to crawl through the worst of it. Even if she cannot bear my hands for a while. Even if the sound of my voice sends her somewhere I cannot follow. I will gather patience and time and lay both at her feet until she believes me. The words I cannot say yet are on the edge of my tongue. I cannot say them, so my mouth starts spewing the cheesy stuff I have kept locked up for days, which I can't hold in anymore.

“Twelve days,” I mutter. I can hear her breathing, soft and uneven, and I know she is watching me. I feel the warmth of her attention like a hand against my chest. “You ask me if you were worth it.” I shake my head, looking away, clearing my throat for the tenth time and blinking twice. Stupid AC. “If I bought a pen today, I’d write your name first just to see if the ink worked.” My voice scrapes on the words. “If you were to never talk to me again, I’d move from this city because all the places would forever be kissed by your memory. For twelve days, I tasted you in my coffee. I saw your reflection in every window. I tried to read to make the hours pass, but the words kept turning into you.” I look back at her then. “You’re asking me if you were worth it, and I’m standing here trying not to say something that would scare you, when the truth is, your smile has been dictating my choices since the day I met you. Your laugh has ruined every other reward. Nothing, and I mean nothing else, comes close.” Her lip shakes as she bites it. “And earlier, when you said home, you meant my house.” My voice drops. “I need you to know that there hasn’t been a single day since you left that I haven’t missed watching you live there like it was yours.” The words thin in my throat. “Like it was ours.” A jolt of electricity runs through my forearm, and it takes everything in me not to cup her sweet face. “So yes. You were worth it. Every loss. Every piece of the life I had to burn to get to you.” I hold her gaze. “No matter how monumental they were.”

“I…I missed you so much,” she signs, shutting her eyes hard. Relief washes over me; even if it's meager, it’s still there. My Ella does not seem like herself as she looks back at me, haunted by another presence that is not there with us and yet fills more space than both of us can fight against. Cole won. Not by taking my money and businesses. By taking her spark away. Stealing it. Momentarily, I tell myself. Still, a nagging sensation settles in my gut, warning me that I will have to make her acquaintance again and uncover the new version of Ella she's become. Because darkness changed her, and I will take it upon myself, as her knight, her partner if she will let me be one, to find her in the black forest she is now hiding in.

Cole is on the run now, with an entire investigation building behind him, waiting on Ella’s deposition before they can secure warrants and formal charges. It does not matter that I am not out there hunting him. Ella needs me and I need her. My jaw twitches as I keep trying to avoid the question hammering in my head. Had Cole taken something from her she did not freely give? Had he crossed every line drawn in the sand of decency? How irreversible is the damage, and how could I possibly support her?