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“No, you do not.” I hate that he is right. I hate that even now, furious enough to open him from throat to sternum, part of me is drawn toward him. Toward the thing in Alcott that refuses shame. The monster that looks at ruin and does not flinch, but Olive’s sobs are still in my ears. Her hands striking his chest, voice breaking over the words, I hate that I survived it.
I move closer until only a few feet separate us. “You do not get to decide her recovery is too slow because patience bores you.”
Darkness’s eyes darken, “I did not do it because I was bored.”
“No. You did it because watching her numb offended you.”
“It should offend all of you.”
“It does.” The words snap out of me. “God help me, it does. Every hour. Every room she enters without truly entering. Every time she looks through us. Every time Edward asks permission to breathe near her. When Alcott makes another list because that is only what he can control, but he cannot stitch her mind back together with ink.”
Darkness goes still.
I feel my voice grow rough. “You think I do not want to drag the rage out of her? Think I do not want to put The Collector on his knees and place every blade in her hands? That I do not wake every hour imagining what he did and wishing I could go back in time and flay him alive before he touched one hair on her head?”
The room has gone silent except for the fire and Darkness watches me now without smiling. Let him look. Let him see this too.
“I love her,” I say.
The words burn.
“I love Edward. I love Alcott.” My molars grind together. “And against every ounce of sense left in my body, I love you too.”
Something moves across his face, but then quickly hidden beneath his cold demeanor.
“But if you hurt her like that again without her asking you to, without warning us, without knowing where the edge is before you shove her toward it—”
My hand closes around his throat and he lets me. My thumb rests beneath his jaw, where his pulse beats in Alcott’s body. “I will not forgive you simply because you were effective.”
His breathing changes and the room changes with it. Darkness’s gaze drops to my mouth, then returns to my eyes. “Is this where you threaten to kill me?”
“No.”
His brow lifts.
“I know better than to make promises I may not keep.”
That pleases him. Damn him.
“Then what do you promise?” he asks.
I tighten my grip just enough to feel him swallow. “That if you shatter her, I will choose her.”
That lands and the creature behind Alcott’s eyes goes utterly still and for once, Darkness has no clever answer. I release him, he does not step back and neither do I. The anger remains between us, hot now instead of cold, transforming into something worse. Something with teeth, something I have no patience for and no desire to name.
“You would choose her over me,” he says.
“Yes.”
His mouth curves slowly. “Good.”
The answer throws me. “What?”
“If you had said otherwise, I would have been disappointed,” he remarks.
“You are impossible.”
“I am honest.” His hand hovers over his chest.
