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I pressed my face into her shoulder, trying not to cry. The tears froze before they left my eyes.

The dark was everywhere, inside and out, pulsing under my skin, whispering that it would never, ever leave.

Chapter 15

Bones

Starla

Something was shaking me awake. I felt my body moving, back and forth. It was violent. Then there was a voice.

“Are you alive? Are you alive? Wake up, bluebird, I need to know if you’re still here!”

My eyes snapped open. Malakar’s silhouette was standing over me in the dark. I tried to move away to the far end of the mattress.

“Yes! Yes, I’m here, calm down.”

He looked confused. His eyes squinted in the dark, illuminated by the moonlight seeping through the window. “I had a nightmare. You were screaming. The vortex was eating you. It ate you up. My mother was there, she was consumed with flames. I was alone, all alone.”

His face was wet. I looked closer. Was he…crying?

“Malakar, I’m here. I am.” I didn’t know what else to say.

“Please don’t get swallowed by the dark.” He sat on the bed and gazed at me with an intensity so immense, it nearly broke me. “I don’t want to do bad things, I don’t want to hurt you like I hurt those other girls.” He shook his head violently, and muttered to himself.

“What did you do to those other girls, Malakar? I need to know.”

Instead of getting angry, he shook even more. “The dark got to them. They tried to leave, Starla. They didn’t love me. They didn’t want to be here. They wanted to leave, they wanted to escape. Dad always said that disobedient women had to be punished. So I punished them.”

“You killed them because your dad told you to?”

He glared at me and stood up. “NO! I killed them because they tried to leave. They saw the monster inside of me, and tried to flee. They didn’t want to stay. They weren’t special. They weren’t, they weren’t.”

He was pacing now, erratic and rambling. “My father is dead, but he still walks in my shadow. He does, and I can’t make him go away, bluebird. I can’t.” He came back over and stared me down. “Can you make him go away? I need you to make it go away!”

He smacked the wall with his palm. I shrunk back. How could I help him? This man was so damaged. I didn’t know what happened in his childhood, but it must’ve been bad enough to mold him into this.

He kept talking, on and on. “You made the dark go away, Starla. Just for a little while. You’re so special to me. You make me want to reach for the light. But my father—” He laughs, and shakes his head. “My father doesn’t want me to be nice.”

“You’re father’s not here, Malakar. I’m here. Starla. Your bluebird.”

For a moment, he stopped rambling. “You’re here. You’re here, you’re here. Just like you were there, all those years ago. In that fucking place, you were there. The prettiest thing I’ve ever seen. I was so lost, so gone, but with you, I remembered Milo. I remembered the boy I used to be.”

“What do you mean? Saw me where?” I tried to remember what he could be talking about. Maybe he was confused? I don’t remember him from anywhere. Most of my younger memories are blocked out. My childhood, my father butchering those women, the group homes.

“You don’t even remember me. That means you don’t love me. You don’t want to be here. I can’t believe I fell for your lies again!” He stalked towards me and grabbed me by the hair. I screamed.

“Why do you keep lying?” His body trembled with rage. “I can’t shake this obsession, this hunger, this need to have you forever. But if you keep lying, you’ll be just another body skinned to bones.”

“Please don’t do that, Malakar. I’m not lying, I won’t lie. I just want you to be nice, I want you to beat the darkness.” I was weeping, pleading, begging.

“I love it when you beg, bluebird. Do you really want to know what will happen if the darkness wins? If I succumb to this need to break you, to keep you forever?”

His grip in my hair was the only constant. The world around me was flickering, jerking, moving too fast, colors smeared, the air gone thin and sharp. My scalp burned where his fingers twisted, the pain sharp enough to keep me tethered, just barely, to the meat of my body.

“Do you want to see what happens when the darkness wins?” Malakar crooned, but it wasn’t sweet, it was a question with a razor pressed to my throat. His breath was filling my ear. “You want to know what happens to little birds who try to fly away?”

I tried to shake my head, but my neck didn’t belong to me. My whole body felt like it had been hollowed out, stuffed with wire, manipulated like a puppet.