The battlefield goes quiet again.
I think it’s thenext day. I’m not entirely sure.
The uncertainty feels weirdly familiar, like a distant friend I wish I’d never met.
Last time I was intimate with it, I used to count everything. Drips from a leaky pipe. The number of footsteps it would take to cross that small room. My own heartbeats between Reese opening the door and deciding whether or not to talk to me.
Now I just lie on the floor and wait.
At some point during what I assume was the night, I dragged myself into the corner of the room and made something resembling a nest. Not intentionally. My body just kind of folded in on itself there because it hurt less than the middle of the floor.
Everything hurts.
My ribs ache every time I breathe, like my lungs are still remembering what it felt like to be full of shadows instead of air. My throat is raw. My muscles feel like they’ve been wrung out and left to dry.
This is fine. Everything is fine.
I’ve survived worse.
Probably.
I miss my cat.
Felix is most likely sitting by the apartment door right now, judging my absence with the quiet moral superiority only cats can achieve. He’ll eventually decide I’ve died and eat the houseplants in protest.
I also want to call my mom.
The thought sneaks up on me out of nowhere, sharp and sudden. I hope she’s blissfully unaware of my current predicament and tending to her garden in North Carolina, sending me pictures of tomatoes like nothing in the world could ever touch her son.
I wonder what she’d say if she knew I’d been kidnapped twice by the same man.
Actually, that’s not fair.
Reese isn’t the same man anymore.ThatReese died.
I curl in on myself a little tighter, wincing as a fresh spike of pain shoots through my chest.
He might actually kill me this time.
I think the only reason I hope hedoesn’tis becauseIkind of want to commit murder first. And, no, I don’t think I’d regret killing my own uncle, not after everything he did.
My kidnapping. Reese’s death and Ascension. Setting me up so fucking perfectly…
Footsteps echo somewhere beyond the door, and my mind goes quiet. A moment later, the lock turns, and the door opens. Reese steps inside. Even from across the room, I can feel the air change when he enters, like the shadows in the corners of the room suddenly remember who they belong to.
I don’t bother getting up. Instead, I stay huddled on the floor, my cheek pressed against the cold concrete.
“Please, Reese,” I rasp, my voice absolutely wrecked. When was the last time I had a drink of water? “I can’t take any more.”
The words hang in the space between us for a second. Then…
I start laughing.
I don’t mean to. It just slips out of me, rough and slightly hysterical, like my brain finally snapped one too many tension wires.
Reese’s jaw clenches. “Why are you laughing?”
I roll onto my back, staring up at him to see the overhead light casting a dim halo around his shoulders, obscuring his face in darkness.
