Instead of saying anything else, she hangs her head.Her body slumps as if the inevitable weight of us ending has finally slid over her shoulders.She looks like she’s been awake for a week.
But the way she appears niggles at me.As if I’m forgetting something important.Oh well.
I tilt my head at her, the fucking gall of this woman.
She wipes a hand over her face.
I sniff.It’s such a dismissive sound, it makes Midnight recoil.
I should have known she was only out for herself.She’s not even going to apologise for selling me back to my torturer.The person I gave up everything to escape.
I should have fucking known.Should have read her like any other contract or academic text.I’d have realised then.Knowledge is the only thing I can trust.But I let her blind me, take my objectivity and replace it with a deception: love.
Not anymore.
She lurches forward, gripping the bars.Even from the middle of the cell I can feel her warmth.I stop breathing because for all the simmering heat raging in my gut, I know if I even let a single hint of her back in, I’ll crumble.
She opens her mouth to speak and then hangs her head.
It’s the thickest silence I’ve ever felt.As though it fossilised our history over millennia and turned them into poisonous lies.
I turn away.
We’re done here.
Midnight draws a sharp breath, probably realising her attempt at whatever the fuck this was is futile.
Instead, I hear a tiny splash.And then the slide of paper against stone.
I spend a long time listening to her steps fade.I spend longer waiting for the cold tears sliding down my cheeks to fade.
For all the fury I felt seeing her, I am not naive, I recognise that I hurt her too.She is not the only one to blame.I made her kill me.Or perhaps more accurately, she transformed me.If she hadn’t reaped my soul, I wouldn’t be here now, trying to harness a power beyond anything I can conceive.
And that removes some of the sting.The fire in my belly douses, and I realise that perhaps I was too cold, too hard on her.
I hurt her, too.
No matter how long I wait, the sharp pain in my chest doesn’t fade.
Finally, when the sky outside the bars shifts and brightens once more, I find a single piece of paper.
One dried tear stain in the corner.
It’s sketched.Celestial runes.The paper is so threadbare I know it’s the one she carried for months while trying to help me.
And beneath it is a single word that slices through my chest and carves me wide open.
A peace offering.A plea.A safe word I can’t ignore.
My hands tremble as I grasp the note to my chest, that one word repeating:
Satan.
26
Midnight
“How did it go?”Lex asks as I reappear in our apartment.
