Page 481 of Coal Hearts

You need to get him to talk...

Doing my best to ignore the creeping fear that he was slipping away, I scrambled for something to say. Something he’d find interest in. Something that would cease his descent into whatever nightmares he fought.

I came up blank.

My mind danced with sparks.

Yes, sparks!

Blurting, I said, “My wand.”

His forehead furrowed. His grey eyes flickered to mine. But he didn’t speak.

My mind filled with memories of that day. A happier time. A safer time. Those happy feelings bubbled over, and I found myself doing exactly what he’d said I would: I willingly shared a piece of who I was in order to bring him back to me. “I was nineteen when I got my tattoo. I got it the week after I passed my gemmology degree.”

I waited for him to ask for more details.

He didn’t.

Instead, he hyper-focused on another bruise, and another, and another. Making a personal vendetta against them as if by removing them he could erase everything that’d happened.

“I got a wand because Krish drew me a picture when I went to sit my exams. He said to imagine my pen was a wand, and it would write all the correct answers.” I smiled so big my cheeks hurt. “It worked. It brought me luck. And I decided I wanted to keep that luck with me forever.”

No response.

Yet I had the sense he was listening...clinging to every morsel I gave him.

“You might say that my luck didn’t work. That it ran out, and that’s how I ended up here.”

Nothing.

His lack of conversation and the wrongness of his silence forced me to continue filling it.

“But luck works in mysterious ways...” I closed my eyes for a moment, tapping into that endless knowing within me, letting it guide what I said. “I think...I think my luck drew me here. Drew me to you. To the jewels. I think—”

“Enough,” he snarled. “Stop it.”

I didn’t flinch this time at his scolding.

I saw it for what it was.

Agony.

I overflowed with druggy forgiveness.

He’d killed for me. Twice.

Because of him, I hadn’t been raped or mutilated.

He’s good.

Peter was right.

He saw that light.

It’s still there.

I pointed at the dinged-up watch on his wrist, needing to make him snap.