Page 100 of She Who Was Severed

Vale’s voice cuts across the silence. Just my name. Nothing else. Not gentle. Not sharp. Like she’s throwing a rope and letting me decide if I grab it.

I don’t look at her. Can’t. My throat locks. Like my body’s trying to hold something down that isn’t ready to be released. Not grief. Not rage.

The scream behind it.

“He signed it,” I whisper.

“I know.”

That’s it. No softening. No excuses. No lies. Just weight. A stone placed next to mine.

She’s been here. I can hear it in her voice. That place where the pain gets heavy enough you’d rather be furious than broken. Where silence is safer than someone telling you it wasn’t personal.

Something inside me slips.

Or maybe it cracks.

I shift before I realize I’ve moved. My knee slides through ash, slow and dragging. My palm scrapes stone. There’s nothing graceful about it—nothing planned. Just motion that starts somewhere deeper than thought. Somewhere cracked.

Vale doesn’t stop me. She watches. Tracks every inch like she’s waiting for the shape of it to make sense. Like she’s giving me the space to find out what this really is.

My fingers find her wrist. Then her shoulder. Her body’s warm beneath the grit. Solid. Real. I shouldn’t want anything more. I know that.

But I do.

I lean in. Not for comfort. Not for a lie. For a kiss.

Not lust. Not romance. Not a neat label I can pin down later. Just the desperate kind of pull that comes when everything else is broken, and the only thing that makes sense is the heat between two people who survived.

I don’t close the distance all the way.

But I want to.

And that’s enough to crack something inside me.

Her hand rises.

Not sharp. Not unsure.

She places it flat against my chest. Right over the chain.

And for a second, she just holds it there. No pressure. No retreat. Just presence.

“This isn’t reaching,” she says, voice low. “It’s bleeding.”

The words land harder than if she’d pushed me away. Harder than a slap.

I stop.

All of me.

The breath I didn’t know I was holding shudders out. My ribs ache. My face goes hot, then cold, and all I can do is pull back before something gives. My hand trembles where it brushes her sleeve, then slips off entirely.

“I’m sorry,” I say, raw.

She doesn’t look away. “Don’t be.”

No judgment. Just honesty. And space.