Page 150 of The Silversmith

He snatched my blade off the dresser and—before I could scream or register an attack—he opened my hand, placed the knife in it, and knelt beside the bed. “Give me a chance to explain myself to you.” His deep voice shook with the strained desperation he drowned in. “If you still don’t believe I’m on your side…” He watched me remember the moment after he killed those Insidions in the woods. “If, when I’m done, you still hate me enough to wish me dead, I’ll beg you to kill me.”

For him, I would not listen. To do anything for his sake felt like betraying myself and those I loved. The brutal push and pull I felt in his presence was a curse on my heart, health, and life. I just knew, after speaking with Oliver and taking this second chance at living, I needed to find the will to persevere. Even if this life was a gods-damned mess.

But for me, I needed the pieces to fit.

“I will ask you questions. You will answer. And only then, if I choose not to kill you, you will leave,” I rushed out to quell the hope rising in him, the waves of relief washing over him. “That is all you get.”

“Yes,” he breathed. “Thank you.”

Patiently, he waited, and I had to wrack my cluttered brain with where to begin. My eyes shifted to the silver rings around his neck.

“Am I really the wife you spoke of?”

Without breaking my gaze, he unfastened the black cord around his neck and placed it, and the rings, at my bedside. “Yes.”

“Do you… do you truly love me?”

“Yes.” He dug his calloused fingers into the bedding. He strained as he held himself back from me, tears brimming in his gaze. “Yes, gods, I love you. With everything I am, I love you.”

I tore my burning eyes away from his and focused instead on my pale fingers in my lap. His confession of love opened the door to a place of tolerance I did not want to go to.

“How old am I?” I muttered.

“You’ve lived only nineteen years. But if you count the years you’ve been trapped and asleep… four hundred twenty-one.”

“And you?”

“Four hundred twenty-four.”

“How many years have you lived?”

A chilling pause. “All of them.”

I resented my heart for how it hurt for him. For that persistent loneliness in the brown eyes that just days ago had sparkled with love. The ache in my chest at the thought of him—or who I thought he’d been—alone for so long… I couldn’t reconcile it with the things I now knew.

“Are you Molochai’s son?” I pressed on.

“Yes.” His voice darkened. “He raped my mother, and she died in childbirth.”

I blinked out a tear. For her. Not for him. Not for him.

“Are you—” I looked up at him then, needing to see the look in his eyes when he answered this next question. “Are you the Butcher of Nyrida?”

His tormented gaze dropped to his hands, then back up to me, where it steadily remained. “I am.”

“How many people have you killed?”

“I don’t know.” He swallowed hard. “I lost count.”

“And you killed Phillip and Oliver?”

He flinched but nodded. “Yes.”

I knew it. I did. But to hear him say the words thinned the air in my lungs, what was left of it whipping out of me with every horrified gasp. He shifted toward me, hands flexing to reach for me, to comfort me. But I abruptly withdrew from him, causing the raw wound in my belly to burn. I cried weakly and held a trembling hand over my abdomen.

“Breathe.” His helpless gaze raced up and down my trembling body. It was killing him not to touch me. “Please breathe.”

“Why did you kill them?” I groaned out, vision swirling, head dizzy with pain. “Why?”