Page 301 of These Tears

Expects me to disappear like the rest.

As soon as this is over, there is no doubt in my mind he’d make a move to remove me alongside everyone else involved in this. I’m not gullible enough to think otherwise.

A door beside the dock opens with a heavy mechanical clunk, and every sound inside the courtroom falls away.

Two officers enter first. Elias comes between them.

Everything inside me seizes.

He is dressed in black trousers and a plain grey T-shirt that strains across his shoulders. But it’s not the clothing that drags over my nerves.

It’s the steel, joining his wrists in front of him. Again.

Their rattle reaches into me, tearing open the memory of the first room in which I ever saw him.

Concrete. Institutional lights. His body folded behind a table too small for him. A great man reduced to narrow space.

Back then, the chains had seemed like the only thing keeping everyone else safe. Now they look like punishment for the monster everyone had spent years convincing him he was. A man walled up behind his own eyes, suffering without bending to the oppression.

His head is lowered as the officers guide him. Dark curls fall across his brow. There are bruised shadows beneath his eyes and a weight pulling at his mouth.

Then he looks up.

Finds me.

The chains snap taut between his wrists.

Surprise breaks across his face, gone almost before I can be certain I saw it. And rage sets in.

His brows drag low, eyes turning glacial as they rake over me, then move to Conall and the rest of the Norwegian horde.

The accusation reaches me from across the room without him saying a word: What are you doing here?

The officer beside him touches his elbow. He turns on him so quickly that both men tense, hands shifting towards their belts. I nearly spring to my feet. The chain chimes as he checks himself halfway through, both officers bracing. ‘I’m calm. I’m calm.’

And finally, his gaze comes back to me.

The fury remains, but his eyes run over me once more before they settle, as though counting the pieces of me I’m barely holding on to, making certain they’re all still in place.

They move to my hands last.

Devoid of Frida’s ring.

His fingers curl and he focuses on the tiles as they guide him forward.

When he steps into the secure dock, one officer unlocks the cuffs through the narrow hatch. The red impression blooms around both wrists. The violence in him fractures when it meets the outrage in me.

His eyes stay on my bare hand. The tension in his face eases. But barely.

A question passes between us in one silent beat, because wanting me anywhere near this is precisely what terrifies him.

Though the chains are off, I can still hear that faint, metallic tremor of steel on him – the beginning of us.

I hold his gaze without a smile. He holds mine the same. But I feel his hand pressing into mine without him doing it.

His jaw works once. You should not be here.

I lift my chin. Try to stop me.