Page 55 of Pareidolia

It’s strange—I longed for it for the years he was gone, coveted it when I finally had it in my grasp again… and now…

Now that apathy is the last thing I want. I want the burn, the anger. I want to know how to make Aspen feel… whole.

It’s the only reason I let him leave.

I want to see what he’ll do.

I want him to go far enough that he realizes he has to come crawling back…

Even knowing that he will, that he has to, he still blows out another frustrated breath and reaches into his pocket, yanking on his gloves and zipping up his jacket to hide the shadows slipping beneath his skin before he turns and heads back toward town. I wait until he’s a few steps away before I slip to shadows and follow him.

I wonder… are there enough emotions running through the people of Duskfen for me to devour, so I can understand what I need to do to make Aspen finally accept that he belongs to a monster? Could I gorge myself on human logic and thoughts until I finally understood how to make Aspen admit that everything he is belongs to me… and all that I am—just as I am—is the only thing he’ll ever need?

CHAPTER 22

ASPEN

I can’t believe I’m actually considering living in the cabin that Nox turned into a crime scene—I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. There’s no way I’m going to be able to stay in the woods, but my body is already starting to twitch, the things in my chest are already starting to squirm now that I’m back in town.

Nox didn’t try to stop me when I left. He just watched me go with those inhuman red eyes and blood splattered across his chest. I left him with body parts scattered around him and anger welling in my chest that I couldn’t quite explain. It’s hard to understand—he’d done more for me in that moment than any human I’d ever depended on in my life. He’d at least tried to take better care of me than my mother and father had, because he’d given me somewhere to stay.

And he doesn’t even realize that he’s doing it. That’s the problem. He wants me in that cabin because he wants me trapped like an animal in a cage. He wants me in one place where he can keep me…

I don’t want to be kept. I didn’t have a choice—I guess I did when I touched his wings initially… but everything that happened after?

I didn’t ask for it.

I didn’t ask for how good it felt.

I didn’t ask him to show me what fear could feel like, drinking it down and wrapping it around me so I could run.

I didn’t ask for any of this, and I think the thing that makes me angriest is that he’s still giving it to me without realizing that it means something I don’t have the capacity to understand.

I don’t know how to be with a human, let alone a fucking primordial monster.

I don’t know what I’m doing… and that’s the worst part of it all. I’m furious, because I told him that I want more. I want to know him. His half-assed answers that probably make sense in his head aren’t enough.

I’m greedy now. I’m greedy because he blew open every emotion that I’ve never felt and offered me the chance to experience it without the capacity to completely follow through.

He wants me with him, and I want to know him… but neither of us seems to have the ability to ask the right questions or give any answers that mean shit.

It’s so fucked… the first time I’m contemplating a…

A what… a relationship? A partnership? The first time I’m actually showing someone who I really am, and it’s not a someone at all.

It’s a monster, and even now when I’m trying to struggle to understand what it is that I want, I know one thing.

The things in my chest want to get back to him, and I’m never going to know if those shadows are the only reason I’m here or if it really is some fucked-up form of fate.

If I eat you whole, would we be connected by a thread?

A thread. Fate.

Nox doesn’t understand that right now I’d almost prefer to be devoured if it would bring me close enough to understand any of this at all.

I have to stop off at the fire tower again to ransack the place and see what he left behind. None of my belongings are there, but there is a first aid kit that lets me put a bandage on the bite marks visible on my throat. I can’t do anything for the cut on my cheek, but at least I can explain that away as a run-in with a branch.

I don’t know how I’d explain the teeth and claw marks.