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Because if I don’t do this, I won’t know peace.
Ever.
Please forgive me. But I’ll understand if you cannot.
I hope you find a love that is beautiful. That is what you deserve.
Yours forever,
Elia
When I speak, my voice is hoarse.
“I don’t understand.”
Vylco sighs heavily and when I look up at him, his eyes are rolling so far back into his head that he looks like he is about to pass out.
“I don’t understand.”
Vylco’s expression softens. The hurt must show on my face. “My brother.” His voice is gentle and tinged with equal parts worry and exasperation. He comes to sit down on the couch next to me.
“She’s the killer. She is the one you’ve been hunting. Don’t you see? She came here five years ago from New Solas. And the killings in New Solas stopped five years ago.”
“Elia is human.” The disbelief in my voice is so obvious that Vylco bursts into a weary chuckle.
“And humans are hardy, determined creatures. And it was our mistake to underestimate them. Elia probably could have killed you if she had the tools to do so.”
“But…” I stutter, unable to finish the sentence.
But as I think about it, everything starts to make sense. Elia’s moods and her fierceness make more sense now.
And the feeling I always had when I was with her, the feeling that she was dangerous, that she could take even me on, now settles neatly in my brain and body as I slowly accept that she is a serial killer.
And you still love her. She’s a serial killer and you still love her.
How could I not?
“She must have killed dozens of them,” I say wonderingly to myself. Vylco chuckles again.
“Is that admiration in your voice?” he asks me in his gravelly tone.
“Maybe.” I shrug. “But I think I understand now. I think.”
“She escaped from New Solas on my boat, too,” Vylco says after a pause. I turn to look at him with raised eyebrows.
“She didn’t know it. She didn’t know it was my boat. I just worked it out once I started talking to her. Her escape lines up with the times I was sailing from New Solas to Ikoth.”
More things fall into place as I think about the situation.
And I know then what Elia has set out to do.
I know then why she wrote the letter. I know why she told me she loved me. I know why she finally told me about the most painful parts of herself.
Because she really never expected to see me again.
“She thinks she’s going to die,” I say out loud, slowly, before I jump up. “And I can’t let that happen.” My voice is grim.
Vylco is standing, too, and he nods at me fiercely.
