22. Selis
Selis
She asks me the question I’ve been trying not to answer.
“Are you going to give me to them?”
And for a second, I forget how to breathe. Because the truth is a blade. Worse than that—it’s one I don’t want to hold. One I don’t want her to see me holding.
If I speak it, it becomes real. And I don’t think either of us walks out of this room whole after that.
So instead—
I let go of her wrists.
Not cruel.
But not gentle, either.
Like the answer itself: unfinished. Ugly.
She stares at me like she wants to spit.
Or cry.
Or worse—like she wants to understand me anyway .
That’s the part that kills me.
“You keep trying to make this fate,” I say, “but maybe I’m just the sharpest cage you’ve ever been thrown in. Ever think of that?”
She doesn’t answer, which means I’ve landed the hit.
Good.
But then—quietly, not with fire, not with fury, but with something so much worse—she says, “I wish I never met you. ”
My breath catches. Just for a moment. Like a misstep in the dark.
She doesn’t even look at me when she says it. Doesn’t raise her voice. Doesn’t scream. It comes out flat. Small. Like she’s already said it to herself a hundred times and this is just the first time I get to hear it.
Then she turns away. Quiet. Fragile in a way I’ve never seen her.
Shoulders stiff, like the weight of her own words hurt more than mine ever could.
She crosses to the far edge of the room and curls up on the corner of the bed like she’s afraid it’ll shatter beneath her. Like softness might split her open.
And me… I just stand there. Watching her fold in on herself like I didn’t put the wound there with my own hands. Like I don’t want to take it back and don’t know how.
Like an idiot.
Like her cage.
The fire in the hearth dances like it's mocking me. Throws long, flickering shadows across the floor that crack the silence wide open.
Eventually, I drop onto the narrow chaise across the room and stare at the ceiling, blade tucked beneath my pillow, silence stretching too tight around my ribs.
She sleeps with her back to me.
I don’t sleep at all. How can I when my hands still burn from where I touched her, and my mouth is full of ash in her absence?
She asked if I was going to give her to them…
And I didn’t say no.
Didn’t say yes, either.
And I hate that somehow… that might be worse.