28. Dead By Dusk Silene
28
Dead By Dusk: Silene
I ’m not quite sure how I got here. When I open my eyes, I’m tucked into Ronan’s chest. His arms are wrapped around my body as he gently rocks us back and forth, and for a moment, I’m content. I don’t want to move from where we rest, but I know we need to. However long we’ve been here is too long given the situation, but the throbbing in my head makes me want to stay. The swelling of my eyes makes it hard to even keep them open long enough to see anything, which almost solidifies that desire.
But I need to move.
My body aches, and as I try to stretch, Ronan’s hold on me tightens and he rests his chin atop my head.
“How long have we been here?”
My throat feels overwhelmingly scratchy as I speak, but the sound of my voice is much worse. It’s raw and deep and cracks more than it doesn’t. Self consciously, I bring my hand to my throat, deeply rubbing the expanse of my neck. Coughing wracks my body for a moment, and when I open my eyes again, my gaze lands on my fingers and the dried blood packed under my nails.
“What is…” I attempt to remove myself from the fortress that is his arms, but he just continues to hold me in place while I observe my skin and clothes. Multiple areas are covered in the same dried blood, even though there are no real wounds to dignify the amount of evidence left behind. “Ronan, what is— where is—let me go.”
I’m struggling to escape his grip, but he won’t release me. Won’t even loosen his grip. No matter how much I try, his hold just gets tighter, and the longer I struggle, the more I remember. But whatever well of tears I had been made of before sleep found me, has run dry. And suddenly, I’m not fighting to remove myself from his grip as much as I’m fighting him. Still, he doesn’t let go. He remains steady through every punch I throw into his chest and every question or accusation I toss his way.
He endures until I tire myself out and am left weakly questioning why it had been her and not me. Not once does he correct me, probably assuming that nothing would be able to change my mind and that guilt will most likely weigh on me for as long as I breathe.
It’s not quite guilt, though.
No, it’s rage. An inferno burning me from the inside out, chanting a dark prayer for revenge.
“Let. Me. Go.” His hold on me hesitantly loosens as I grit each word out through clenched teeth. I immediately remove myself from his embrace, crawling several feet away, taking deep breaths, trying to cool the fire that feels like it’s burning me alive. The chill that flows through the air does nothing but suffocate me with all the words I’ll never get to say.
I slowly move to stand, but Ronan doesn’t move. He instead stays seated on his heels, and I take this opportunity to fully look at him and the dark circles beneath his eyes. He is hunched over, and he looks so defeated and withdrawn that I can’t help but step closer to him again. His eyes trail the length of my body, from my shoes all the way past the hand I have extended out to him and land on his face. I steady my breathing under his graze while sorting out my thoughts. Everything that needs to be tucked away for the time being and what I’ll keep at the forefront of my mind to guide me the rest of the way through this insanity.
“It’s not safe out here,” I calmly state, and he slowly nods, taking my hand and standing up to full height. I drop his hand to turn around, but he grips my wrist and pulls me back into him, holding me again. But this time I don’t pull away. I hold him the way he held me as he murmurs in my ear—emotion lacing every word. “I’m so sorry. I couldn’t save her but I made sure you were safe. The whole night, I made sure you were okay.”
I let my hold on him tighten, not trusting myself to speak before pulling away and offering him a small grateful smile.
“I tried to find her, I swear it,” he whispers, his eyes pleading with me to understand what he’s saying. For a moment, I remember the fight and the screams that sent terror racing through me before the rage took over. I remember him telling me he would save her, and I do understand what he means. The direction he ran was completely opposite from where I had found her. There would have been no way for him to know it was a ploy to separate us.
“I know, Ronan,” I say softly, offering him my hand, but instead of taking hold of it, he laces his pinky into mine and brings it to his mouth, softly kissing my knuckles. When our hands drop, we hold each other’s gaze for a moment more before looking to the house and then the space around us.
“It’s quiet,” he notes, his eyes squinting as he looks at the surrounding emptiness.
“I’m not surprised,” I start while shading my eyes and quirking my eyebrow at him. He looks down at me, tilting his head to the side as if wanting me to continue, and I stare back out to scan the treeline, searching for any hidden movement. “He’s lost a lot of men recently. He’d be stupid to send anyone else out here when he’s going to need protection.”
“Protection from what?” he asks, but the way he’s looking at me when I turn back to face him tells me he already knows the answer. Even if he would rather leave now and fly to some remote island, he knows I would never leave things unfinished.
“Me,” I state plainly, and his eyebrows draw together as he tries to grab me, but I move out of his reach, holding out my palm as a way of asking him to not try to stop me or talk me out of what needs to be done. “No, you can’t stop me. It’s already been decided.”
“You can’t seriously still want to go back there and kill him, Silene. You have to let this one go,” he speaks with urgency, borderline begging me to give in just this once. But I cannot simply turn my back on what has been done to us and the others who came before. We cannot all be casualties of this man’s power hungry paranoia. Not anymore.
“You know I have to. I have a score to settle.” I shrug lightly as I say this, and he just brings his fingers to his tired eyes and presses into them before roughly rubbing his face. When he drops them, any sign of exhaustion that had been there before is gone, replaced by his cool, calculating gaze. For a moment, I see part of the man I love again. His steadfast confidence in me and unwavering support will forever be something I carry by my side, and I think that when this is all over, I’ll say the words I haven’t dared speak yet.
“Okay, so you kill him and then what?” he asks, but he’s no longer focused on me or what I’m saying and doing. Instead, he’s turning over plans in his head. Assessing the probability of each idea that could result in our survival or death. As another breeze flows through the air and pushes my hair out of my eyes, I think about how this all should end and know there’s only way it can.
With fire.
Something that will cleanse the Earth of the stain he’s left. No evidence of who he was or what he did will be found, no one will remember the man who clawed his way up to the top of the food chain just to be overcome by madness and tormented with delusions that he would never be safe. There will be no proof of the payments he sent so others would kill innocent men and women who had families. There will be no hint that suggests there was ever a monster who sent his daughter to die.
He will be what he fought his whole life to escape becoming.
Nothing.
“I’m going to burn that place to the ground.”
I’m not sure if it was the conviction in my voice or the confidence I carried, but he no longer appears concerned. Something about him seems more proud than anything as one side of his mouth tips up into one of his half smiles accompanied by an irritating wink of his capacious blue eyes. Before I can get lost in the comfort of knowing he’s on my side no matter what, I gently push his shoulder and look away with a smile.
“Sunrise is long gone. Nathaniel and Adonis with it. We’re most likely on our own, so make yourself useful and help me back up onto the roof. I’ll get something you can use to climb after,” I say haughtily. His laughter fills the space around me. I can’t help the smile that forms upon my lips, mirroring his amusement.
“If you have a plan, why don’t we just go to one of the tunnel entrances into the woods?” he asks through bouts of laughter as he clutches his stomach and runs his fingers through his hair. My eyes trace every movement he makes, enjoying that he feels a little more like himself, a quality I need from him at the moment to help keep me moving. It’s a gentle yet painful reminder of the promise I had made to Carmen before she took her last breath, and even though it still hurts every time my heart beats, I know I cannot fulfill her promise without avenging her. And I don’t think I can keep moving without this man that wholly believes in all I am to remind me that there’s something after this ends.
Should I survive, I still have him.
Always.
“Si?” His voice breaks me from my train of thought and forces a tight lipped smile from me.
“Because we need to know exactly where we’re going if we’re going to do this. I need another look at the map.” He shakes his head before squatting down low and weaving his fingers together, forming a space for my foot to step into.
“As you wish, Killer,” he says, smirking and waiting for me to move. I place my hands on my waist, cocking my hip to one side, debating if I should question him further. Ask if my every demand is his wish to fulfill. Maybe when this is all said and done, I can ask him and see if he’d get on his knees for me with one simple command. But right now, I need to focus and not delay the inevitable journey back inside the house. The knowledge that my feet don’t rest on solid ground has my hands sweating and throat constricting.
My stomach drops at the thought, and I have to force myself to push away the anxiety.
“Come on, Si. Don’t let your fear guide you. You can’t hold onto it forever,” he says, and I can’t help but force my attention back to the man in front of me, patiently waiting. The man who has said this to me before and unknowingly helped me find my way down on the first day we woke here.
Dropping my hands from my waist and placing them on his shoulders, I place my foot in his hold. With far too much ease, he lifts my body above his head, my chest easily the same height as the roof, making it easy to pull myself up. It took no more than a minute—the whole process—but not for a second did I have fear. Once I was in his hands, there was no moment that I worried I would fall. Not because I trusted myself to hold on, but because I knew he would always catch me in my fall.
“Alright, I’ll be right back. I just have to get one of the curtains from downstairs, and I’ll tie it to one of the bed sheets. That should be long enough to tie around a spike and reach you,” I call down to him. He winks, crossing his arms over his broad chest and nods at me as I turn around and rush to the window.
I tell myself he’ll be fine by himself, that he’ll pick up the weapons he left discarded on the ground and wait for me. He can defend himself just fine. But as I’m rushing down the steps of the house, I can’t help but feel unnerved. My chest tightens as I hear muffled voices come from outside of the house, too far away for me to reach him, and next thing I know, I’m running back up the stairs with the long cloth dragging behind me.
When I get back to the window and look around the field, I don’t see him. His weapons still lay haphazardly on the ground, but there’s no him. My hands tighten around the fabric in my hand, wringing it out as I bend my body through the hole.
“Ronan!” I call out, my voice carrying further than I thought possible. He doesn’t answer. I cautiously step down the slope of the roof, looking around the expanse of land that now feels as if it extends forever.
“Ronan!” I call out again, but still, no response. No other voice than the sound of my own taunting me with the name of the man who was here just a few minutes ago waiting for me.
He’s gone.
Panic tries to take control of me, but I reign my emotions in and remind myself to breathe as Ronan always does while I tie the cloth to one of the large metal spikes. I pull, putting as much of my weight against it as I can to make sure it will hold before throwing it over the side and ensuring it’s long enough for me to reach. Once I’m sure it is, I do what I did six days ago.
I jump.
Once I’m steady on the ground, I’m checking the immediate surroundings of the house. There’s no sign of struggle, no red covering the green grass beneath my feet. But as I turn the final corner, it’s obvious he is no longer here.
Someone else has taken his place as I feel a blade on the skin of my neck. There’s enough pressure for me to know that with one small movement, it will slice my skin.
“Don’t move. I’ve come to take you back, dead or alive.” A laugh tears through me as something in me snaps. I move forward just enough for the blade to pierce the skin of my neck and feel the warmth of my blood flow freely down my chest. The wound isn’t deep enough to kill, but it’s definitely enough to throw him off track. And when my laughter dies, I say the one thing he should know before he dies in a cold, detached tone as my hand slowly moves to one of the daggers at my side.
“A smart man would’ve just gone for the kill.”
For a moment I feel the way he tries to deepen the wound, making for an easy death, but he’s not fast enough as I swipe my blade across my chest and let it sink into the skin just below his elbow, and then tear through veins and tendons as I drag the blade all the way down to his wrist.
He drops his weapon, backstepping away from me as I begin to laugh again before dragging two of my fingers across the dagger, clearing it of his blood. He wears a prominent scowl on his tanned, aged face. He’s examining the wound, undoubtedly noting it’s not deep enough for a quick death, but one that will be slow and painful if not treated soon. He isn’t deterred though. It instead seems as if the promise of death only compels him forward.
One last job well done, I suppose. If he’s going to die, he wants to do so fulfilling his purpose. It’s almost admirable when he pulls another blade out and readies it in his grip.
Almost.
We rush toward each other, each carrying our respective weapons in our hands. He is the first to throw out his arm, attempting to easily slash my neck, but I crouch low, making the same motion he did, catching one of his shins in the process. A deep, pained grunt fills the air as he kicks out my leg from underneath me.
I roll away from where I fall just in time to evade the impact of his dark leather boot stomping into my head, but not quick enough. I release a loud yelp at the painful pull that results from the pressure on my hair and roll back to where he stands, shoving my blade into his calve and twisting it.
He collapses, and as I rip my knife from his leg, dark red blood oozes from the gaping wound. An unfeeling smile forms on my lips as I crawl onto his body and sit at his waist.
I drag my blade across the man’s neck, watching as skin breaks and warm blood bursts over my hand indicating I had hit a vein. I wasn’t planning on the cut being as deep as it was, but I can’t bring myself to care the way that I knew I should at the moment. Instead, I just let my hand cover the length of his neck and feel the haphazard beating of his heart beneath my fingertips, and let a crazed smile grow on my face. I grip the handle of the dagger so tightly that my knuckles begin to turn white as I force myself to focus.
You can’t kill him yet, a small voice in the back of my mind reminds me, and I do my best to tell myself that over and over again, but the man struggling beneath me is making it hard to not just end him as he spits blood at me and laughs out a weak, “Kill me if you want. You’re both already dead.”
My grip on his neck tightens, and I force his face to the side, my smile widening. “Why would I do that when the sight of you suffering beneath me brings me so much joy?” I question and watch as his face pales further. Logically, I know it’s likely due to the amount of blood he has lost, but it’s nice to believe I’ve instilled fear into this man.
I shouldn’t kill him without demanding answers, but my control has frayed and before I finish him off, I lean my body down and bring my mouth to his ear to whisper a quick message. The last words to a man who will die a failure.
“Anyone who dares touch him will die by my hands. Their blood will be spilled come sunset, and every drop will be a love letter and an apology for all the words I have been robbed of,” I start, and as his arms struggle for freedom beneath my body, I huff out a quick laugh and continue, “If only you had killed me when you had the chance rather than running your mouth. Now, their blood will be on your hands.”
And then, sitting back up, I finish the movement I had begun earlier, digging the tip of the blade into his skin and roughly dragging it across the length of his neck. Agonizing screams fill the air, and when the blade reaches the halfway point, I make sure to push it in deeper across the bob of his Adam’s apple. Satisfied as his blood shoots out of his neck, splashing onto my arms and chest before pooling around his body, I feel his pulse grow weaker and weaker before his final heartbeat shoots through my hand like one final distress signal. I feel no remorse as I numbly stare down at the man before me .
They all die by dusk.