22. Quell
Chapter twenty-two
Quell
I wake up to a silence so thick it feels like a blanket pressed over my face.
My cheek is mashed against the hardwood, cold and sticky.
For a second, I don’t know where I am. Then the world comes back in little pieces; the sharp, burned smell of gunpowder, the coppery tang of blood, a pounding ache behind my eyes.
Metal. I remember the gun in my hand, Talon on his knees.
He told me to do it. Pull the trigger. I didn’t try; it wasn't what I wanted.
It wasn't right. My dream ended with him holding the gun, not me.
Then… nothing. Just blackness, like I fell off the planet.
I blink, and my vision swims. My glasses are somehow still on, smudged and crooked, but they’ve survived.
Pushing myself up, I groan. My head thuds with every heartbeat, like my blood is fighting gravity.
I wipe my face. Dry. Just old tears, crusted tight on my skin. How long have I been lying here?
Something is off. The apartment feels hollow, like a party that ended hours ago and everyone forgot to clean up. The air is missing that weight, the one you get when someone else is in the room with you. No breathing, no footsteps, nothing. Just this empty, echoing space.
I glance at the coffee table. There's the sketch of Talon’s death, folded neat as a napkin. The one I hide. The one I promised myself he’d never see. He found it. Opened it. Stares at his own face, resigned and peaceful, waiting for the end.
“Talon?” My voice comes out thin, a cracked whisper.
No answer. Just the distant hum of the fridge and the sound of my own lungs. I try standing, but my legs are jelly and my hands won’t stop shaking. The room tilts for a second, and I have to grab the wall just to stay upright. Great. I’m about to faint again.
Then I hear a zipper. The muffled slam of a drawer. The sound is coming from the bedroom. Relief hits me so hard I nearly drop back to the floor. He is still here. He hasn’t left. Not yet.
I shuffle down the hallway, one hand trailing along the wall. The bedroom door is half-open, yellow light cutting across the dark flooring. I push it wider and just… stop.
Talon has his back to me, bent over the bed. He is packing, but not like a normal person. Every movement is tidy, practiced. Like he could do this in his sleep. He has all his bags packed. All the things you’d need if you want to vanish.
“You’re leaving.” It hurts to say it. Like swallowing broken glass.
He doesn’t even flinch. Doesn’t turn around. Of course not. Talon always knows exactly where I am. That’s how he survives.
“Yes.” His voice is flat. Not angry, not sad. Just… gone.
I step into the room, pulled forward by something I don’t understand. My body feels wrong, like it belongs to someone else. “When were you going to tell me?”
He turns, slow and careful, his face wiped clean of emotion. But his eyes are different. There’s a shadow there, something I’ve never seen before. “I was hoping you’d stay unconscious until I was gone.”
“That’s cruel.” My voice cracks. I hate how weak it sounds.
“It’s kinder than watching you break.” He goes back to packing, rolling up a shirt and tucking it in the bag. “You need to be free of this. Of me. Of all of it.”
“Free?” The word is sour on my tongue.
“No more deaths.” He looks at me, just for a second, then away. “No more dreams. No more blood on your hands because of me.”
I stare at his hands. The same hands that kill, clean up bodies, hold me when I wake up screaming. Now they’re just… packing. Getting ready to erase himself from my life.
“And what about my choice?” I say.
His shoulders tense, just a fraction. “That choice nearly broke you today. You couldn't pull the trigger. It does something to you.” He zips the bag. It sounds sharp and final, like a gunshot in the quiet. “I won’t watch that happen again.”
“So you’re just… leaving?” I take a step closer. “Just like that?”
“Yes.” He turns, catches my eye. His gaze is steady, unflinching.
The kind of look you get from someone who’s already grieved what he’s about to lose.
“You’ll be safe. Vincenzo will come after me, not you.
Just follow my instructions. The dreams will stop once I’m gone.
You can have a real life, Quell. Draw what you want. Sleep through the night. Be normal.”
Normal. The word stings more than I want to admit.
Normal hasn’t been an option for me, not since the first vision, the first death, the first time I saw through a killer’s eyes.
But Talon is holding it out to me like something precious.
Like something he’s willing to bleed for, just to give it to me.
I look at the bags, at how ready he is to go.
At the man who has become the only steady thing in a world full of blood and nightmares.
And something breaks open inside me; not the brittle thing that shatters when he puts the gun in my hand, but something older.
Something I bury so deep I think it’s gone. Suddenly, it’s all spilling out.
I move before I can think. Three quick steps and my arms are around him, my face pressed into his chest, my hands fisted in the back of his shirt. He goes rigid, startled, like he’s never been hugged before.
“You were already gone, and I couldn’t breathe,” I say into his shirt, the words muffled and shaky. “I felt it when I woke up. That emptiness. That silence.” I hold on tighter, like I can keep him from disappearing. “I don’t want silence if it means I lose you.”
His hands hover at his sides, not touching me, not pushing me away. Just hanging there, awkward and uncertain. “Quell…”
“I drew your death because I’m scared of what your life will do to me,” I blurt, rushing the words out before he can shut me down.
“Because I know what we’re turning into.
Because I don’t want to care if you live or die.
” I pull back just enough to look at him, to make sure he’s really seeing me.
“But I do care. I care so much it scares me.”
Something flickers in his eyes; a crack in the mask, maybe, or just surprise.
“The dreams are always torture,” I say, voice shaking.
“Always, until you. Until I know whose eyes I’m seeing through.
Until the killer has a name, and a face, and arms that hold me through the night.
” I’m crying now; I know it, but I don’t care.
“You kill people. And you still hold me like I matter.”
One of his hands lifts, slow and hesitant, and settles on my back. Just the weight of it, warm and solid, makes my breath catch.
“I do,” he says, voice so soft I almost miss it. “You do matter.”
“Then come with me. Follow your own damn instructions and come with me.” I press my forehead to his chest, listening to his heartbeat, steady and strong. “Even if it kills us.”
His other hand comes up, and suddenly he’s holding me, really holding me. He lets out a breath, like he’s been suffocating for hours. “Then we die together.”
We just stand there, tangled up in each other, his chin resting on my head, my hands twisted in his shirt.
I’m not sure who moves first. Maybe it’s me, tilting my face up. Maybe it's him, bending down. Either way, suddenly we’re eye to eye, breath mingling, the air thick between us.
I kiss him. Desperate. Clumsy. Real. My lips press hard to his, all the fear and want and longing I’ve bottled up since the day he let me live. Since he brought me home instead of leaving me dead in a ditch somewhere.
For a second, he doesn’t move. He just freezes, like he’s not sure what to do. I start to pull away, an apology already on my lips…
Then his hand catches the back of my neck, fingers threading into my hair, and he kisses me back. Not gentle, not careful, but like he’s been starving for this. Like he’s been holding back for years.
The kiss deepens, his tongue sliding past my lips, hungry and hot. I make a sound I don’t recognize, something raw and needy from deep in my chest. His arms lock around me, lifting, pulling me closer.
We stumble backward, his legs hitting the bedframe. He sits on the edge of the bed, dragging me down with him, never breaking the kiss. I land straddling his lap, my hands on his face, his on my hips. When we finally break apart, both of us gasping, his eyes are darker than I’ve ever seen.
“Are you sure?” His voice is rough.
I nod. I can’t speak. Yes. God, yes. I’ve never been more sure of anything.
His hands slide under my shirt, warm and reverent, fingertips gliding over my skin with a care that makes me shiver.
I reach for his buttons, clumsy with need, but he pushes my hands away and undoes them himself, slow and methodical.
The shirt parts. Scars everywhere, a map of violence and survival, each one a story I’ve only glimpsed before.
I trace them, gentle, and feel him tense, then ease. These are the marks of a life that should have ended a dozen times, but hasn’t. Somehow, he’s made it here. To me.
My shirt is next, peeled off like a layer of fear. His gaze sweeps over me, lingering, and I fight the urge to hide. Instead, I lean in, pressing my lips to his neck, feeling the sudden jump of his pulse.
Time warps. Everything sharper, the scratch of stubble under my palm, his hands mapping my back, the heat between us.
He eases me onto the bed, his weight settling over me, and I feel safe, not trapped.
His hands hover, uncertain. The most dangerous man I’ve ever met, hesitating now, as if afraid to take too much.
“Quell,” he says, my name a soft question seeking approval.
I touch his cheek, leaving a faint streak of pencil dust. “Please,” I whisper. “I want this. I want you.”
Everything else slips away. Clothes gone, skin to skin, nothing left to hide. He moves with his usual precision, but there’s tenderness now, a care in every touch as he preps me for him. He finds my hands, laces his fingers with mine, pins them to the mattress as he enters me.
Pain and pleasure tangle, sharp then sweet, my body figuring him out.
We settle into a rhythm, slow at first, then urgent.
Our breathing syncs, two heartbeats pounding in time.
I watch his face, see the control slip, see the intensity in his eyes burn away everything else.
Hear the slap of flesh hitting together like it’s the most natural sound in the universe.
“Stay with me,” I gasp, barely words at all. “Don’t go.”
“I’m here,” he answers, voice rough. “I’m here.”
When my orgasm hits, he holds me through it, follows me over the edge. The world goes white, then dark, then comes back in pieces: his weight, his breath, the tears on my cheek I haven’t even noticed until now.
Afterward, we lie tangled together, his arm heavy around my waist, my head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat slow. The room is quiet except for us, the city outside a distant hum.
“I never saw this coming,” I murmur, tracing idle lines over his skin. “Did you?”
He’s quiet, stroking my back. “Only every time I look at you.”
I lift my head. His face is unguarded for once, open, almost shy. “Really?”
“From the first day,” he says. “When I found you in your apartment, sketching my kill. When I should have ended you, but didn’t.” He brushes hair from my face. “I know something has changed. I just don’t know what it means.”
I settle against him, feeling the rise and fall of his chest. “What happens now? Vincenzo will still come for us.”
“Yes.” His reply holds no fear, just calm. “But we’ll be ready.”
“Together?” I ask, needing it spelled out.
He pulls me closer. “Together.”
Outside, life goes on. Cars, people, the world spinning. In here, none of it matters. Just his heartbeat under my ear, his breath in my hair, his arms around me.
The dreams will come. Death might still find us. But we’ll face it side by side; the killer and his artist, bound by visions, choices, and something we haven’t named yet.
For now, that is enough.