Chapter 35 Sterling
Sterling
I should be with her. Every part of me screams it, clawing under my skin, tearing at my ribs. She’s out there somewhere, broken and hurting, and I’m still here. Rooted to this rotting soil. This graveyard of everything I used to be.
I hate it. Hate the distance between us, even though I decided on it. But I can’t leave yet. I’m not done here until this place dies the way it deserves to.
The vineyard stretches out before me, rows of twisted vines and blackened trellises, the earth soaked in old blood.
I move through them methodically, smashing lanterns at each base, oil spreading like veins through the dirt.
When I strike the match, it flares against the dark.
One by one, I light them. One by one, I let it catch.
The flames leap up the wood, fast and hungry. The heat slams into me. The shed behind burns too. None of it feels like justice or revenge. It just feels necessary.
When the fire climbs high enough to erase the stars, I finally turn away. Flames chase my shadow across the ruined ground. I walk along the cliffs, each step one more away from the past.
The Valkyrie waits near the rocks. I press a hand to the roof, grounding myself on the metal. The ocean howls below, salt and smoke thick in the air. Far down the shore, floodlights sweep across the rocks. A convoy of vans creeps along the edge, sleek and quiet. Damon’s work, no question.
They move toward the base of the cliffs as figures of shadow, efficient and fast. I squint through the smoke and distance.
Two shapes lie broken against the stone.
Clo and Lix. Even from here, I can see their misshapen limbs.
The ocean laps without pulling them under.
The waves reach the shore blue but retreat back red.
They should be dead. Maybe they are. But as I stand there, I catch a shallow lift of a chest. The twitch of fingers in the wet sand.
I don’t know if it’s real. I don’t know if it’s hope or madness.
But I believe it anyway. Because survival isn’t logical.
It’s stubborn. It’s desperate. I know more than anyone how it can defy the odds.
Especially when you let the right people in.
I slide into the Valkyrie, the engine rumbling to life under my hands. The seat sticks against my skin, salt and soot clinging to everything. I don’t care. I don’t look back. There’s nothing left for me here. In this haunted house that held my childhood nightmares.
It’s all in the past now. Burned down to nothing but smoldering ash.
There was never anything but Elle. She’s my present. My future.
So I drive toward her. Toward the only thing that ever mattered to me.
***
The drive back to the safe house drags torturously slow. Even with the Valkyrie snarling, every mile grinds against my bones.
When I finally pull up, Stan’s sports car sits crooked on the gravel, the driver’s door left hanging open like an afterthought.
It sets my teeth on edge. I stalk past and slam it shut. The metal groans. A little harder and I would’ve cracked the frame. It still wouldn’t have been enough to bleed off the rage.
The safe house is dark except for a few flickering lights. I walk up and step inside. And then I see her.
Elle. Running toward me barefoot, her hair tangled, eyes swollen with tears. The second she reaches me, I lose my breath. She collides with enough force to knock me back a step, arms tight around my ribs.
I catch her easily. One hand fists in her hair, the other pulls her closer to me. As close as I can have her in my arms.
Around us, I sense motion. Damon taking a step forward, Stan reaching out. But Kaye cuts them both off with a sharp command under her breath.
I murmur words against Elle’s temple—something useless and desperate—and she tightens her grip around me like she can feel the words without needing to understand them.
After a breath, I carry her to the bathroom, kicking the door closed behind us with more force than necessary. The water hisses to life under my hands, steam thickening the air in an instant.
Elle watches me silently. Eyes wide, breath uneven, hands still locked in my shirt.
I peel the soot-stained clothes from both of us. My hands stay steady. Even as everything inside me screams to claim her. To prove she’s alive. That we both are.
Our clothes hit the floor wet and heavy. The water is hot, almost too hot, but she follows me in anyway, skin to skin.
I cradle her head against my shoulder. Let the water run through her hair and down her shivering spine. Her hands move over me, tracing the lines of my chest, like she’s relearning every part of me in search of the comfort I know she needs.
“I’m here with you, Elle,” I murmur. “I’m not going anywhere.”
She nods. Her lips press to my chest, right over my heart.
We stay like this, locked under the water, until everything else washes away. Until all that’s left is us.
***
Days slip by like smoke. The safe house stays silent around us. The world beyond here fades, leaving only the hush that holds us together.
The others hover at a distance. Kaye checks in with care. Damon watches and supports her. Stan cracks jokes for all of us. But they know better than to intrude.
Elle lies against me in our bed. She’s wearing one of my old flannels, the fabric swallowing her, sleeves hanging past her fingertips.
The hem brushes her thighs. Her skin is soft where it meets the fabric, warm beneath my hands.
The scars along her legs catch the light now and then.
She looks like a dream despite the nightmares we keep surviving.
Her cheek rests over my heart, her pulse keeping up with mine. I hold her closer, one hand stroking slow over the curve of her spine. My other hand holds up one of my journals as she smiles tenderly at me.
“Read it to me,” she whispers. “I want to know everything.”
So I do. Even when the words feel raw in my throat, I give them to her. “Friday, April 13th,” I read. “The day I made my first mistake. The day I decided never to harm a woman or a child ever again.”
She nuzzles her cheek into my chest, listening. I read a few more lines, trying to keep my breath even. Time passes slow. My lungs hurt. But I keep reading for her.
“When my fingers brushed the back of her, she wrenched forward, faster than I expected,” I continue, my mouth dry. “She was that horrified of me when all I wanted to do was say sorry. Her and the little boy in her arms had nothing to do with why I was there, to kill—”
I stop, the words cutting off sharp in my throat.
Elle lifts her head to look at me. There are tears in her eyes, but her expression is open and patient.
I close the journal carefully, letting it rest on the nightstand. Then I pull her tighter into my arms and hold her.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper into her hair.
It costs me more than anything else I’ve ever said.
“I’m so fucking sorry, Elle.”
She shakes her head, pressing her forehead against my jaw.
“You didn’t hurt me,” she says carefully like she knows how easily I could shatter right now. “You tried to protect me. Even if you didn’t know it.”
Her hand drifts up, fingers tracing over my heart.
“I don’t remember everything all that clearly yet,” she says, her voice almost a hush, “but while you were reading, a memory came to me. I remember more about the first time I saw you.”
A tiny, broken smile pulls at her mouth.
“You had the same haircut,” she murmurs. “Faded on the sides. Your bangs falling over your mask. I could see the silver-white back then, even with your hood on. Wearing all black, trying to blend into the night.”
I can’t breathe for a second. I drink in the sound of her putting pieces of her broken memories together. I remember it all like it was yesterday.
“It was four years ago,” she says, stroking her thumb along my jaw. “I was hiding in a closet with my brother. We watched from there and saw what you had to do. What you were told to do.”
I tense, but she keeps tracing over my heart, keeps anchoring me to every word from her lips.
“My parents weren’t good people,” she says. “That’s a terrible truth we can’t ever change.”
She stretches her legs, bare and marked. The sight of her burned skin twists my stomach into knots.
The rage builds fast, but the guilt presses harder.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “You were just kids.”
Her eyes stay kind, in a way I don’t know how to accept. “Sterling…” she whispers. “So were you.”
My heart stops at her words. She leans up and kisses my jaw. Her fingers card through my hair. Her breasts press against my chest. The feel of her pulse on mine restarts my heartbeat.
“I wasn’t afraid of you, Sterling. I was sad for you because you looked so alone.”
Her smile’s still faint, but it breaks me open.
“I remember seeing you with blood on your hands,” she says. “You didn’t leave right after what you had to do. You were on your knees, staring at your hands, almost as if you weren’t sure how the red got on them or how to get rid of it.”
Her voice shakes. I squeeze her other hand.
“I’m remembering more of my childhood lately,” she says. “Mostly how lonely and scared I was for years… How I kept pretending I was strong, when most days I felt like I was breaking in half just trying to get through the day.”
I can’t breathe. I can’t look away.
“But since you stayed by my side, I haven’t felt afraid or alone. All you do is make me feel safe, Sterling. Like I’m not a book with missing pages, but one that has more pages to be filled. To finally write my own story.”
Her eyes meet mine, steady through the tears.
“Even though we met through fire and darkness, it led me to you. To loving you, Sterling.”
My chest caves. The guilt hits harder than anything Clo ever carved into me. Because I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve her.
I was there when her story started falling apart. When the fire took her family and Kys warped her mind. When she was just a girl and I was a boy made into a weapon pretending not to see where her story would lead to.
I failed her long before I ever held her.
Long before I knew what it meant to love her.
And now she’s looking at me like I’m the reason she believes she still has pages left in her story.
When I’m not the reason she can rewrite herself—she is.
She’s powerful all on her own. She can make monsters behave.
She can breathe life into bones that have only known pain and suffering.
My hands shake. I press them on her anyway. I need to feel that she’s still here, alive and safe. I want to tell her she’s wrong. That I’m still the monster she keeps letting in. That I’ll never forgive myself for not saving her sooner.
But then she says, “Thank you, Sterling.”
The monster inside me falls silent at her words. Her voice has been the only thing that’s ever reached the part of me I thought was too dead to be revived.
She opens her mouth, looking like she’s trying hard to push the words out into the open.
I kiss her hair, showing her I’m listening. That there’s nothing she could ever say or do that would change the way I feel about her.
“I’m not proud of this, but ever since I was little, I’d pray for my parents to disappear,” she confesses. “Every night, I prayed for that. I knew what they were doing was wrong. I tried to stop them. But they found ways to stop me first.”
Her breath catches. She hides her face in the crook of my neck.
“They nearly let me die each time I fought back,” she says. “But I wouldn’t give up.”
My brows furrow while I rock her gently.
“I wanted revenge,” she whispers. “I wanted them to pay for all the suffering they’ve caused. But I knew if I did it myself, I’d never be able to live with it.”
Her trembling fingers thread through my hair. Her nails scrape into my scalp.
“And then you came along,” she says with a shaky sigh. “You took the weight off my shoulders. You carried it so I wouldn’t have to.”
Tears sting my eyes. I let them fall.
She pulls away, scaring me for a second until I see her smile and feel her steady hands cup my jaw. Her eyes lock onto mine with awe I don’t deserve directed at me.
“Sterling, what I’m trying to say is…” Her voice breaks beautifully. “You truly are a dokkaebi.”
The air leaves my lungs in a shudder. Her thumbs brush my damp cheekbones.
“I don’t remember every detail,” she says, “but someone used to tell me stories. Sometimes a dokkaebi hears the pleas of desperate people and chooses which ones to answer.”
She stares into my eyes. I remember them brown, but they’re just as brilliant as blue.
“You answered mine,” she whispers. “You didn’t just save me. You took away everything that tried to cage me. You’ve set me free, and everyone else, from Kys.”
I wait for a heartbeat. When she doesn’t say anything else, I crush my mouth to hers. Kissing her like I’ll never get enough. I won’t. But I pull back to let her breathe. “I didn’t care about taking down Kys,” I say against her lips. “None of it ever mattered. Until you.”
Her tears fall fast, trailing down her cheeks. Mine follow. There’s nothing left in me to stop them.
“I did it all for you, Elle,” I whisper. “Only you.”
“I know,” she breathes. “I think…I always knew.”
Before a desperate sob can break free, I bury my face into her hair, breathing her in, grounding myself in the only thing that has ever mattered in my life.
Elle. The girl who survived. The woman who saved me. The only soul in this broken, burning world I will ever belong to.
She’s my breath. My blood. My beginning and my end. My reason to keep breathing when everything else feels like ash.
My heart beats for her. Breaks for her. Builds itself back into something stronger just for her.
The world could burn to nothing and I wouldn’t care. As long as she’s mine. As long as she knows I’m hers.
I press my quivering lips to her temple, close my eyes, and let the truth settle, absolute and final. This is what it feels like to survive the fire. To stay, even after every failure. To love her, even knowing I’ll never deserve her.
I’ll keep being the man who earns her every smile, every kiss, and every quiet act of her never-ending forgiveness.
“Elle,” I say, sounding shattered. “Stay with me.”
“Of course I will,” she whispers with a soft laugh.
Her voice is light. But her words carry a heavy oath. One that settles deep into this useless soul she saved and claimed as her own.
“Always and forever, Sterling.”