Chapter 29
PENELOPE
Autumn arrives on a blustery October evening with a heavy drop of rust coloured leaves and a cold dousing of rain.
It’s been months since our Pairing. Months since his hands last anchored me to something solid. We only had half of the summer together before Billy was sent away.
The absence of him has become its own hunger, chomping away inside of me like razor sharp teeth torturously nibbling their way into my marrow.
The days blur together in this place, endless halls full of the same faces that once carved fear into my skin, the same whispered prayers that once held me down.
Without him, every shadow feels sharper, every footstep too loud, every silence too deep.
I try to breathe the way he taught me, steady and slow, but the air tastes wrong without him in it.
They say he’s away on a job, but no one tells me what or why or when he’ll return.
Sometimes I think they like watching me wither, alone.
Sometimes I think they can smell the fear on me.
Billy’s brothers seem to circle me like a school of piranha, watching as I descend lower and lower into the water, but ultimately waiting to attack.
Because I am afraid, terrified of who I become when he’s not here to pull me back from the dark, terrified that one day I’ll look up and realise I’ve been waiting for someone who isn’t coming back to me at all.
I’m trying to hold on. But every night gets harder, the days get longer, and I don’t know how much longer I can survive in a world where his absence is the only thing that fills the heaving bosom of my chest.
I’ve done this before.
Endured his absence.
But it’s different this time.
I was alone before. Navigating life without knowing what it was like with him in it. I know now. What it’s like. How he fills me, how he sees me, makes me whole.
Protects me.
The graveyard is the only place where the walls don’t feel like they’re closing in. Slowly, I walk between the stones, my fingers brushing the cold granite edges as if they might answer me, as if the dead might offer the comfort the living never do.
Mist clings to the ground in pale ribbons, curling around my ankles like something trying to keep me here, and for a moment I let it.
It’s peaceful in a way that feels dangerous, like the world is holding its breath just to hear mine break.
I stop beside an unmarked grave, weather worn and crumbling, I stare down, wondering if this is what waiting feels like, a slow burial in reverse, dirt piling up inside instead of out.
I imagine him beside me, his hand in mine, guiding me through the darkness like he always did, and the ache of it nearly folds me in half.
I’ve never felt more alive than when he’s near, and I’ve never felt more ghost than now, walking through a place meant for the lost, fitting, maybe, because that’s all I am without him.
I have never really felt like anything without him.
It’s not that I can’t get by on my own.
It’s that I don’t want to.
I have never wanted to.
He was all I ever saw whenever I thought of my future.
He and I together.
A big house full of dark rooms and low lights, just Billy and I.
Lovesick little demons creeping in the dark.
But in that house, in this place, a gothic estate locked in by sky high iron fences with razor tops and twenty-four hour armed guard, I’m anything but safe.
Their attention crawls over me now, bold in ways it never was when he stood at my side.
The cult speaks in murmurs that stop the moment I enter a room, their gazes lingering too long, too hungrily, as if recalculating my value without the man who once shielded me.
Even though I am supposed to be one of them, equal, untouchable, Billy’s absence has become an open wound, and they gather around it, scenting blood.
Every rustle of a robe feels like a threat, every soft chant sounds like a decision being made in a language I don’t understand, meant to exclude me.
I can feel the shift, subtle, poisonous, inevitable.
They are remembering what they once did to me, and realising there is no one here now to ensure they can’t do it again.
Hail begins as a whisper, soft, cold taps against stone, then suddenly the heavens open, pelting the graveyard with shards of ice that sting like thrown gravel.
I flinch beneath the first barrage, breath catching, and instinct sends me sprinting towards the nearest shelter.
The mausoleum door groans as I force it open, slipping inside just as the storm crescendos.
Suddenly, darkness swallows me whole, thick and stale, and I press a shaking hand against the wall, searching. My fingers skim along cold marble, then metal, the outline of the door. The hinges shriek when I push it, and a rush of cold damp, subterranean air washes over me.
That’s when I realise what I’ve stumbled upon, instead of the door I entered through taking me back the way I came, I descend into the tunnels.
I know I shouldn’t. Everything in me telling me not to do it, not to go, to turn around.
That I won’t like what I find. But there’s this other little piece of me, this tiny festering rot, that urges me onwards, luring me farther into the labyrinth beneath Raven Ridge Manor.
Heart hammering, breath fogging the cold as I venture deeper.
The further I go, the more the storm fades, replaced by the low hum of the estate breathing above me.
I follow the winding paths, lit by warm sconces, desperately scanning for an exit, a forgotten grate, a broken ladder, anything to pull me beyond these cursed grounds.
Hope flares once, fragile and trembling.
Maybe I can slip out. Maybe I can disappear before they decide my fate.
But then I hear it.
Footsteps.
Heavy.
Familiar.
The sound burrows into my bones before my mind even catches up.
Him.
The man who hurt me. The man whose face I still see in my dreams, nightmares, scars carved into my skin, daggered through my hands.
Balor steps into view, blocking the narrow corridor with a smile that curdles my blood.
My breath stutters, panic clawing straight up my throat.
And I run.
I don’t think, don’t breathe, don't pray, I just run, the tunnel spinning around me as terror takes me by the spine and drags me forward. The air tastes like metal. The walls feel like they’re caving in.
Footsteps pound behind me, faster, too close, hunting.
And every echo reminds me just how alone I am.
I slam my shoulder into a rusted door at the end of the tunnel, praying it gives, and it does.
A mausoleum erupts around me in a burst of cold light and dust as I stumble out, scraping my palms on stone, lungs burning.
The storm has passed, leaving only the echo of dripping branches and the sharp scent of shattered hail melting into the earth.
I suck in a desperate breath, freedom, open air, sky, and sprint towards the nearest row of crypts, feet slipping on wet grass.
I barely make it ten steps before the world is ripped out from under me.
His weight slams into my back, hard, crushing, driving me straight into the ground.
Knocking the breath from my chest, splitting my lip as it crushes against my teeth, leaving me tasting copper and dirt.
I claw at the earth, kick, fight, but his hands press against my spine, my skull, pinning me with brutal familiarity.
His breath hits my ear, rancid and triumphant, and despite his silence, I can hear what he’s saying.
You thought you could run?
Terror detonates behind my ribs. I twist, gasping, nails tearing at his grip, at the ground, at anything that might save me. My vision blurs. Heartbeat turning feral. I’m screaming without sound, body thrashing beneath him.
He’s tearing at my clothes, ripping the fabric in his haste to get it off, and then a chain is connecting with my spine, making me cry out, squeeze my eyes closed, feeling him lash me with it again and again.
I feel faint, sick, dizzy, like I’m not really here, my soul swaying, caught somewhere between life and death.
But then I feel it.
Another presence.
Another shadow falling over us.
Heavy.
Dangerous.
Charging the air with something electric.
Balor goes still. Freezing above me. His entire weight crushing me into the consecrated earth beneath. But I’m forcing my head up from the mud, craning my neck, eyes stinging, breath ragged, I see boots.
Scuffed toes, worn black leather, unlaced. The hem of a familiar long grey coat, dripping wet from the storm. A black shirt, the top few buttons open, proudly displaying his branding. A ‘two’ in roman numerals.
Billy stands over us like a judgment.
A storm that never needed the sky.
His face is carved from something lethal, quiet, controlled, but dark enough to make the air around him vibrate. His bright eyes fall to mine, and the fury behind them softens just barely, just enough to let me see him.
I feel Balor’s grip falter. His confidence drain.
I feel salvation settle on my skin like a second heartbeat.
His.
My dark menacing god.
Without even removing his coat, Billy moves. Dropping into a crouch, his hands on Balor’s shoulders, wrenching him half off me, and then he’s kneeling on Balor’s back.
And Billy is staring down at me, his face only mere inches above mine. My chin and cheek pressed into the damp earth, dirt in my flaring nostrils, between my teeth. His elbows are bent, almost flush with the cold earth, fingers splayed wide, rough palms holding down the back of Balor’s head.
His entire body weight is pressing into the crown of Balor’s skull.
Billy’s knees wide, pressed to the ground, his thighs straight, hips lifted up where he rests down and forward, weight onto his shoulders, intense pressure on the struggling man’s cranium.
Suffocating him with only the consecrated ground beneath us.