Chapter 27 Aftershocks #2
The question echoed in the emptiness of my mind, a persistent knocking with no answer forthcoming.
Princess seemed a hollow title, a remnant from another life that grew more distant with each passing day.
Mireille felt equally foreign—that name belonged to someone who had agency, choices, dignity. None of which remained to me.
The bruises would fade eventually. Days, perhaps weeks, but they would recede, leaving my skin unmarked once more.
But the bruises beneath—the ones on my soul, my sense of self—those might never heal.
They would remain, phantom aches to remind me of this night, this surrender, this breaking point that had revealed something terrible about myself…
that pleasure could exist alongside hatred, that my body could betray me so completely.
I closed my eyes, exhaustion pulling at me with greedy hands. Sleep would bring no real rest, I knew. Only nightmares woven from memories still too fresh to fade. But unconsciousness beckoned nonetheless, promising temporary escape from the reality of my existence.
The silence of the cell wrapped around me, no longer accusatory or suffocating but simply.
.. empty. A vacuum where sound should exist, where life should flourish.
In that emptiness, my thoughts grew louder, more insistent—a chorus of self-recrimination that threatened to drown out even the dull throb of physical pain.
“Mireille…”
The whisper came so softly I thought I’d imagined it—a product of my exhausted mind, conjuring comfort where none existed. But then it came again, barely audible through the stone that separated us.
“Mireille.”
My harbinger’s voice. Deep and resonant even in its gentleness, carrying no mockery or indifference. Gone was the sardonic edge that accompanied the last words he said to me, replaced by something almost... tender.
It cut like glass against my raw emotions.
Because tenderness was more dangerous than cruelty. Cruelty I understood. Cruelty had rules.
Yet the sound of his voice after so long sent a tremor through me, something perilously close to relief slicing through the fog of shame and exhaustion.
Still, he had said my pain meant nothing. That he would watch me break as long as he got his freedom. What purpose would answering him serve, other than my own disappointment?
So I stayed silent until his attention grew unbearable.
“Go away,” I whispered, the words raw in my throat.
A pause, then, “I cannot.”
Something in his voice, a faint, strained note, made me lift my head. Was that... guilt? No, impossible. Death didn’t feel guilt. He had made that abundantly clear.
“Then continue your silence,” I said, pulling my arms tighter around me. “Since I am not near death, your assistance is not required. And I see no reason for you to speak with me.”
I did not regret the words, harsh as they were, as for a moment, I got what I wanted. Silence. Blessed, aching silence.
But, of course, it didn’t last.
A sigh slipped through the stone—long, ragged, tired in a way that sounded centuries old.
“Stars above,” he murmured, the words falling more like a curse than a prayer. “I... should not have said what I did. I do not think of you as merely noise.”
My breath caught in my throat. Was my harbinger... apologizing? The concept seemed so foreign, so unbelievable that for a moment I wondered if I’d finally lost my mind completely.
“What?” I breathed, barely able to shape the word.
“I… I am trying to apologize,” he said, voice low, tense. My eyes widened at the confession—at the impossibility of hearing such words from him. “I have not... spoken to anyone in a very long time. Longer than you could fathom. And you—“
He paused, and I heard the faint clink of chains as he shifted, as if uncomfortable.
“I forget, sometimes, that words can wound just as deeply as blades. And I needed you to understand…”
Another pause, this one punctuated with a quiet, bitter breath.
“I did not expect even the possibility of freedom. Not in your lifetime. And if the price of one chain removed was watching the only soul I’ve wanted to speak to in decades nearly die, just to heal her again—“
His voice broke off, not in anguish, but with something almost like self-contempt.
“I would still make that choice. If the offer came again, I would not refuse.” He exhaled sharply, like the admission stung. “So I told myself it was better to fail you now. Better that you hate me early, before you expect too much.”
A pause. Then, softly—
“Because I will fail you, Mireille. Eventually.”
The silence that followed his confession, his almost-apology, dripped with its heaviness. I hardly knew how to respond.
The only soul he’d wanted to speak to. In decades.
Not insignificant, then. Something more, though I couldn’t fathom what that might mean to a prisoner.
“Fail me how?” The question slipped out before I could stop it, my voice barely above a breath.
Another pause, longer this time. When he spoke again, his voice carried the weight of centuries. “By being what I am. By being unable to save you from this. By watching your light dim night after night while I remain shackled.”
My throat constricted. Light. He thought I still had light worth preserving. After what had just happened, after my body’s betrayal, after the sounds I’d made—he saw something in me worth protecting.
“There is no light left,” I whispered, the admission scraping against my bruised lips. “He’s taken it all. Piece by piece, night by night. And tonight...” The rest died in my throat.
I couldn’t speak it. Not yet.
Not the truth of my body’s betrayal. Not the way desire had tangled with pain until I didn’t know which one I’d craved more.
And somehow—somehow—he understood. He didn’t push. Didn’t demand the pieces I couldn’t yet give. Instead, his voice came soft. Unsteady.
“Come here.”
Two words, but they shook me more than all the silence that came before. Death’s voice, stripped of any chill, was… gentle. Almost hesitant.
“To the front of your cell,” he said. “Where the wall meets the bars.”
I stared into the darkness, my body still curled tight against itself. Moving meant uncurling from my protective position. Moving meant acknowledging the pain in every inch of my body. Moving meant facing him—or at least the sound of him—after what he had heard.
“I can’t,” I breathed. A half-truth. Physically, I could move, despite the pain. It was the other barriers that seemed insurmountable.
“You can,” he contradicted me, but without heat. “Come to me.” His voice was so gentle, but still held a sliver of command, one that somehow carried more authority than Valen’s most violent threats.
My hesitation must have been palpable in the silence, for he spoke again, his words carrying a weight I couldn’t ignore.
“I cannot go to you, little fawn. Please, let me comfort you in the only way I can.”
The subtle strain in his voice made my decision for me.
I hesitated for one more moment, then slowly began to uncurl my limbs.
Pain radiated through muscles held too long in tension, joints stiff from the hours hanging from the ceiling.
I moved cautiously toward the wall that divided our cells, crawling across cold stone.
By the time I reached the bars, my breathing had grown shallow and rapid.
“I’m here,” I managed, resting my forehead against the cool metal. The contact soothed my heated skin, grounding me in my physical reality.
Then, movement caught my eye. Something emerging from the adjacent cell, reaching through bars and stopping before mine.
A hand.
Not a spectral limb or monstrous claw as I might have imagined from the one I called Death, but a human hand—large and masculine, with long fingers and a broad palm.
Strong but not brutish. His skin was pale, too pale, marked with a network of fine silver scars that caught what little light filtered into our cells.
This hand was unmistakably powerful—a hand that could snap bone as easily as it could offer his promised comfort.
I stared at the offered hand in shock. I hadn’t seen much of my harbinger when he healed me—my eyelids hadn’t cooperated long enough to focus.
Even knowing it was ridiculous, I had pictured him as a skeletal figure draped in shadows, or sometimes a spectral being that floated through walls.
The reality, this very human hand, was strangely reassuring.
“Take it,” he said, his fingers extending toward me in invitation. “If you wish.”
If I wish. Such a simple statement, but the choice it offered nearly undid me. When had I last been offered a choice about touch, about contact with another being? Valen took what he wanted. The guards did what was necessary. But this—this touch was presented as a decision for me to make.
I studied his hand with wary attention. The nails were clean but uneven, as if broken rather than cut.
A thin silver chain was wrapped several times around his wrist, disappearing up his unseen arm.
Despite the obvious strength in that hand, there was nothing threatening in how it waited, palm up, for my decision.
My hand trembled at my side, uncertainty warring with a sudden, inexplicable yearning for contact that wasn’t poisoned by cruelty or pity.
I found myself wanting to touch my harbinger so badly it frightened me—this pull toward a being I barely knew, who had admitted he would sacrifice me without hesitation for his own freedom.
“I will not hurt you,” Death said, though I knew the lie for what it was. Pain was the currency in all my relationships.
“Everyone hurts me,” I whispered. Yet even as the words left my lips, my hand moved of its own accord, reaching through the darkness toward his. My fingers hovered above his palm for a heartbeat, two, three—before finally descending to brush against his skin.