Chapter 14 Elior
Elior
I’d watched him unlock it a hundred times. Muscle memory, maybe. Or maybe I just paid attention to him in a way I never quite knew how to pay attention to myself.
The screen lit up, and then it was too late to stop. One click was all it took.
CULT LEADER ARRESTED IN WIDENING INVESTIGATION
Below it, smaller text.
Questions Remain About the Other Members—Including His Son
I stared at it for a long time, my thumb hovering uselessly above the glass. My heart didn’t sink as I expected it to. I didn’t feel nauseous or lightheaded. My thoughts didn’t race.
I just felt… tired.
When I tapped the article, more appeared beneath it.
INSIDE THE COVENANT: WHAT DID THEY KNOW?
WHY IS ELIOR RANSOM FREE WHILE MALACHI RANSOM AWAITS TRIAL?
SURVIVOR—OR ACCOMPLICE?
DEATH CULT? FBI DIGS UP SEVERAL BODIES ON PROPERTY
That one made my throat ache, but still no tears came.
I wondered, distantly, if my lack of tears meant I was doing better. Or if it meant I was just running out of whatever part of me used to react.
One article talked about indoctrination. Another talked about radicalization. Someone used the phrase religious extremism.
The comments under the articles were numerous, but I stopped reading after a few.
“He had to know.”
“No way he didn’t help.”
“They’re protecting him.”
“Lock him up, too.”
I waited for something to snap inside me—for the panic to kick in. But nothing happened.
Was this what “no tears left to cry” meant?
When Jace swore, I looked up.
His face wasn’t angry. Not really. It was shocked, then tight with something like fear, like he’d just realized he was already too late to catch me before I fell.
“I remembered your password,” I said, because it was the only true thing I could find fast enough, “from watching you do it.”
I waited for myself to apologize—for my mouth to shape the word sorry the way it had been trained to.
It didn’t come.
I didn’t tell him what I’d read. I didn’t tell him about the headlines or the comments or the way my name looked in all caps, dissected by people who had never once had a conversation with me.
I just felt tired.
It felt like the aftermath of a storm that had already passed, leaving everything soaked and flattened and too damaged to fix. Like when a tornado tears through a town, and the survivors just stand there looking at all the destruction.
“Elior,” Jace called, softly enough that it barely disturbed the air.
I looked at him.
“I didn’t—I told you—” He stopped himself. I saw it happen, the way he swallowed whatever instinct he had to take control of the situation. “How much did you see?”
I searched myself for the answer.
“A little,” I said finally, setting the phone down on the cushion beside me. My hands fell into my lap afterward, useless and heavy.
“I’m not upset,” I added, because his eyes were already darkening with worry. “I mean, I am. But not… like before.”
His brow furrowed. “That doesn’t sound better.”
I huffed out something that might’ve been a laugh if I’d had more energy. “I know.”
The exhaustion seeped deeper the longer I sat there, settling into my bones. It wasn’t sleepiness. It was the kind of tired that made existing feel too difficult.
“I think,” I said slowly, testing the words as they left my mouth, “I don’t have the energy to be scared anymore.”
That finally made him move.
He crossed the room in two long strides and dropped to his knees in front of me, his hands resting on my thighs.
I stared into his eyes, falling into those beautiful pools of a brown so dark it was almost black. With the tip of my pointer finger, I reached over and traced the strong lines of his face.
“I love you,” I murmured.
“What do you need me to do?”
I stared past him for a moment, at the dark television screen, at the faint reflection of us both in it. This was how we’d started, too, wasn’t it?
“I’m not sure.”
Jace leaned into my touch as I rested my palm along his jaw.
The shift was subtle, but it stole the breath from my lungs anyway—the way his weight followed my hand, the way his eyes softened for me without ever losing their sharpness.
He was still alert, still coiled tight beneath the surface like a guard dog that hadn’t been dismissed.
His shoulders were tense, his spine straight even on his knees, like he was ready to spring up at the slightest threat.
But he stayed there.
For me.
It struck me all at once, not like a revelation but like a puzzle piece finally settling into place. This dangerous man was kneeling in front of me, letting my fingers map the planes of his face like they were the only instructions that mattered.
His jaw clenched under my palm, not pulling away, not resisting. If anything, he leaned closer, his hands tightening slightly on my thighs as if to ground himself. His eyes never left my face, dark and intent, tracking every flicker of thought like I was the most important thing in the room.
And I think I truly was to him.
“I’d do anything for you, El. Just tell me what you need.”
I believed him when he said he’d do anything for me. I knew he wasn’t just talking about comforting me or feeding me dinner. No. He was talking about things that shouldn’t be said out loud.
He was choosing me. Over and over. Choosing restraint when every instinct in him wanted to tear outward. Choosing to kneel instead of stand. Choosing to wait instead of act.
If I wanted him to ruin his own life, he would.
I’d never had that kind of power before.
My thumb brushed along his cheekbone, and I felt the faint hitch in his breath.
My throat tightened, not with panic, but with something like awe.
Then my mind suddenly reminded me of the last headline I’d read.
“Did they dig Mother up?”
Jace didn’t answer right away.
His hands were warm through the fabric of my pants, but the pressure changed—firmer now, like he was bracing himself. His jaw worked once, twice. When he finally looked away, it wasn’t guilt exactly. It was calculation. Fear of saying the wrong thing. Fear of saying the right one.
“Tell me the truth,” I said quietly.
His eyes snapped back to mine.
“I always do,” he said, too fast.
I tilted my head just a fraction. “No,” I murmured. “You don’t.” His mouth opened, about to interrupt. “It’s okay, I just… I need to know the truth now. I need to know what you haven’t been telling me.”
Silence stretched.
Jace exhaled through his nose, slow and controlled, like he was forcing himself not to bolt. His voice came out rougher when he finally spoke, scraped raw around the edges.
“Yes, they exhumed the graves,” he said.
I waited.
“They dug them up,” he clarified, quieter now. “All of them.”
My fingers went numb where they rested on his face. “All of who?”
He swallowed. “The people who died on the compound.”
I shook my head, confused. “Only my mother died there…”
He didn’t nod. Didn’t shake his head either. Just held my gaze like he was daring me to look away first.
“I… How many?” I frowned, trying to sift through years of my memories all at once, looking for anything amiss.
“Elior…”
“How many?” I repeated, my voice sharp.
“Nine, including your mother.”
My chest throbbed, and my brows creased. “So, Father is in trouble for hiding the deaths?”
He hesitated.
My hand dropped from his face.
“Jace,” I urged.
“He’s in trouble for that, yeah. But…” he closed his eyes in a grimace, “the bigger issue is that investigators suspect foul play. Either by your father directly or orchestrated by him.”
The words felt wrong. Slippery. Like they didn’t quite belong together.
I blinked at him.
“…What does that mean? ‘Foul play?’”
For a moment, something unreadable crossed his face—something almost like pain. He took my hand in his, and brought it up to his face, leaning his cheek into my palm.
“They believe your father killed them.”
The world tilted.
“No,” I said, because that was the only word I had. “I mean, you know Mother died from giving birth to me. I’m not sure about the others, but Father…” Father what? Father wouldn’t? Isn’t that what I had thought before he whipped me?
Jace’s fingers wrapped around my hand again, pulling it from his face to hold it between both of his.
My ears rang. “I don’t know about the others—I-I don’t remember anyone dying, but Mother… he wouldn’t. Why would they think that?”
“Because,” he cut in, then stopped himself. His grip tightened just a little, his voice dropping lower, rougher, threaded with something dark, “because they had the remains examined. Some of them were in late stages of decay, but most were skeletal, meaning those ones have been dead longer.”
I stared at him, my thoughts moving like they were trapped in syrup.
He winced at whatever he found on my face. “I don’t want to tell you, cherub. Please. You shouldn’t hear the details. You’re too soft for this. I can’t—”
“I need to know,” I whispered. “I can’t believe he would do something like that. I won’t. Unless you tell me what they found.”
“Fuck,” he muttered. “A single bullet wound, entering from the back of her skull.”
I stared at Jace, waiting for the rest of the sentence to come along and make it make sense.
It didn’t.
“A… bullet?” I repeated, testing the word like it might dissolve if I said it wrong. “Like from a gun?”
His jaw tightened. He nodded once. “Yeah,” he answered.
My mind refused to follow. It just… stalled. Slid sideways.
“No,” I said, my voice oddly calm. “No, they must have mixed her up with someone else.”
“Baby…”
My fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt without me noticing. “How do they know it’s her? How do they—”
“DNA testing. It’s her, baby. I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t know what that is,” I cried, becoming frustrated at my limited vocabulary.
His eyes softened in a way that almost hurt to see. “It’s a test they can use to identify people from their fluids or hair or—I’m not sure how to explain it in a way that makes sense to you, but it’s accurate, sweetheart. It’s her.”
I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. “Then why—why would Father… I thought it was my fault. Daddy, I—”
Jace surged forward, arms coming around me before the thought could finish forming. He pulled me against his chest, one hand cradling the back of my head, pressing my face into the warmth of him.
“Did he tell you that? That she died because of you?” he asked, voice vibrating through me.
I nodded just barely. It was enough.
“I should’ve killed him while I had the chance,” he growled.
Jace’s arms tightened, possessive and protective, like he could physically hold the past away from me if he tried hard enough.
I pulled back just enough to look at Jace. His expression had changed—still gentle with me, but beneath it something had surfaced, something cold and dangerous.
“You knew,” I said softly. “Didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“I started to suspect it when we were still at the compound,” he admitted.
“I found her birth certificate while searching one of the buildings. I just had a feeling, so I asked Patel to do some research. He found out that her parents had reported her missing, and there was never any death under her name reported to the state. It wasn’t until recently that I found out the autopsy results.
I knew I had to tell you, I just didn’t know how. ”
His thumb brushed under my eye, catching the wetness there before I even realized tears had started to fall.
I laughed.
The sound ripped out of me, sudden and wrong, like something breaking instead of releasing. It startled me—this ugly, breathless bark of laughter that didn’t belong in my chest. Jace stiffened immediately, arms tightening, like he thought I’d finally lost it.
Maybe I had.
“I’m sorry,” I said, still laughing, because apparently my mouth had stopped listening to my brain.
“I just—” Another laugh cut off halfway through, collapsing into a sob so guttural it knocked the air from my lungs.
My face crumpled before I could stop it, the sound tearing out of my throat like it had been waiting its turn.
Jace made a distraught sound and pulled me closer, one hand pressing between my shoulder blades, the other still cradling my head. He didn’t shush me or tell me to breathe. He just held me.
“I keep thinking,” I choked, words tripping over each other, “that I finally understand my life. That I finally know what happened. And then—then something else cracks open, and there’s more underneath.
” I sucked in a shaky breath that burned all the way down.
“It’s like—like a floor falling out from under another floor.
There’s never any ground.” My hands fisted in his shirt, knuckles aching.
“Every time I think I’ve reached the truth, it turns out it was just another lie. ”
“My whole life,” I whispered hoarsely. “Everything I believed. Mother. The Light. Father. Me.” I let out another broken laugh that dissolved into tears again. “It was all built on a story he made up.”
“I don’t know who I am,” I admitted, the words finally slowing, heavy and scared.
“If Mother didn’t die because of me… if he lied about that…
then what else did he decide for me? What parts of me aren’t even mine?
” I pressed my face harder into his chest, voice muffled.
“It feels like my life was written by someone else, and I was just… acting it out. I’m so tired of it, Jace. I’m so tired.”
His hand slid up and down my back, steady and grounding. When he spoke, his voice was low and controlled. “I know, baby. I know you’re tired.”
Jace pulled back just enough to look at me, his hands firm on my arms, forcing me to meet his eyes. They burned with certainty.
“You don’t have to know who you are yet.
But I can tell you the parts that I see.
You’re so strong, but so soft. So in love with the simple things.
You appreciate the things that no one ever thinks to appreciate.
You’re resilient, like a dandelion growing through a crack in concrete.
You can bloom no matter where you are or what chaos is happening around you.
You may not have discovered all of yourself yet, but we have time.
We have all the time in the world, cherub.
And no matter what you find, I’ll be there. ”
Another sob tore free, quieter this time.
“Even if it’s ugly? Dandelions are weeds, you know.” I hiccuped through the tears, smiling shakily up at him.
“They’re only weeds to those who’re mad they can’t get rid of them,” he said, kissing my forehead. “And we’ll never be around people like that anymore.”
“Promise?”
“I promise, sweet boy.”
And as the grief kept breaking and breaking inside me, I let myself believe that maybe—just maybe—this was the one thing that wasn’t a lie.