Chapter Four Elliot #3
I am on the floor in Jace’s apartment, curled so tight my spine feels like it might snap. My body is damp with sweat and tears, but I don’t make a sound. If I make a sound, it will never stop.
My face is mashed against the carpet. I can see each fiber, each fleck of grit and old skin. My arms are wrapped around my legs, hands locked together. My fingers are so cold I can’t feel them.
My heart is running at double speed, like it’s trying to escape my chest.
I stare at the wall and wait for the next hand to grab me.
But nothing does.
The silence is a new kind of violence.
My stomach lurches and I gag, but there’s nothing in me to bring up. I lick the inside of my cheek, searching for blood, but all I taste is the ghost of memories.
I drift in and out. The line between memory and now is thin as a breath.
I don’t know how long it is before the door opens.
Jace enters without a sound. The air around him is colder than the apartment, the pressure of his presence instantly crushing. His steps are silent, deliberate. He kneels beside me, eyes level with mine.
He doesn’t touch me. He waits. The room is so quiet I can hear his breathing.
He says, “You’re safe, now.”
But my body doesn’t believe it.
He studies me, the way you’d study a wounded animal, looking for signs of madness or rabies. His hand hovers at my shoulder, then lowers, but still doesn’t make contact.
“Elliot,” he says. He never uses my name. Not until now.
His voice is a lifeline, but it also yanks me under.
I flinch away, but the wall is there, no room to move. My hands come up in front of my face, palms open, a gesture I learned in the Auction, the way you show them you won’t fight.
He leans in, slow, never breaking eye contact.
“I’m going to touch your shoulder,” he says. “To make sure you’re here.”
He waits for a reaction. I can’t give him one.
He moves his hand, so slow I could count each hair on his arm. When he finally places it on my shoulder, the heat is immediate, burning through the shirt. It’s not pain. Not exactly. It’s just more than my body can hold.
The pressure of his hand is enough to bring everything crashing back.
I scream. Not a word, not a plea, just pure noise. It bursts out of me like a rupture, raw and animal. My throat tears on the first note. My ears ring.
Jace doesn’t flinch, but his face changes. I see, for the first time, something like shock. Like he didn’t expect me to have that much voice left.
I scream until my chest caves in, until there’s nothing left but a whimper.
Then I collapse. The floor is a raft. The world spins in tight, dark circles.
Jace takes his hand away.
He sits back on his heels, watching me breathe. I watch him through slitted eyes, expecting the next blow, the next order.
But there is none.
He waits.
Finally, when my breathing slows, he stands and leaves the room.
I don’t know what happens next.
I just keep breathing, waiting for the next lesson.
The apartment is silent after the scream. There’s no echo, just the tight click of my teeth as I grind them. Back and forth. Back and forth. The rawness in my throat feels like I’ve torn something loose.
I lie on the floor, breathing in short, animal gasps. I stare at the underside of the coffee table, watch the dust swirl in the light, focus on the numbers in the serial tag glued to the wood. Anything to keep from drifting again.
Jace stands in the hall, not moving. He watches me. I can feel the weight of it, but not the intent.
I expect him to return with a punishment, but the next sound is a cabinet door, the click of a lock, the soft slide of a tray.
When he returns, he carries a sealed case, the kind used for first aid but more expensive. He opens it on the couch and pulls out a syringe, a vial, an alcohol pad.
He sits cross-legged on the floor across from me, sets the kit to one side.
He speaks in that same, flat voice. “This will help you sleep.”
He holds up the syringe, draws the liquid slow and precise, flicks out the air bubbles with a practiced thumb.
“I’m going to give you something to calm you,” he says. “It is not harmful.”
He looks at my arm, at the thin skin just below the elbow. He waits for a sign of movement, but my body doesn’t resist. He swabs the skin, injects the needle, pushes the plunger in a steady, slow squeeze.
The chill of the drug spreads up my arm, then down, tracing the veins to my fingertips. My muscles unclench in one slow release.
Jace sets the needle aside and folds my arm over my chest.
He watches me, the way you’d watch a chemical reaction, waiting for it to finish.
As the sedative works, my breath slows. The shaking stops. Even the ache in my jaw and the pit in my stomach starts to dull.
He leans in, close but not touching. “You are not in danger,” he says. “You’re not in that place anymore.”
He waits until my eyes stop darting, until I can look at him.
“You’re safe here.”
The words make no sense. Nothing in my life prepares me for that.
He slips his arms under me. He lifts me with no effort, as if I weigh nothing at all.
I probably don’t.
I’m nothing but a skeleton.
A corpse.
A rotten egg.
His hands are warm, not rough. He holds me close, one arm behind my back, the other under my knees. The last person who carried me like this was my mother, but that’s a lifetime ago. She smelled of powder and warm skin; Jace smells like a man.
He carries me to the bedroom. The sheets are fresh. He sets me on the mattress and tucks the blanket up, not tight but just enough to cover.
He stands by the bed for a minute, watching my face, waiting to see if I will wake up or bolt.
But the drug is strong. My eyes blur. The ceiling pulses.
Jace turns off the light, closes the door.
In the dark, the only thing I feel is the lingering warmth where his hands were. It’s a different kind of pain. Not bad, but not good. Just a new thing my body can’t understand.
I drift, not back into the void, but into something soft, safe, and so unfamiliar it feels like a trick.
Before the world goes fully dark, I wonder if this is what it’s like to be breakable.
Maybe this is what it feels like to finally die.