Silence is Bliss?
Chapter twenty-three
Ione
The bathroom mirror doesn’t lie, but it also doesn’t tell the whole truth.
I pad downstairs without a word. He’s already there.
I can feel him before I see him—that unnatural stillness that hums beneath his skin like a storm waiting for permission.
He doesn’t speak, but he stares. Of course he stares.
I can see him out the corner of my eye but I don’t look back.
I just move around him, careful not to let him know that I am actively ignoring him.
"I made food," He says softer than I've ever heard him speak.
Breakfast is on the counter. Sausage, slightly burnt. Pancakes that lean like tired ruins. Eggs with that glossy sheen that means they’re not quite done.
He sets a plate in front of me. And he smiles.
I stare—at his mouth first. The fangs, sharp and crisp white.
Then the eyes. Both sets. They blink at different times.
The top then the bottom ones. I've gotten so used to it, staring at four eyes to look at another human with just 2 feels odd.
I take the plate to the table without a word, inclining my head—barely—a gesture that could be politeness or peace or exhaustion. All three, actually.
He follows. Of course he follows. Bastard knows what he did, what he said, and he's trying to make up for it. He doesn’t take the chair across from me—no, he slides in on the bench beside me, close enough to touch.
My fork tightens in my hand, but I don’t move.
Not yet. It’s Saturday. I don’t have shit to do and I don't have to play nice. I can just… not speak.
He watches me eat. Mimicking my moves. He doesn't speak either. When I finish, he gently—almost reverently—takes my plate. I let him. I don’t look up.
He washes the dishes. Ok, good, let him work.
I sit on the couch in my pajamas with the TV remote in my lap after turning on the first thing I see—a game show, just for background noise.
Athanasius sits beside me again. His lower left hand finds my thigh. Warm, heavy, deliberate.
I move away. It’s small, but it’s enough. He doesn’t follow.
There’s silence. The air is thick, I can feel words wanting to form in my throat. I want to curse him out, to yell and scream. No, he doesn't deserve my energy.
Then: “I’m sorry,” he says, voice low, edged with something jagged. “What I said… I said it because I wanted to be resolute. I didn’t want to appear weak. Not to them. Not to you.”
I don’t reply. My jaw tightens. He keeps going. I'm not even looking at the rude bastard, I can see him staring straight ahead, speaking, because he knows I'm listening.
“I have no intention of disgracing my true form by walking this realm.
That version of me is meant to end things, not live among them.
But you, Ione—" Oh, not rabbit, he's serious.
"You are to be the bearer of my will. You will enact my wishes. You will speak for me, carry me.” He turns toward me, leans closer, not touching now, but close enough to feel.
“I will convene with you in the form I have now. Only you. Always you.” His voice drops to something quieter.
“To deter now would be to become someone else. And I have never been that.”
His words sit in the air like a prayer I never asked for.
Only me. Always me.
And yet I’m still the one who felt, correction, feels disposable. An avatar when he called me his consort. Someone he can easily replace.
I stare at him for a long moment—two of his eyes watch my mouth, the other two flinch every time I breathe like I might say something sharp.
Good. Let him fucking think I might pop off and slap the shit out of him because that might feel really good right now.
No, I am an adult, I don't use my hands.
That's what I'm trying to tell myself, but the other half is really wanting to fuck him up.
What's he going to do? Call the cops? Ione, please…
“Then why?” My voice cracks before I mean it to, low and raw.
“Why say it like that? Why let me hear something so—so cold, so calculated?” He starts to speak but I shake my head, fast and sharp.
“No. You don’t get to pretend that was strategy.
That was cruelty. Do you even understand what it felt like to hear that?
Like I was nothing but a convenience? An avatar you get to fuck and use and then discard like I mean nothing to you?
" I press the heel of my hands against my eyes, but the tears push through anyway. God, I hate this. I hate this.
“I am scared to death of everything you want to do in your supervillain need to have some damn revenge." I whisper. “Hell, I am still here. I’m here, aren’t I? Still standing next to a creature who terrifies everyone but me. Still waking up and choosing this, even though you burned me.”
He’s silent. Watching. Too still. It only makes it worse.
“Do you know why it hurt so much?” I ask, suddenly standing to face him, voice rising.
“Because I love you. I care about you. I want all of you, in every terrifying, strange, impossible form.” What am I doing?
Why would I say that? I've surprised myself, hell, I've surprised him because his eyes, yes all of them, are wide. The words rip out of me now, hot and frantic. “So why the hell can’t you say that about me? What is so wrong, so unworthy, so human in me that you can’t love me back?”
I’m crying now—angry, embarrassed, cracked open. My shoulders shake, I just feel so full. I don't know what to do with myself, and I want to hate him, but I can’t. Not really. Not when he’s sitting there looking at me like I’m something holy and untouchable.
“I’m not asking you to become someone else,” I finish, voice breaking. “I’m asking you to be honest. With me.” And just like that, the room goes quiet again.
Only now, it’s full of everything we’ve been too afraid to say.
For a second, I think he’s going to stay silent again.
But then he stands. Not abruptly—like he’s afraid even that might scare me.
His lower hands are up, attempting to calm me.
Athanasius crosses the space between us and he kneels in front of me.
He takes my hand, pressing it against his forehead before he kisses my fingers.
Athanasius stands and his arms fold around me with a gentleness I didn’t think he was capable of.
Like I’m glass. Like he thinks he already broke me and is scared of doing it again.
He holds me, and for the first time in what feels like forever, I let myself fall against his chest.
“I do love you,” he murmurs, his voice rumbling low in his throat, not fragile but reverent.
“I love you like the stars love the earth. Watching from far away, burning silently, always there. Always seeing.” His fingers run along my spine, slow, anchoring.
“My love is like the stillness of the night sky,” he breathes against my hair.
“Vast. Endless. Too much for most to hold. But I would give it all to you.”
My breath hitches, and I can feel my fists curl on his bare chest, gripping like I might float away otherwise.
“I am nothing in my soul if not obsessive,” he says, a hint of that old fire curling beneath the words.
“And I will be obsessed with you, rabbit," He lifts my chin, wiping my tears.
"—for a day, for a century, for eternity.
When everyone else is gone, and their bones are dust, I'll carry your name into the void.”
And then he kisses me.
Slow, deep, full of everything we both refused to say. I'm trying not to sniffle, his hands are all over me. I melt into him. Into that impossible, terrifying, beautiful thing we’ve somehow made between us. Fuck…I'm gonna forgive him.
Because love this sharp, this infinite, was never going to be gentle.