29. Everett
Everett
FIVE AND A HALF YEARS AGO
“Are you going to sleep with me?” Songbird asked, her yawn echoing through the hole.
I blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You know what I meant.” She yawned again. “As in, are you about to fall asleep, too?”
“Oh.” Well, now I wasn’t. My mind was wandering down all sorts of directions. “Yeah, I’ll probably go to sleep soon. Why?”
“Nothing. Just checking.” There came rustling from the other side of the wall. “Do you feel okay?”
I couldn’t help but smile. She’d been worried for me over the last week, ever since Mortep’s men tortured me.
She was constantly checking in, playing the nervous mother hen, waiting to go to sleep until I did.
She even tried to shove as much of her food through the hole as she could.
I had to admit, it was sweet. I hadn’t been doted on in years.
“Songbird, I’m nineteen,” I said with a chuckle. “As much as I love the attention, you don’t need to tuck me in every night.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Fates, she was stubborn. “Actually, I’m a little cold. You know what would warm me up?” I asked, wiggling my eyebrows even though she couldn’t see.
She let out a snort. “Your jokes are back, so I guess you’re feeling fine.”
“You’re the one who put the idea in my head.” I propped my head on my elbow and faced the wall. “You’re torturing me, sweetheart.”
Her laughter faded. I knew the instant I said the word that it was the wrong thing to say. I closed my eyes and kneaded my forehead. “I’m sorry. It just slipped out. I shouldn’t have joked like that.”
She had been so hard on herself since the day they hurt me. No matter how many times I told her it wasn’t her fault, she could only see what she let herself see: that they tortured me because of her. She didn’t understand there was nothing they could do to me that I wouldn’t endure for her.
“Don’t be silly,” she said, clearing her throat. “I know it was a joke. It’s not a big deal.”
“No, it is. Torture was the wrong thing to say. But Fates, Songbird,” I said, scrubbing a hand down my face. “You don’t know what you do to me.”
A pause. “What do you mean?” Her voice was quiet, barely a whisper.
I pulled myself up so I could see through the hole, heart hammering like a drum.
“Do you know what it’s like to sit here, day after day, knowing you’re feet away from me?
Hearing your voice and not being able to touch you?
To see you?” I braced my hands on the wall, arms strained.
“Every instinct tells me to reach for you. To put my hands through this wall and prove you’re real.
And every day I can’t…” I rested my head against the stone.
“That’s torture, sweetheart. Not what they do to me. ”
I hadn’t said that before. I hadn’t told her how deeply she was embedded in my skin, how much my heart craved her. Part of me didn’t see the point; it wasn’t as if we could do anything about it. But the other part…the other part was afraid she wouldn’t feel the same.
I had too many things in this pitiful excuse of a life to be afraid of. My feelings for her shouldn’t be one of them.
“Swift, I—I don’t know what to say,” she breathed out, her golden eye finally appearing in my view.
My stomach sank, then twisted itself into a knot. “You don’t have to say anything. Forget it. I just—”
“I do. I do know what it’s like,” she said softly. “But I—I don’t let myself imagine it. I don’t let myself think about you and me, because once I start…I don’t think I could stop.”
A single tear slid from the corner of her eye. I didn’t breathe, too scared the moment would burst if I moved.
“When they were hurting you,” she started, her words breaking at the end, “I wanted to die. They know you’re my weakness.
It was my fault, and I—I can’t protect you from in here.
I don’t know how to do this. How to feel this.
I'm so scared, all the time.” Her voice shook as another tear slipped free. “I can’t lose you. I can’t.”
“Sweetheart…” I curled my hands, my nails digging into the wall between us.
“The way I feel about you isn’t a weakness.
Before you, I was barely surviving. I was numbering the nights and hoping one day they would finally just end it.
But then you came along, and you…you gave me something to live for. To fight for.”
I exhaled slowly. “I’m in love with you, Songbird.
I think I’ve been in love with you for longer than I even knew what love meant.
Do you realize what a gift that is? To be able to feel something so strong, so good, when all I can remember is pain?
You gave that to me.” I held her gaze. “I may never be able to touch you, but you are all I can feel.”
She sucked in a breath. “You can’t say things like that.”
“Why not?” I asked softly.
“Because I’ll believe you.”
“What’s wrong with that?” I murmured.
“Belief leads to hope.” Her breath hitched. “I’ve spent a year and a half trying not to hope for anything outside of this cell, but I—I want a future with you. I see a whole life for us, and hope like that is dangerous.”
Her finger appeared through the hole. “But I love you, too, Swift. Even if it’s scary. Even if it’s dangerous. As long as you’re here, as long as we have each other…” She let out a breath. “That’s enough.”
She curved the end of her finger, and I wrapped mine around it until they were intertwined.
We stayed like that for a long time, neither of us speaking.
I think we were both afraid that if we said anything else, the spell would break.
So we just held on. Our curled fingers were the only things between us and everything that wanted to take this from us.
I listened to her breathe, counting the seconds between each exhale. Outside our cells, chains rattled somewhere down the corridor, and the familiar smell of damp stone pressed in on all sides. None of it mattered. My chest was bursting, full of so much love that I could barely keep it all inside.
This, I thought, pressing my lips to the tip of her finger. This is what happiness feels like.