Chapter 8 #2
I have to stop myself from smiling. He can see the answer written all over my face anyway.
“Damn.” He shifts on the tile. “Guess I didn’t miss anything worth having. Except…” His jaw works. “Safety and stability. And health insurance.”
“Oh, stop it.”
Talon’s laugh dies in his throat.
“Alright,” he says, exhaling. “Truth game. Let’s do it.”
I stare at his hands first. At the tendons standing out. At the way his fingers keep flexing like he’s trying to crush something in them.
He swallows. “Who’s first?” he asks.
“Who do you think?”
He rolls his eyes and groans, but then he gets serious.
When he starts speaking, I’m surprised by how open he gets, and how quickly.
“There are some things I actually wanted to tell you. Um… where do I start?” he begins. “I hate that Rhea hurt you, and I hate that she can… do that. Just tug your lungs like you’re a puppet. Also, I hate”—his jaw tightens—“that I froze when she walked in. Like some idiot statue.”
My chest pinches.
“Another thing I hate is that I can’t fix it. Because I can’t fight Death. Can’t stab a god in the throat. I can’t put Mark in the dirt. I can’t even drop Rhea without you paying for it with your body. And I don’t even know if I want to, because—“
His eyes flick to my throat, like he remembers the sound I made when she tightened that invisible leash.
“Shit,” he says. “I keep thinking that if I had done things differently back then maybe she wouldn’t be like this. Maybe she wouldn’t be here. And she wouldn’t suffer like those girls did, you know?”
His voice roughens.
“And the ugliest truth? I’m angry at her for coming back at all.” He laughs once, humorless. “Which makes me a shitty person, because she died, and I… Well, I didn’t.”
He stares at the floor.
“But I’m also angry because you’re mine,” he says. “And she looked at you like you were the thief.”
His throat works. He swallows hard.
“And I can’t stand it. Because if anyone’s the thief, it’s me.”
And… wow.
“That was a lot,” I comment.
“Yeah.” He exhales like he’s surprised it came out of him. “Guess it just… spilled. There’s a lot I hate at the moment.”
“Ditto,” I say. “But I’m supposed to mirror now, so… bear with me.”
I reach for his hand and stroke it with my thumb.
“You hate that she can hurt me,” I say. “And you feel helpless because the biggest threats aren’t things you can kill. And you’re blaming yourself for what Rhea became. And you’re angry at her for coming back because it feels like she’s trying to claim space that belongs to me.”
Talon’s eyes lift to mine.
“And,” I add, “you think you stole something from her by surviving.”
His mouth opens, then closes. He nods again, smaller this time.
“Yeah,” he whispers. “That.”
I let out a slow breath. The tile is freezing through my clothes, but I don’t move.
“Are you sure you didn’t play this game before?” I joke. “That was really proficient of you.”
He scoffs and shifts his grip so that where I’d been caressing him, he’s now clasping my hand with one hand while the other starts playing with my fingers one by one.
“Your turn,” he says. “It goes both ways, right?”
“Right,” I murmur.
But I wonder—just like him—where a good place to start even is. I feel so much. I’ve felt so much since I died. And it’s like, with each passing moment, something else stacks onto my tower of misery.
I inhale, close my eyes, and decide to go with the flow. The first thing I feel, I say. Just like that.
“I’m tired,” I say. “Really fucking tired. Sick, honestly, of being told what to do. By Death. By Rhea. By three traumatized girls who, frankly, kind of deserve to be helped. I feel bad for them, you know? But I just… I don’t want to be forced into things I didn’t choose.”
I swallow and open my eyes. His expression is compassionate. Genuinely empathetic.
“And I also hate things,” I continue. “I hate that I can’t kill Mark. It makes me feel like I’m back under his hands sometimes. And I’m scared,” I say, “that my power is gone, and Pain is gone, and I’m going to become… useless. Or worse. A liability.”
My fingers dig into my sleeve.
“When Rhea called me your new love, part of me wanted to kill her. And then,” I add, quieter, “I felt your guilt, and it hurt so much. So much. So another thing I hate is that… I don’t really know what’s up with you and her. You didn’t break up. She died on you.”
I take a breath.
“So I need you to be honest. With me. Even when it’s ugly. Because everything else right now is shifting, and you’re…” My voice catches. “You’re one of the only things that feels real. So if you feel bad—like now—I want to know it first. Don’t shut me out. Just… spill it out.”
Talon’s throat works. He nods once, slow.
“I’m gonna mirror it now, yeah?” he mumbles.
“No,” I say. “Spill it out.”
“What?”
“Tell me how you feel about her,” I say.
“But the rules—“
“Yeah, fuck the rules.”
For a second, he opens his mouth and stops playing with my fingers. Then he takes a deep breath.
“Man, why the hell did you even tell me the rules then?” He narrows his eyes. “Do you know how hard I focused not to fuck up?”
I can’t help it, I smile. And then the stress hits again, sharp and immediate.
I don’t want to smile. I want an answer.
“How do you feel about Rhea?” I ask. “Not what she’s done to me, or that she came back. Overall. What do you feel about her?”
He looks me straight in the eye, like he’s checking if I really mean it. Then he looks at the ceiling and slumps back, resting against the sofa more heavily than before.
“Isn’t it obvious?” he asks, then looks at me again.
“No,” I say.
“Seeing her is like… seeing an old friend,” he says.
“She died before I knew anything about the supernatural shit. She’s like…
from another world. The world before, you know?
So I can’t really wrap my mind around it.
The fact that she was just here, talked to us, and has some problem with you.
It’s all surreal. I don’t know how it happened. ”
He lifts his gaze to the ceiling again, blinking hard, like the light hurts.
“And also, remember how I told you I killed her killers?” he adds.
“Seeing her made me reflect on stuff. Honestly, stuff I wish I didn’t.
Back then, when I thought I’d caught those fuckers, I was seeing red.
All that mattered to me was killing them.
I was asking questions about Rhea. Where is she?
What did they do to her? And something about their reactions made me think they were mocking me.
But I had them at fucking gunpoint, and it didn’t even cross my mind that they might be telling the truth. ”
He drags a hand over his face, then looks at me.
“How do I feel about Rhea? I think she’s a reminder of a lot of bad shit I’ve done. Mistakes and bad memories. Like the fact that I didn’t hold a funeral for her. Yeah. You know, I didn’t. Even after finding out about Grim Reapers and shit, I still didn’t. I just… put it all behind me.”
He resumes playing with my hands again, running his thumbs over my knuckles, tendons, nails, watching all the curves and edges.
“You have no reason to be jealous, okay?” he murmurs. “I told you I didn’t love her back then, and I certainly don’t love her now. I just… I feel like shit.”
I swallow.
Suddenly, I feel stupid for asking.
“Hey.” I squeeze his hand. “Look at me.” He does. “I love you. You have a past. We all do.”
His mouth twitches, almost a real smile.
“Say it again,” he murmurs.
“We all have a past,” I repeat.
“Not that,” he chuckles.
Right.
I swallow hard, heat crawling up my neck like I just stuck my hand in a fire.
“I love you,” I say.
A beat passes. Then Talon huffs a laugh—real this time, rough around the edges.
“Damn,” he says, lighter, like he’s annoyed at himself for it. “This little truth-stack bullshit actually worked.”
I lift my head, blinking at him.
He points at me with our joined hands. “Even though you broke the rules.”
“I did not—“
“You did,” he says, smirking now. “You went ‘rule one, rule two,’ and then five minutes later you hit me with ‘fuck the rules.’”
I snort. “Shut up.”
“Nah,” he says, eyes brightening a little. “You shut up, Miss Teacher.”
He leans in to kiss me.
“I guess I am a rule-breaker after all,” I murmur.
And isn’t that the truth?
I’ve been told—on very good authority—that it is.
The Lord of the Dead told me so himself.
So what else can I do but prove him right?