CHAPTER FORTY-TWO Reaching Salvation
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Reaching Salvation
His hands were still on my neck. Firmly controlling. The way a storm pins a tree in place before it decides whether to uproot it. He was deracinating me in the same manner.
The edge of the table bit into my spine, cold wood searing through the thin barrier of fabric that was no longer entirely whole. My breath came in sharp, unsteady bursts; every exhale and inhale seemed to tangle in the fist he had buried in my hair.
I was shivering, though my skin burned.
Tears streaked down my face, carving black rivers through the ruins of my mascara. I didn’t care how I looked, only how it felt to be held like this. To be broken open by someone who had studied the architecture of my defences long enough to know exactly where to strike.
He was my enigma.
“More,” I choked out, though I couldn’t name what I meant. More of what? I wanted to ask myself. More of who? I didn’t know. “Hurt me. Destroy me. Don’t stop until you’ve emptied every last piece of me…”
His eyes caught the light. If steel could burn, it would burn like that. My tormentor didn’t speak a word. He didn’t need to. The air between us was enough. It’d been loaded for some time, and now it was detonating.
He moved against me like a never-ending war. Like every motion was a siege and every pause a test of whether I’d surrender or burn. My body answered before my mind could think. My voice cracked hymn to ruin.
I clung to him as though holding him tighter would make him crueller. I wanted cruelty. I wanted him to be the blade and me the skin. I wanted pain that rewrote me.
Relief hit me. Lighting splitting the tree open. My vision blurred, my body buckled, and I bit back a cry that still escaped, ragged and too human.
But in the same breath, he was gone.
Not gone entirely; his hands were still there, steadying me, but the war had stopped. The storm had passed. My body, still caught in the aftershock, searched for the rest of him, confused and empty.
I looked for him, and then at him. Lips parted to ask why, but he was already adjusting the cuffs of his shirt, fastening himself back into the pristine calm that always came after his tempests. His movements were deliberate, measured and maddening.
Before I could speak, he bent and swept my brokenness into his arms. I should have fought it, demanded answers, clawed at the silence, but my limbs betrayed me. He fucked me like a madman. Rearranged my guts. Sucked my soul.
My head found its place against his shoulder, and the scent of him seeped into my lungs like a drug I didn’t want to recover from.
The room spun, not from dizziness, but from the whiplash of him; how he could strip me to bone and then cradle me as though I were the last holy thing in his keeping.
I closed my eyes. The world narrowed to his steady heartbeat beneath my ear, the faint rasp of his breath above my head. Somewhere between waking and the dark pull of sleep, I felt cool water against my skin, the ghost of his touch as he wiped away the evidence of my ruin.
Fabric whispered around me as he dressed me in something soft. My mind was too heavy to hold questions anymore. His warmth pressed against my back, the gravity of his arm securing me against his chest, staking a claim in my dreams as well as my waking life.
Just before I slipped under, his soft, low, and rough voice brushed my ear subtly.
“Sleep, Dolcezza. Your husband will chase away your demons.”
I believed myself. But how would he chase away the demon I was most scared of? The demon wrapped his arms around me. The demon called me Dolcezza and called himself my husband.
Darkness was never still in my dreams. It had never been ever since I met Zagreus Vitale. Or was it before that? Was I always doomed to darkness ever since forever?
It moved within me, breathed inside me. Pressed its palms over my eyes and whispered my name like a curse meant to be broken.
“Stina…”
A voice crooned in that darkness. My mother’s voice. Lilting and slow. Haunting and melodical. Familiar and unfamiliar. “Sleep, Stina, sleep. You’re safest when you don’t open your eyes.”
I tried to obey, but the dark kept pulling me backwards, through hallways smelling of smoke, through rooms with no walls, only shadows choking me. Somewhere, a door slammed again and again, the echo bleeding into my bones.
I was small in this dream. My knees bare. My feet were cold on a floor that seemed to pulse with a heartbeat rhythmic with my own. There was no furniture, only corners shifting when I looked away. And the faint scent of iron in the air.
“Where are you?” I asked, though I didn’t know who I was speaking to. I was desperate. I wanted my mother. “Mama…”
“Shh…” she said again. But her voice was wrong this time. It wasn’t warm like I used to feel. Or safe when the thunder roared outside. “If you’re quiet, they won’t find you, little Stina.”
I wanted to ask her who she was talking about. But I couldn’t comprehend anything.
My hands were wet, stinky, and my chest ached like I’d been running forever. In the distance, I heard footsteps. But I couldn’t see anything. Only feel.
“Don’t move,” she warned. But her hand, when it touched mine, was ice. The sudden light from across her struck her bare face. The warm mocha eyes that used to comfort me stared at me blankly. I expected the welcoming features my mother always adorned.
Only it wasn’t her face anymore. It was hollow. Skin stretched too tight over bones. Older and weaker. Her eyes were wide, soulless, and her pupils were gone. Her lips cracked as she smiled at me. “Sleep, Stina. Sleep forever.”
My heart lurched as a gut-wrenching scream tore through my lips. Something grabbed my ankle, and I fell down, rolled over and over through nothing, through her voice still calling after me, and my screams. The smell of ash and something burning through the echo of my own cries.
Just when I felt like I was falling off a cliff, I woke up choking on air.
My eyes snapped open, and my chest tightened.
It took me several minutes to realise I was in a room; it wasn’t dark.
My heart jackhammered against my ribs, my nails digging crescent moons into my palms. My breath came in short, sharp bursts, and I was already screaming before I knew what I was saying.
Cold hands grabbed me, and my wails grew louder.
“No, no… get off… stop!”
Arms wrapped around me from behind. Iron-strong and warm for some reason. My body thrashed against them until the scent hit me. Cedar and smoke. Zagreus.
“Dolcezza, hey, hey… look at me.” His voice was low but edged. As if he was standing too close to the cliff I rolled down from. His hand came to my jaw, turning my face toward him, but I couldn’t stop trembling. My skin was clammy, and my hair a damp, tangled mess.
“I…” My throat closed. My chest hurt. “I don’t…”
“You’re safe,” he whispered into my ear, forcing me to meet his stormy eyes. “It’s me. Zagreus. You’re safe. I’ll keep you safe.”
The word safe broke something in me. I collapsed forward into him, fists gripping his shirt so tightly I could hear the stitches strain. My sobs were violently messy and raw.
“I don’t remember, Zagreus,” I gasped against him. My voice was shaking so badly I barely recognised it. “Why don’t I remember my childhood? Why don’t I remember my mother?”
His arms tightened. “Dolcezza…”
“Don’t… don’t call me that unless you’re going to tell me the truth.
” My nails scraped at his shoulders, desperate for an anchor.
“Do you know? Do you know what happened to my mother? I don’t know if what I know is true or not.
It’s killing me. I can’t… I can’t live like this. I can’t live with the lies.”
His eyes held something he had no intention of exposing me to.
“Yes,” he said finally.
I froze. Everything tilted. My tears blurred him, but I could still feel the intensity of his gaze.
“Then tell me,” I whispered. “Please. Please, Zagreus… I can’t live with this fog in my head. I feel like I’m missing pieces of my own soul and…”
He shook his head, jaw tightening. “It’s not time.”
“I don’t care about time…”
“You will.” His rough voice cut through mine. “There are truths that don’t free you, Celestine. They bury you like they buried me. And I will not hand you a shovel and watch you dig your own grave.”
Celestine.
My sob caught in my throat, half-anger, half-grief. “You don’t get to decide…”
“I do.” He leaned closer, pulling me closer on his lap, pressing against mine. His breath was warm, steady, and deliberately heavy as if he was fighting something far darker than my darkness. “Because I promised someone I would keep you breathing. Even if you hate me for it.”
I wanted to fight and scream. But my body betrayed me again, collapsing into the solid wall of him, letting his warmth bleed into my cold skin. His hand was in my hair, untangling the mess, stroking slow and sure as if he could smooth the nightmare out of me.
“I hate this,” I whispered into his chest. “I hate not knowing.”
“I know.”
He didn’t let go of me until my breath slowed and my sobs dulled to tremors. Even then, he kept one arm around me, his thumb tracing slow circles against my spine.
In the quiet, the words came back. Her words.
Sleep, Stina. Sleep forever.