5. The Silence Between
CHAPTER FIVE
the silence between
The fire dies to a single red eye, watching us from the ashes.
By the third day, the air in the shack has become a solid thing—a cloak woven from wet smoke, iron, and unvoiced words.
We haven’t spoken a full sentence in twenty-four hours.
Silence is a torture method. I know this.
They use it in the camps I’ve heard rumors of.
Sensory deprivation. It makes the mind eat itself.
It makes you doubt the existence of anything outside your own skull.
I sit with my back pressed to the rough wood, watching dust motes spin in a beam of grey light.
My ribs ache. My stitched hand throbs with a dull, heavy rhythm. My wrist burns.
The burning drags me back.
Detroit. 2018.
The arena is a cauldron. The noise is a physical weight, pressing against the glass. I’m on the bench, breathing hard, tasting the metallic tang of blood from a cut lip. The air smells of popcorn, Zamboni exhaust, and hate. Coach grabs my shoulder. His fingers dig into the padding.
"Vale. You see Number 88?"
I look. Number 88 is a giant. A Slavic nightmare on skates. He’s been taking runs at our captain all night. He’s smiling.
"I see him," I say.
"End it."
Two words. A command. A license. I hop over the boards.
The ice is bright, blindingly white under the arena lights.
It’s cold, but I’m hot. Burning with it.
The crowd's roar changes pitch. They know. They see the predator stepping into the ring. They scream for blood. I skate toward him. He sees me coming and stops smiling. He drops his gloves. I drop mine. The first punch connects with his jaw—a satisfying crack. Pain explodes in my hand, but it’s good pain.
It’s righteous. He hits me back—a sledgehammer blow to the ribs that steals my breath.
We grapple. The refs are shouting, but I don't hear them.
I only hear the blood rushing in my ears. I only feel the heat.
I jersey him—pulling his shirt over his head to blind him—and feed him uppercuts.
One. Two. Three. Each impact is a release—a purging of everything that’s broken inside me.
I am not a person. I am an event. He goes down.
The ice is cold against my knees, but his blood is hot on my hands.
The crowd is screaming my name. Vale. Vale. Vale.
I look up at the lights. I feel... useful. I feel alive.
The memory fades, leaving me gasping in the freezing shack.
The silence rushes back in, heavier than before.
There’s no crowd here. No coach. No enemy to punch.
Just the cold, indifferent, and absolute.
I close my eyes, and the darkness takes me.
Not sleep. Not rest. A drop into a black well.
I am back on the ice. But it’s not Detroit.
It’s the lake. The surface is polished black obsidian, stretching to a treeline of bones.
The stands are filled with snowmen—thousands of them, silent, watching with coal eyes.
I look at my hands. They are gloved, but the leather is rotting, falling away to reveal bone.
I am holding a stick made of driftwood. The puck drops.
It’s a heart. Frozen solid. Blue arteries hanging off it like streamers.
The other team skates toward me. I know them.
Archer. Isaac. The driver. Their faces are blue, their eyes filled with frost. They skate silently, their blades carving deep, bleeding ruts into the black ice.
"Play the game, Rowan," Archer whispers. His jaw hangs loose, broken from the crash.
I try to check him, but he passes through me like mist. The cold hits me from the inside out. I turn. Isaac is in the net. He’s not wearing pads. He’s naked, his skin painted with bruises.
"Save it," he screams. "Save it!"
The heart-puck slides toward me. I swing my stick.
Connect. The sound is a scream. The heart explodes into red slush.
The crowd of snowmen applauds. It sounds like bones breaking.
Snap. Snap. Snap. I look down. The ice is cracking beneath my skates.
Fissures are spreading like spiderwebs. Black water bubbles up. Cold words float in the water.
YOU. FAILED.
I wake with a gasp, my body jerking violently.
Clara is beside me, staring. Her eyes are open, fixed on the ceiling.
She didn't notice my panic. She’s staring at a water stain that looks like a face screaming.
She’s waiting to die. I can see it. She’s used up her hope.
The gold in her eyes has turned to lead.
The silence pushes against my ears. It sounds like buzzing like applause from a room next door.
Then, she hums. It starts low. A vibration in her chest. Hmm-hmm-hmmmm.
"Stop," I rasp. My voice is rusty.
She doesn't stop. She hums louder. A figure skating routine, maybe. Or a funeral march. It’s the sound of a mind cracking.
"Stop," I say again.
She turns her head. Her eyes are flat, dead gold. "Why?" she whispers.
"It sounds like..." I trail off. It sounds like the ice is laughing. It sounds like an invitation to madness.
"It sounds like I'm still here," she says.
She keeps humming. Deliberate. Stubborn.
An insult to the silence. The sound scrapes against my nerves.
I want to shake her. I want to scream. I want to break something just to hear that noise.
I crawl to her. I need to stop the sound.
I need to prove we are real. I grab her face. Her skin is rough, dirty.
"Rowan?"
I don't answer. I lean in and crush my mouth to hers.
It’s not a romantic kiss. It’s a collision. It’s violence. It tastes of ash, dried blood, and fear. It’s desperate. Teeth clashing. Breath mingling. It’s two animals huddling together in a burrow while the wolves scratch at the dirt above. It’s a demand for proof. Are you there? Am I here?
She freezes, then melts. Her hands claw at my coat. She kisses me back with a ferocity that matches mine—a desperate need to feel something other than cold. She bites my lip, hard enough to draw blood, and the pain is a relief.
We break apart, gasping. Her eyes are wide, alive again. The gold is burning. The dead look is gone.
"You're still here," she whispers.
"I am."
"Why?"
I open my mouth to lie—survival, duty—but the silence is too honest. "Because you are," I say.
Outside, the wind rises. A high-pitched shriek. It sounds like a whistle. A summons. Not random. Deliberate.
Rowan. Rowan. Rowan.