Chapter Twenty-Nine
K i a n G r i m m
I sit there, listening to her shallow breathing. My heart racing in my chest with an unknown pain that settles in my bones.
I’ve never been scared before, not to the point I thought my body would boil over with combustion. She smells like iron and smoke, the lavender scent she always carries left behind. He had touched her life, scarred her memory, and something hot coils in my chest.
I knew he was behind us all along. I felt the air change and heard his heavy steps. He thought he had a solidified plan but I noticed him all along.
Even more so when they were outside digging up the entrance to that place.
I step out of the car, calm and no regret pinging in my mind. The only thing I care about is her. The front door to her house slams open, the wood hitting the window with a loud bang.
I turn and her father runs down the steps two at a time. Panic strips years off his face and I hate how desperate he is now. Where was all that when the people who were hunting his daughter stood two feet away from his door, staring straight at him? If I saw them, he saw them.
“Where is my daughter?” I can hear the desperation in his voice as he stops in front of me, eyes wide.
“In the car.” I open the passenger side, her hair in view. “She’s alive.”
He rushes forward but I step in front of him, stopping him from touching her. Relief settles in his eyes when he sees her as well as fear.
“What happened?” I cock my head at him.
He knows what happened.
“I killed the man who hurt her mother.” That's all I say as I pull her from the car.
One arm beneath her knee and the other around her back. She doesn’t stir, her head flopping against my chest and for a dangerous moment I think about never putting her down again.
I look at him, waiting for him to guide me where to put her. He stares at me, searching my face for remorse or anything of the sort but there’s none. I’d do it again for her. People like him expected monsters to look like monsters.
He nods and walks ahead of me to their parlor. The entire house smells like lavender and turpentine. I wonder how much space in here she’s touched.
I carefully lay her on the couch and nod to the door.
“Her friend is outside in the car as well.” His brows lift and he walks outside.
I stare at her chest, rising and falling, hoping that it never stops moving. If it does I don’t know what I’ll do.
He walks inside with Alistair limp in his arms. His head bobbing with the movement as he lays him on the opposite couch.
He kneels, checking both of their breathing, his gaze shifting with sorrow and guilt. I hope he feels worse than what he’s showing, I hope the truth eats him from the inside out.
“They’re fine. Just going to take a bit to wake up.” He says finally.
Soon means she’ll breathe freely with her eyes open. Soon means I won’t have to keep imagining what he would look like with his eyes gouged out.
“How did you manage to do it?” He asks.
I study him, deciding if I should tell him the truth or if he could even handle it.
I meet his gaze, my expression unreadable as I tell him the truth. “He made the mistake of touching her.”
His head tilts and silence stretches between us. I don’t hide the fact that I enjoyed it or the small smile that curves my lips.
He straightens and to my surprise he holds his hand out. It trembles but he doesn’t withdraw.
“Thank you,” he croaks. “For saving my daughter.”
I take his hand in mine, my grip firm and I know he’s afraid. I release his hand and turn to Sylvia. My eyes never leave her until she wakes.
Sometimes I thank my father for being heartless because it showed me how to watch rot fester until it exposes itself.
Hours have passed, turning into the next day. Sylvia nor Alistair have awakened, but their abdomens move with the same steady beat. Neither have moved since being laid now, maybe a finger shifting but nothing more.
I still sit on the same chair I took when I first put Sylvia down, angled toward the couch where she lies. Her father sits opposite of me, head bowed as he sleeps. The lights are low as I listen to the rhythm of their breathing. Still alive, tethered to the human world.
I so badly want to shake her awake, to see those green eyes filled with fury rather than closed in sleep. My chest feels wrong, tight, overstimulated. Every time her breathing stutters, the natural hesitation of sleep, my mind slips somewhere vicious. It plays a future I can’t tolerate, I won’t.
I don’t normally panic, I dismantle problems, but this is a possibility. Possibilities don’t obey logic, they rot you from the inside out.
I think about what I’ll do if she doesn’t wake up, not in the way normal people think of death but in erasure. In what would need to happen to the world to make it right again. I hate how my mind slips answers in but none of them solves the central issues.
Her.
So many signals fire off in my brain but with nowhere to go.
My hands flex at my sides as my mind seeps into a darker place. The blood on my hands has long been washed away but I still feel it, cold. That’s what emotions do, they disrupt systems, creating noise that shouldn’t be there. They tangle with the words my father preached to me.
Emotions make you weak.
I spent years refining control, paring myself down to clean precision but now as I sit in this parlor with her so close to death—I feel as though my brain has been replaced with something primitive and insistent.
I lean forward, pressing my fingers to her wrist even though I know it’s still there. The pressure point beats steady and I let my hand linger to feel the warmth seeping from her skin.
For the first time, my thoughts aren't sharp weapons. They’re blunt, colliding with one another and it makes me irritable.
It makes me human in a way I deeply resent.
“Where—” Alistair's voice breaks my focus as he sits up with a sharp intake and a mumble.
Relief washes through me, not for him, but knowing he’s alive and Sylvia won’t hate me.
His eyes find me immediately and confusion settles in his gaze.
“How are we alive?” He croaks and grabs the glass of water her father had set out for them as well as some pain medication.
“Because I saved you.” I knew he wouldn’t be able to protect Sylvia. He couldn’t even protect himself in grade school.
He blinks. “What happened to Clandic?”
“I killed him because he wanted her dead,” I admit. “And I wanted him dead.”
His eyes widen with fear and I turn back to Sylvia.
“You killed him?” He asks in disbelief and slowly shifts back as if I don’t notice.
I nod and trace my fingers down her face, brushing a few strands sticking to her lips behind her ear.
Silence stretches between us as he processes everything and rubs his temples, a groan leaving his lips.
I can see the confusion in his posture and the questions he wouldn’t want answers to brewing in his mind.
“He got me good,” he mumbles and lifts the cold glass to his head.
“You should go home and get some rest, I’ll handle Sylvia,” I mumble.
He turns to her as if he's just realizing she’s unwell. His lips turn into a frown and I answer him before he asks.
“She’s fine, just resting,” I partially lie, anything to get him out of the door.
“I don’t think I should go.” He stands and before he can brush his hand across her head I stop him.
My grip around his wrist is tight, not bruising but enough to make him pull back.
“She’s fine.” I try my best to be nice, as that’s what Sylvia wants but one more word from his mouth and I don’t think I’ll keep quiet long.
He nods as he rubs his other hand across his wrist before grabbing his keys and leaving. I turn back to the only thing that matters to me and notice a tear running down her cheek.
I brush my thumb across it and a broken sob leaves her lips.
“Sylvia,” I whisper, drawing her back to reality because whatever dream she’s having isn't pleasant.
Her body jolts upright, her hands grasping at the cushion beneath her. Her wide eyes meet mine but she doesn’t see me, terror shines through the tears and I reach for her.
My hands wrap around her waist lifting her up until she's in my arms, her bottom pressing into my knees. She shakes in my hold, her nails digging into my flesh. Sobs wrack through us both as she breathes out.
“You’re not there anymore, you’re ok.” I softly whisper near her ear, softer than I’ve ever spoken in my life.
I repeat the words until her breathing calms down, until her body stops shaking in my grasp. Her tears come to a pause and hiccups leave her throat. The wilderness in her eyes dull to something fragile and confusing.
I’ve never seen her so fragile, even in my grasp she’s always been feisty.
She blinks, recognition filling her eyes as she looks around, the room reassembling itself around her until they stop on me.
“Where’s Alistair?” Her eyes search the room desperately as if it’ll make him appear before her.
“He woke a few minutes before you, so I sent him home.”
“Is he ok?” Her voice is hoarse but soft.
“Yes, perfectly fine, just a small headache,” I admit.
Her eyes search mine for sincerity before she nods.
“Where’d you go?” Her brows furrow. “You disappeared in the cave.”
I don’t remove her from my lap if anything I hold her tighter. Did she dream she died? That I didn’t save her?
“I knew he was coming,” I admit. “I had seen him a few times outside of your home and that morning when you left he was here. He knew you were coming and that’s why I followed.”
My jaw tightens as the memory of his hold on her arm replays in my mind.
“You were so distracted in your mind, you didn’t notice when I sunk into the shadows, waiting for him to pass me.”
She looks down at her hands in her lap and swallows.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “That you had to kill him because of me.”
Something in my chest cracks, why does she feel obligated to apologize? He deserved to rot in the place he built.
“Don’t,” I lift her chin to meet her eyes. “Don’t apologize, I’d do anything for you. If it comes to it, I’ll kill again.”
There's no remorse or hesitation in my tone. My mind is fucked beyond repair, blood on my hands means absolutely nothing compared to her.
She searches my face as if she’d find either of those but nods.
“Thank you, Kian. If you weren’t there—” I stop her.
“I will always be there.”
She surges forward, almost knocking the both of us out of the chair. Her lips crash into mine with desperate, bruising urgency. For a moment, I’m caught off guard, gripping her and the chair to keep us from falling, but it vanishes as I wrap my arm around her.
I kiss her back, deep and certain. There's nothing soft about the kiss, only longing we’ve both felt for a while. My other hand grips her chin, bruisingly, as if she’ll vanish.
The kiss feels as if my bones ache for her, as if every part of me recognized something lost and now returned.
Every kiss before this had been my doing—my hand guiding the movement forward, but this time she closed the distance. I can taste the hesitation on her lips, the way she lingers as if learning me anew. I memorize the warmth and the soft insistence.
My little swan.
As we pull apart, her hands cup my face as a blush arises her cheeks.
“I like you too.”
While I knew she was mine, it feels different hearing her admit it. Something irrevocable takes root and I pinch her side, receiving a yelp.
It was horrifying watching her life be in between here and there and it whispered in the back of my mind that I felt more for her than like, I love her.