Chapter 26 Anything
ANYTHING
“Please… save me from them.”
As soon as the words left my mouth, his arms tightened instinctively around me.
He didn’t laugh or question me or even look disbelieving.
No, instead, he went utterly still. Not the cold, distant kind I had seen in the throne room.
But something heavier, more focused. As though the world beyond the two of us had narrowed to a single point, and that point was me trembling in his arms.
His grip didn’t loosen, instead, one hand slid more securely around my waist while the other lifted, before his fingers threaded carefully into my hair.
Which meant he was soon cradling the back of my head with a gentleness that felt at odds with everything I knew he was capable of.
He tilted his forehead slightly toward mine, not quite touching, but close enough that I felt the warmth of his breath brush across my skin as he leaned down.
“The statues,” he repeated quietly, not as a question, not as mockery, but as confirmation that he had heard me properly.
Heat stung behind my eyes, and I loathed the weakness of it.
I had faced him on his throne without cowering, yet this was what threatened to unravel me.
My fingers curled into the front of his jacket again without permission, clutching at him as though he were the only solid thing in the hallway.
“I know they can’t hurt me,” I said quickly, forcing out the words, though my pounding chest refused to cooperate.
“I… I know they’re stone. I know that. But when there are too many of them, when they’re lined up like that, when they look like they’re watching…” My breath faltered again, and I swallowed hard, trying to steady it.
“It feels like they’re waiting.”
His thumb moved slowly at the base of my skull, a grounding pressure that drew my attention back to him instead of the pale shapes behind him. He didn’t glance over his shoulder, nor did he dismiss what I was saying. He simply listened with a gentle look of understanding softening his gaze.
“You were left alone once,” he said, and I didn’t know how he knew, half terrified that he could access my memories.
As he was right, the phobia wasn’t something I had been born with but something that had developed.
And it was the quiet certainty in his voice that caught me off guard, tightening my throat.
“Yes,” I admitted, forcing out the single word.
His jaw shifted slightly, as if he hated this for me.
“And no one came when you needed them?”
I closed my eyes at this and shook my head at the same time, my fingers tightening reflexively in his jacket once more.
As if he were the anchor in this emotional storm raging within me when, in reality, I should have been asking how he knew any of this.
Unless he was dangerously perceptive and could read me as though my secrets were written in plain view across my features.
“No,” I admitted, needing to say it aloud.
Something in him changed at that. Something understated that stripped him of the darker side I had learned to expect from the Enforcer. There was something fiercely protective in it, something that made me believe he would set the world ablaze before allowing it to touch me.
His hand left my hair for long enough to brush a loose strand away from my face before settling at my cheek, his thumb grazing lightly along the curve of it as though reassuring himself I was real.
“You are not alone here,” he said gently, before his voice hardened slightly with his next admission,
“And nothing in this house watches you without my consent.”
The possessiveness threaded through that statement should have unsettled me. Instead, it steadied something in my chest that had been spiraling. So much so that the pressure building inside me finally gave way, and I let out a soft breath that warmed the fabric of his shirt.
“I hate that this is what breaks me,” I admitted on a whisper, my forehead finally resting against him.
“I can argue with demons and judges and whatever else you throw at me, but carved marble and I fall apart like a child,” I added, scolding myself as I shook my head at the ridiculousness of it.
But hearing this, his hand moved again, slow and rhythmic now, up and down the center of my back in a quiet, soothing motion. One that did more to calm me than his earlier command for me to breathe.
“Fear does not measure itself by scale,” he said it softer this time, as though he were trying to wrap me in silk and shield me from myself.
“It attaches itself to memory,” he finished, and I swallowed hard as the truth of that now rested heavily between us.
“It was a museum,” I confessed before I could stop myself, the words slipping free because he hadn’t laughed, because he hadn’t dismissed me as most people would.
He hadn’t tried to convince me of my irrational fears like people had done in my past. He simply accepted it without trying to belittle me for it.
Offering comfort, regardless of how silly it must have sounded to a demon.
So, because of that, I carried on, giving him more of myself, and taking him back to the day my fear first took root.
“I got separated from my mother in one of the sculpture rooms. There were too many of them. Faces everywhere. I couldn’t tell which way I’d come from, and they all looked at me…
judging me silently… eyes watching, they had been everywhere…
faces almost alive.” My breath trembled faintly despite the steadiness of his hold.
“It was only a few minutes, but it felt endless.”
His fingers stilled at my back.
“You were only a small girl, yes?” he asked gently, as if he already knew the answer and was seeing that day play out for himself.
“Yes.”
“And you believed no one was coming for you.”
I nodded at his assumption, as the memory rose sharp and unwelcome. The echo of footsteps, the silence pressing in.
“I know it sounds foolish now, I’m an adult, after all, but back then I didn’t know if anyone even realized I was gone, and every time I see them, I just… just revert back to that scared little girl… You know?”
His hand shifted again, sliding from my back to cup my jaw properly this time, tilting my face up just enough that I had no choice but to meet his eyes. There was no amusement there. No condescension. Only steel-like focus.
“First, you are not foolish,” he said, and the firmness in it left no room for argument.
“You were frightened, and just because that memory clings to you, it doesn’t make you weak.” The simple distinction caught me off guard.
“I should be past it,” I murmured, though my grip on him had not loosened. Not when I felt so safe, which was ridiculous, seeing as he was the reason I was here in the first place. But right now, my mind would let me see him as anything but my protector, not the captor he was.
“Why?” he asked, and the word held no authority now, only a flicker of genuine disbelief.
“Because time has passed?” His thumb brushed lightly across my cheekbone.
“Fear does not expire on schedule, Eliza.” The low, intimate way he spoke my name settled deep in my chest before I could brace for it.
I exhaled slowly, feeling the tremor ease fractionally beneath the steady weight of his hands. The statues still stood behind him. The hall had not changed. But my breathing had.
“I don’t suppose, erm…” I began carefully, my voice steadier now,
“…that there’s another way around, is there?”
His gaze held mine for a moment longer before he finally glanced past my shoulder, taking in the hall in one measured sweep. I felt the subtle shift in him as he assessed the space around us. When his eyes returned to mine, the answer was already there.
“No,” he said quietly. The word should have tightened my chest again, but it didn’t this time. Because I knew, this time, I would have his hand in mine. I would have him by my side, keeping me safe.
That I could… could do this.
Although Oblivion had other ideas, as before I could even tell him I was ready, his thumb stilled against my skin.
“But it has been decided,” he told me, his voice lowering a fraction as his hand slid from my jaw to the back of my head once more, fingers spreading more securely into my hair.
I frowned faintly and asked,
“What has?”
However, he didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he pulled me fully into his chest, one arm wrapping firmly around my waist while the other cradled the back of my head, turning my face inward against him.
His palm shifted to cover my ear as his body angled around mine, blocking even the faintest edge of pale marble beyond his shoulder.
“Oblivion…?” I started, confusion replacing fear.
“Close your eyes for me, pretty girl,” he whispered near my temple, and this time there was no gentle coaxing, only quiet command.
Seconds later was when the first statue shattered.
Needless to say, the sound was not what I expected.
Because it wasn’t just the brittle crack of something small breaking.
It was thunder contained within stone, a violent split that tore through the hall and reverberated through the floor beneath my heels.
Even with his hand pressed firmly over my ear, the force of it travelled through his body into mine, the impact vibrating against my cheek where it was pressed to his chest. I flinched hard despite myself, my fingers clutching instinctively at the fabric at his shoulder as the tremor rolled through us.
Another followed.
Then another and another.
Each detonation was distinct, controlled, separated by the smallest pause, as though he were erasing them one by one rather than lashing out blindly.
I could feel the displacement of air with every fracture, the rush of dust lifting, the heavy collapse of carved limbs surrendering to gravity.
The marble that had stood in silent formation only seconds ago was being dismantled with terrifying precision, and the steady rhythm of his breathing did not alter once.