Chapter 34: The Weight of Shared Nightmares
The air between us crackled with unspoken truths as Ren’s fingers tightened around my bleeding hand, his obsidian eyes burning with a question I was too terrified to answer.
He didn’t wait for one. He turned, dragging me after him to the small kitchen sink. The water he turned on was ice-cold. He shoved my hand under the stream, the shock of it sharp against the cut. He worked in silence, his brows drawn tight, his own fingers careful but impersonal as he probed the slice, checking for lingering glass. He seemed to struggle to stay focused, his gaze flicking from my hand to my face and back again, as if he was reading a battlefield report written on my skin.
The clarity was a physical chill washing through my veins, pushing out the fog. My angelic blood was already starting to filter out the alcohol, and the consequences of my sudden outburst reigned in, the reality of what I’d just implied about him in front of everyone crashing down. I was so terrified it sobered me faster than any tonic.
“Who?” he asked again, his voice cracking on the single syllable. It wasn’t a command. It sounded stripped.
I blinked, the world coming into horrid focus. I had blamed him in my drunken rant. The words he didn’t want you echoed in the new silence. Oh, god. That wasn’t true. That wasn’t the truth of that night in the forest. It must have been the tonic mixed with the alcohol, twisting my pain into the nearest, sharpest shape—his rejection.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I managed to say, the words sticking in my dry throat. “I didn’t mean to say it was… I’m just…” I placed my free hand on my temple as the room made one last, lazy spin. The aftertaste of vomit and liquor coated my tongue. “I’m just the idiot who decided to drink while taking the tonic.”
His hands stilled. The water ran pink between his fingers. “What tonic, Arisa?”
He had finished drying my hand with a clean cloth from a drawer. He tossed it aside and placed his hands on my shoulders, turning me fully to face him. His grip was firm, anchoring. His eyes searched mine, desperate and furious. “Who did what to you? Tell me.”
I stayed silent. The fear was a cold stone in my gut. What if I ruined his career? Reporting a Commander, a Warden’s right hand? So what, a reckless part of me whispered. But another, more chilling thought surfaced. What if he was being controlled? I remembered the shadows in his eyes that night in the hallway after the forest, the way he’d looked through me. The unnatural stillness. What if it wasn’t entirely his choice?
Ren searched my face, watching the war play out behind my eyes. Then, his own expression fractured. The anger dissolved into something raw and pained. He pulled me into a hug.
It wasn’t soft. It was fierce, almost desperate, his arms locking around me as if he could physically shield me from the memory. I felt the tension in his body, the way he seemed to hold back his own emotions, a dam threatening to break. I fell into him. My body, my soul, suddenly allowed itself to relax and feel, the solid, real presence of him around me feeling like the only refuge in a collapsing world. I buried my face in the leather of his jacket and didn’t cry. I just breathed.
He moved. One arm slid under my knees, the other around my back, and he lifted me. I didn’t protest, just curled my arms around his neck, clinging. He carried me out of the common room, down a short, dark hall to a door I’d only ever opened once.
His room was nothing like I had last seen it. It smelled of leather and clean, sharp ozone, like the air after a lightning strike. The space was stark, monastic—a neatly made bed, a desk devoid of clutter, a single weapon rack holding his favored blade. There were no personal effects, no hints of the man beneath the rank. It felt less like a home and more like a forward operating base.He laid me down on the crisp, dark sheets. The mattress was firm. I didn’t let go of his neck. My fingers were tangled in the collar of his jacket, gripping as if the room were spinning again. He paused, his body a tense line above me, then exhaled a long, shuddering breath. He lowered himself beside me, on top of the covers, and gathered me against his chest
He just held me. My body melted into the shape of his, my face pressed into the hollow of his throat, as if my bones had been waiting for this exact architecture of support.
“If I tell you who,” I whispered, my voice muffled against his skin, “what good will it do?” I sniffled, the sound ugly and childlike. “It just gives me a name for the person you will destroy.”
His arms tightened. “I will.”
“You can’t destroy him.”
“Why not?”
“You can’t.” I pulled back just enough to see his face. The lamplight carved harsh lines of fury into his features.“Ren. Promise me you won’t.”
He didn’t answer. I didn’t know why he was holding me, especially after the rejection in the hallway, after the forest. I was too weak, too hollowed out, to question the sanity of it. The name was a pebble on my tongue, then a stone, then it fell. “Xenon.”
I felt him stiffen. Every muscle in his body locked. It was like holding a statue. Then, a low, visceral sound tore from his chest, part groan, part growl. He moved to pull away, to get up.
Panic, cold and total, iced my veins. I grabbed a fistful of his shirt. “Don’t leave.Please. Don’t leave me alone. I’m so cold.”
He stilled. His eyes, black and bottomless, scanned my face. Then his gaze dropped to where my sleeve had ridden up. His hand left my back and slowly, so slowly, pushed the fabric of my hoodie dress up my forearm. The fabric bunched at my elbow. The pale, twisting scars from the nulling vines were laid bare, stubborn patches of mottled skin that even a Protector’s healing hadn’t erased.
His thumb brushed over one.He said nothing.
His touch moved to my shoulder, his fingers hooking gently in the neckline of my dress and tugging it down an inch. The bruise there was days old, a sickly yellow-green, but the shape was unmistakable. Four finger pads, one thumb. A handprint.
His own hand began to tremble against my skin.
His fingers trailed down my side, over my ribs, as if I were something fragile, a relic on the verge of dusting. He was afraid to touch me, but he had to know. I understood. I needed him to know.
I guided his hand, letting him feel the truth through the layers. Then I sat up slightly, my movements sluggish. I lifted the hem of my hoodie dress and tugged the waistband of my leggings down just enough. The bruises on my hips were darker, more persistent. One small, round mark. Four larger ones.
I placed his shaking hand over the bra I was wearing, the cotton worn soft. His palm was hot. “He told me,” I said, my voice detached, as if reporting someone else’s crime, “that you may have my heart, but that he would take my body.”
Ren’s hand clenched. Not on me, but in the fabric, gripping it tightly as if he could squeeze the life out of Xenon through the memory in the weave.
I took his wrist and moved his hand lower, down past my stomach, to the apex of my thighs. I held it there, a brutal, undeniable mapping. “He told me he wanted to ruin me for you. That he took Nanami, and now he’d taken your precious flower away.”
A hot, wet drop hit the back of my neck. Then another. His breath hitched, ragged and torn, against the shell of my ear. His chest, pressed against my back, shuddered.
I leaned into him, exhausted. “It’s strange, though,” I murmured, the irony a bitter pill. “Why would he say those things, when you said that you don’t feel that way about me?”
Ren moved. Suddenly. He grabbed my cheek and turned my face toward his. His expression was shattered, raw in a way I had never seen. Tears streamed down his face, cutting paths through the rigid control. He didn’t wipe them away.
He kissed me.
It wasn’t gentle. It was a collision, a confession, an apology and a vow all fused into the desperate pressure of his mouth on mine. His hand on my cheek shook violently. I could taste the salt of his tears. I kissed him back, greedily, my hands fisting in his hair, pulling him closer, trying to breathe him in and erase every other touch, every other claim. It was a fight and a surrender, and for the first time since the forest, I didn’t feel cold.