Page 24 of Wreck and Ruin

The chains, well, that’s neither here nor there at this point. Part of me thinks she only chained me up to keep me hidden. The other part of me believes that she’s afraid that I’ll leave her, and I get it.

I understand her because I think she understands me.

We don't need words.

We don't need anything, just us.

This world is lonely, yet I’m starting to think it doesn’t have to be with her around. If she would only take off these fucking chains because the only way we will truly be safe is if every last one of those assholes is dead. And if I don’t see this mission through, then the past four years of my life would have been for nothing.

Everything I did.

Everything that had been done to me.

The horrors I carry with me, and I'm forced to relive each night in my dreams.

If The Royal and any other bastard associated with them continue to exist, I’d be nothing more than a bad man. A monster just like them, who has done very bad things.

There will be no redemption for me.

I refuse to live the rest of my life knowing that all those innocent people, victims, by my hands or The Royals, died for nothing in a world that doesn’t even fucking care they existed. And that's exactly what failing would mean.

It would mean that I’d be failing them.

Failing Airlie.

“What's your name?” she whispers, her voice raspy and hesitant. Her voice is like music to me. I lean in closer, not enough to make her fear me, but just enough that she knows that I trust her too, which is a damn first, much like these strange feelings I have for her.

“Ezekiel,” I reply. She considers that for a moment, and her eyes roll over the shadows and contours of my body that the moonlight allows her to see.

“Ezekiel,” she says slowly as if trying my name on for the first time, and it fucks me up. “H-how did you…whyare you here?” she questions.

“I blew up a boat,” I answer. Opting for the PG version of the story.

“What do you mean?” she asks. Her brows knit together, and I’m reminded just how little she seems to know about the outside world. I don’t want to embarrass or make her feel like she’s beneath me in any way, so I decide that I’ll tell her whatever she wants to know, whenever she wants to know it.

I can’t imagine too much of the truth being told around here, especially to Airlie, and she deserves to learn everything there is to know about this world, even if it is mostly horror. Then again, if she’s here in Atlantara and has experienced more than once what I listened to those fuckers do to her, I figure that, whatever stories I share, she won’t be all that shocked by them.

“I was working for monsters. People who hid behind their privilege and abused their power. I blew up their ship to keep the world safe from them,” I answer, and she looks away, taking it all in.

“Were you supposed to die too?” she asks, her quiet voice now filled with worry as she stares up at me.

“Yes,” I say, not wanting to lie to her. I didn’t see another way out at the time. Didn'twantanother way out.

“Do you kill people often?” she questions, not batting an eye. If she’s frightened, she doesn’t show it. I’m a little caught off guard because that wasn’t remotely where I thought this was going. Then again, she’s not like anyone else.

I thought she’d at least consider her safety, given her close proximity to a killer, or, at the very least, question why I wanted to blow up an entire ship full of people in the first place. The remorseful expression she wears shows me that she’s more concerned about how I feel about being a murderer than the fact that people are dead.

What happened to her that was so brutal that it has left her so desensitized by the mention of death?

She said before that her mother called her Airlie, as in the past tense.

I make a mental note to ask her about it later.

Now isn’t the right time.

“Yes,” I answer. My eyes search her shadowed features, looking for signs that she might be uncomfortable or at least a little afraid of me, but she gives me nothing. If anything, she seems more at ease.

“I don’t believe you are bad,” she says with finality, and my lip twitches, threatening to curve into a smile. I suppress it, not wanting her to think I’m mocking her.

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