Page 55 of Hollowed

“You weren’t.”

“Then what am I?”

His voice cracked when he said it.

“You’re the vow I never said aloud.”

I stepped closer.

“Say it now.”

He stared at me.

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because if I do, you’ll hear it everywhere.”

“And?”

His breath faltered.

“And I want it to belong to you.”

I touched his chest.

Pressed my fingers to the mark carved there. The one that split the broken circle. The one that hadn’t bled in years.

“It already does,” I whispered.

He kissed me then.

Not like the others.

Not to break.

Not to brand.

But to remember.

And I let him.

Because I knew now.

I had never been just an offering.

I was the echo he had waited to become.

And he had always been my answer.

He wrote my name again.

But not in the ledger.

Not in the book that breathed with forgotten girls, with lines through names and circled sentences of obedience. He wrote it on the floor. With chalk. With blood. I don’t know which. I didn’t ask.

Because the moment I saw it, I dropped to my knees.

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