Page 26 of Ghosts of the Dead

His jaw tightens. “Bad things happen in the dark.”

I brush my thumb along his skin, trying to give him comfort.

He draws a shaky breath. “When we were trapped in that alley, the darkness triggered something worse. It closed in…and I heard the voices again.”

“Whose voices?”

His eyes fill with sorrow. Tears threaten to fall, but it’s his voice breaking when he speaks that undoes me. “Their voices from the night my brother died saving me from our parents. The night they finally decided to kill me.”

“Caspian…” His name catches in my throat. I throw my arms around him.

He wraps his arms around my back and pulls me into his lap. I straddle his hips without a second thought, ignoring the broken gravel digging into my knees. That doesn’t matter right now.

All that matters is him.

“I heared their voices in that alley. Saw their faces the same way they looked that night. Angry. Wild. Like I was nothing.”

He exhales against the loose strands of my hair.

“They used to call me Casper. Said I was more ghost than boy. Too afraid of the world to exist in it.”

My fingers twist through his hair, helpless to offer anything but touch.

“I’ll never understand it,” he whispers. “But I do know this. The dead don’t scare me half as much as the living once did.”

Something sharp blazes through me. My throat tightens, and so does my hug.

He buries his face in my hair and continues. “The day the dead rose was the best day of my life. It meant I could finally run without anything holding me back, but it didn’t matter. The past always catches up. At least rotters and dregs are tame compared to those horrors.”

I sniffle. My own eyes burn.

He lets out a hollow chuckle. “I watched them die, and they still haunt me more than anything else ever has.”

I press my lips to the side of his neck in a light kiss, trying to give him some form of comfort. This sweet man has been carrying around more than I could have ever realized. “Sometimes the ones who are supposed to protect us hurt us most.”

“They called me Casper because of my hair, my eyes, and the crippling anxiety they bestowed upon me. That’s what I was hearing in the alley.”

Something feral and foreign courses through me. An emotion I haven’t felt in a long time. For the first time in ages, fear and heartbreak don’t encompass my body. Instead, anger and white-hot fury blaze in my chest.

I fist his hoodie at his back, ignoring the slight stab of pain in my wrist. “Your parents make me so angry I could kill them myself with my bare hands, sprained wrist or not.”

A faint huff of laughter blows strands of hair across my face, and I tilt my head back to look up. Caspian is lookingover my head with his eyes unfocused. “Good news. My brother already did. Before he bled out.”

My hands tremble at the thought of someone hurting this man, and I have to force my body to calm down. At least they canno longer hurt anyone ever again.

I lift myself up so I’m straddling his lap with my knees still digging into the gravel. My hands settle on his shoulders, our faces level. His pale blue eyes look haunted when they match my gaze.

“You didn’t deserve any of it. Neither did your brother, but I’m glad you had him because I can’t imagine you not being here today,” I say. “I wouldn’t still be here without you.”

“Without me?” His lips twitch, bittersweet. “You would have made more liquor bombs and blown up the whole city by now.”

“I’d take that alley again, if it meant going through it with you.”

His pale eyes soften, and his voice drops. “You don’t even know me.”

“I know enough to know that you deserve so much more than the world gave you.”

His smile is fragile. “I know what it’s like to lose a sibling. I wouldn’t wish that pain on anyone. I swear to you, I’ll do everything in my power to help you get her back.”

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