Page 31 of Monsters' Manor

It’s enough to put a pin in my panic and determination, enough to deflate my sense of certainty and leave me wondering just what the hell I’m doing, what I’m going to do.

I breathe deep and swing the door open.

“Hi, Silas.” My voice is raspy with tears and shame.

“Hello, darling.” His shadowed gaze roves over my face. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m… fine.”

A shift in those shadows, and the huff of a sigh as they clear enough for me to get a better look at his wry smile.

“You’ll have to be a better liar than that if you want to convince me, Rosemary.”

“Fine. I feel like shit.”

“Are you hurt? If you need a healer, I can—”

“No,” I hastily assure him. “I mean, it’s just magick drain. No need to call a healer. I feel worse about what I said to you. I was an asshole. I’m sorry, Silas. I never should have—”

My words cut off with the twist of a shadow around my cheek.

“Apology more than accepted.”

I lean into the faint caress and Silas moves closer. His darkness strokes over my shoulders, my back, the nape of my neck.

“Why are you here?” I ask, then realize how shitty that sounds. “I mean, sorry, not that I want you to go. But after how I acted… I wouldn’t have expected you to stick around.”

“I haven’t been here the whole time, but I did come back earlier,” he admits. “Just onto your porch. Just until I could sense you sleeping inside. After what happened last time with your magick drain… I’m so sorry, I should never have left you like that.”

“I told you to,” I remind him in a whisper.

“I know you did,” he says, and the ghost of a smile on his face cuts straight to the center of my aching chest. “But when I felt you wake I wanted to come and check on you. And now that I know you’re alright I’ll do just that, if it’s still what you want. Say the word and I’ll go, Rosemary.”

More darkness pressing close. Tentative and searching, asking for permission.

I could still tell him to go. End this. Let him know I’m about to pack my bags. The words are right there—poison on my tongue.

Because I don’t want to leave this moment.

Goddess, I need to find some kind of even keel.

These swings from resolve to panic, from certainty to uncertainty… there has to be some kind of end to it. It’s not fair to Silas or Renwick… or to myself.

I’m mortified by how I reacted earlier, and some part of me still wants to run out of the pure humiliation of it. But when I meet Silas’s gaze—ever-patient while I work everything out—it’s not accusation I find there. It’s soft encouragement and empathy, steadiness and a safety I want to sink into.

The last thoughts of leaving tonight fade from my mind.

I’m still nowhere near ready to decide the rest of it—my place here, my training—but I’m also not ready to let this moment end. Not when Silas’s shadows soothe all the ragged parts of me that shattered in the labyrinth with Renwick. Not when, even if I can’t touch or hold him, Silas is somehow the solid presence I so desperately need right now.

“Rose,” I whisper. “I told you it was alright to call me Rose.”

Silas’s shadows shift, and the soft smile on his face grows even wider. “Say the word, Rose.”

“Stay with me?”

A pulse of darkness between us, an understanding.

“Of course. Of course I’ll stay with you.”

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