Page 14 of The Withering Dawn
Her gaze flew upward and I could see that the name meant something. It had to be hers and it had affected her like no one had used it to address her in a very long time. There was the slightest crease between her brows that vanished as quickly as it appeared. Then she glimpsed the paper again and pulled it and the blanket closer.
“Can you write?”
She nodded slowly, sitting on her knees in the middle of the cell with the parchment spread on the floor in front of her. She sat there as if waiting for me to ask something, but suddenly I didn’t know what to ask. I had prepared questions, but for some reason, she robbed me of my focus. Eventually, she hunched over the pages with the little charcoal stick in hand and wrote something in small, neat letters on the top of the page. When she sat back up and turned the page to face me, I fully realized it was the first time I was going to be able to have a real conversation.
What do you want to know?
I chewed on my tongue as I stared at the writing. When I finally looked up at Aeris and saw the absence of emotion in her eyes, it was like a knife in my stomach. I’d felt that hopelessness before and whether it was an act or not, it was convincing and hit me right where I was most tender.
When I still didn’t ask anything of her, she turned the paper back around and wrote something else on it.
I’m sorry for your friend.
I was taken aback by that and shifted on the chair, clearing my throat.
“Do not lie to me,” I said softly. “I cannot imagine you care what happens to any of the men on this ship or the last.”
She bent over to write again.
I’m not a monster. And I don’t think you are the same as the men on the Perry Smith.
“You don’t know anything about me.”
You saved me.
“I didn’t know what you were.” Her head dropped at that. I scrubbed my face with my hands, trying to get my thoughts back on track. “If I let you go, I could be freeing an enemy. But… I do not see an enemy when I look at you. How cunning you must be.”
Finally, something appeared across her face that was not empty acceptance. Her eyes were red and raw, trembling with unrealized emotion before she bent over the paper again.
Do you wish you left me to die on that ship?
“I would not be able to live with myself if I left a woman to die in a sinking ship.”
I’m not a woman.
Each word she wrote became sloppier and more rushed.
“If you’re not a woman and not a monster, then what are you?”
Please don’t sell me, she evaded
She waited a while as if searching for a reaction and then wrote,I’ve always been in a cage. You know what that’s like.
I paused at those words, frowning with discomfort. The familiar heat of anger boiled in my chest, pumping hot blood through me as I reread the charcoal letters.
“That is a big assumption. God, woman. Why did you not swim away when I gave you the chance? It would have been so much easier. Was it that creature? What was it?”
Scoffing, I stood from the chair and shook my head, feeling a need to move. As I turned to pick up the chair and move it away, I heard something scurry across the wood floor and spun back around to see Aeris at the bars, her arm outstretched. I felt her grab at my belt too late and as she moved away, my knife was in her hand. She backed against the wall, a stunned look in her eyes like she hadn’t even expected her own actions. But then she turned the knife toward her palm and began to cut into her own skin.
“Don’t!” I barked.
I reacted without thinking, pulling the key ring off the wall to my left. All in one motion, I unlocked the gate and stepped inside the cell, seizing her wrist with one hand and her shoulder with the other as I shoved her against the wall.
Her eyes darted up toward me, her whole body going rigid at my nearness. I realized then that we had no bars between us and the woman—the siren—had a knife in hand. Silence filled the hold and all I could hear was my own heartbeat and Aeris’ shaky breaths.
We held each other’s gaze for far too long. I knew it, but I couldn’t look away until I heard the wet sound of something dripping on the floor. I glanced at her palm and remembered that she had succeeded in driving my blade under her skin enough to draw a significant amount of blood. It was running down her pale fingers and into the grooves of the wood by our feet. With a curse, I snatched my knife from her hand and sheathed it on my hip.
Bending, I picked up her thin, tattered blanket and tore a long strip from the side, using it to wrap around her bleeding wound. All the while, she seemed complacent, barely twitching a muscle to protest. If she was trying to escape, she was doing a poor job.
