Page 78 of These Eternal Bones
What did I expect them to do?
Fight him?
Elric runs his hands through his mussed silky black hair. He hasn’t bothered doing it in a few days. His clothes are wrinkled and worn as he watches me, always watching.
He would’ve killed them.
All the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been gathering in my chest leaves me in a loud sigh, most of my anger for Tien, Péal, and Cartiel leaving me. They are every bit prisoners here too, their warden one rough blow away from utter mental collapse. He mutters to himself, and lord help me, even now I want nothing more than to go to him. To wrap myself around his toned form and let the chill of his flesh ice some of the intense anger in my chest.
His head snaps to me from where it had fallen, unseeing, to the ground in front of his seat. Could he feel it? How badly my traitorous heart wants him.
For eight days, I have reverted toher.
Silent Molly.
Agreeable Molly.
Molly who saved her tears for the night when she was tucked into her blankets and could discreetly wipe her nose on her sleeve.
“Molly, I have not heard your voice in days,please.” He begs again, the same thing he’s pleaded for until his throat goes hoarse. “How can I make you understand?”
I do, though. Idounderstand. That’s what hurts the most.
I fucking understand.
It doesn’t make it hurt any less.
I trusted him when he walked me over the snowy trails. As he kissed and doted, I smiled and laughed. I saw the look in his eyes, them building into something, the way he closed himself off while working into a frenzy.
The desperation.
Every inch of my soul wants to curl into him, to assure him it’ll be okay. To leave those soft kisses along his jaw that make the chip on his shoulder melt away. I want him to brush my hair, to snuggle me close while he hums my song. I want the tip of his claw tickling my flesh as he maps out my freckles.
But he took me for a final walk.
Like slipping a dog a piece of chocolate on their last day because no being should die without tasting it. A small kindness to assuage the guilt before you did the hard part. The part that ate you up inside. We always had dogs back home, if nothing else than to keep coyotes at bay, away from the chickens and livestock we kept on New Eden. I remember the way Joseph lined us up, each of us kids offering a special treat and pets, a few kisses and tears for Bizzy as he walked her past.
I didn’t understand at first; I was only five, six at the most, when I dipped my fingers in the chocolate powder and let her lap at them. He’d taken a step back, told the sweet old dog to lie down. She did, tail wagging slowly, pleased with her treats and attention. Then he drove a blade into the back of her skull.
I didn’t understand then.
But in a few years, I remembered the odd lumps on Bizzy’s sides and belly. I remembered the slow way she moved and how sometimes she whimpered at night.
I’d stayed away from the other dogs after Bizzy. It seemed easier that way.
But it wasn’t easier, because staying away hurt too. I wanted to scratch behind their ears and press my nose up to their wet ones. When they ran up, tails wagging, and licked at my hands to get my attention as I went about my chores, I wanted to pet them more than anything.
My mouth opens to tell him something…anything. To sayanything.
He blurs toward me, his eyes unguarded and raw, swirling pools of darkness. But nothing comes out, and when he reaches for my face, I jerk away as if he’d burned me. A savage growl rips from him as he bends to my height, his tendrils manifesting and snagging me in a brutal but not too terribly painful hold. My heart ratchets in my chest like someone is pumping it manually. Perhaps it’s him.
“It is better to see hatred in your eyes than to see them vacant, syringa.” He growls. “If it is an apology you require, you will find none from my lips. Another one hundred and seventy-two years without this warmth in my chest is too much a burden to bear!”
Whatever train or thread of understanding I had blips out of existence just as proficiently as the Chimera. “I will leave this cage! I will leaveyou!” I scream, and god, it feels…good. It’s a right and terrible burning, and I don’t want to stop.
I gasp as the world pivots, my back meeting the huge four postered bed with a soft thud as he pins me. “Why? Why would you even say that?”
But this time, I don’t hold steady as he pushes. I thrash and squirm, trying to dislodge his hold on me. “Look what you've done to me! You've taken everything I ever wanted! Oh god, Elric, the things I did to be free! The things I cannot erase from my flesh, I fought so hard to be outside of a cage, and youknew! You knew that night in the snowwhen we first kissed! You’re a terrible bastard. I told you all I wanted was to be free, and you knew you would take it from me. It was an illusion you offered and nothing more. You didn’t have to do this!”
