Page 21 of Sage Haven
The pressure mounted with each passing hour, heavy and smothering.
I pushed myself harder, worked longer, because someone had to.
Even as Castor started falling behind.
He was slower now, distracted in ways I hadn’t seen in years. I’d catch him staring at his phone too long, running a hand through his hair like it might steady him.
But it didn’t.
He was slipping, and I knew why.
He was trying to live a life outside of this.
Something…more.
And I was the one who had made that nearly impossible.
I was the one who ledhim into this life.
I was the one who handed him the blade and told him where to cut.
I promised I’d protect him. Promised I’d shield him from the darkness that had been swallowing me whole since I first ended up with the ENA but promises like that are built on lies.
I hadn’t saved him.
I’d dragged him under.
But even now, standing in the fallout of those choices, it was impossible to tell whether there had ever been another path, though at times I feel like I could have carved out another for him.
The guilt gnawed at me.
Every hour. Every minute.
Relentless as a dull knife twisting under the ribs.
I should’ve been his protector.
Instead, I became his undoing, and yet, he stayed.
He could have left me in this house, this life, in the graveyard of men we used to be, but he didn’t.
He stayed, and that haunted me more than anything.
I ran a hand over my face, fingertips digging into my temples like they could dislodge the pressure building behind my skull.
I needed air.
I needed something else—anything else to keep the walls of this house from closing in on me.
I stepped out onto the deck, shoving the door open harder than I meant to as the wind carried it.
The air held the scents of pine and earth and the faint tug of something distant and wild. I inhaled deeply, holding my breath until my chest ached before letting it out slow.
Trying to clear my head and feel something other than this mental fatigue I found myself in.
The valley stretched out below, quiet and still.
From here, I could see everything.
