Heartless (Merciless 2)

There’s a sudden crackle from the fire and she barely acknowledges it. Just like the tension between us.

“How are you feeling today?” I ask her and tell myself it’s because I want to get into her head, not because the last twenty-four hours have changed everything.

“Tired,” she tells me and the small bit of strength she’s shown since I’ve walked in wanes. She picks at the fuzz on the rug beneath her and answers with a catch in her throat, “I don’t know how to feel right now. There’s so much…” her voice trails off and I ask her, “So much what?”

The smirk on her face is nothing but fragile as she asks back, “Isn’t it my turn?” The walls around her are toppling down. I can see it. I can feel it. She’s too weak to hold them up any longer, but the girl beneath them isn’t what I imagined. She’s a girl who’s been left alone far too long. A girl who should never have been left alone at all.

And the realization tugs at me like nothing else ever has.

I force my lips into a straight line and give her a small nod.

“Why did you do it?” she asks me in a whisper. Still picking at the imaginary fuzz and only glancing at me occasionally. As if she’s afraid to catch my gaze and see something there that could ruin her.

“Do what?” I ask her, although I already know what she’s referring to.

Why did I bring her to the dinner? Give her a knife. And let her kill the man who’s hurt her so cruelly.

“Why did you… give me the knife?” she finally asks, and her words are twisted and tortured. As tortured as she’s been all of today and last night.

“Why did I let you kill him?” I clarify for her, making her come to terms with the truth. She sucks in a heavy breath and pushes the hair from her face as I speak. “Why did I give you a knife so you could kill Alexander Stephan?”

The sofa groans and the fire hisses as I sit back and release what sounds like an easy breath. “Because I wanted you to do it,” I tell her and almost elaborate, but the sarcastic huff that spills from her lips as she looks away from me and toward the door stops me from giving her more.

“What did you dream of last night?” I ask her, and I can’t help that my body leans forward, eager for her reply. She hasn’t been forthcoming, but she always answers me when I give her the opportunity to ask whatever she’d like.

She licks her lower lip, still shaking her head from my non-answer.

“Dreams,” she answers with a hint of indignation in her retort. The words I wanted to speak moments before nearly come to life, but then she adds, “I dreamed lots of dreams,” shaking her head with the smallest of movements. Her voice is small, and she speaks as if she’s not even talking to me.

Like she’s validating what she saw with herself.

“It was like my life sped forward in the form of the dreams I had growing up.”

My brow furrows as I listen to her. I expected it to be only nightmares with the way she screamed. The memory of her shrill screams and the terror of her cries sends a bite of cold down my back that slowly rolls through every limb.

I couldn’t do anything but listen to her and I’ve never regretted a damn thing in my life as much as I regretted giving her that knife like I did last night while she screamed.

Licking her lips, she continues and then that crease in her forehead returns as she looks at me. “And then I dreamed of the night he killed her.”

My head nods on its own. I knew to expect it, that seeing him would elicit those fears for her, but I expected her to be different after she killed him. For the realization that he’s dead, to free her in a way she could never be while he was allowed to live.

Give it time, the voice hisses again and the irritation I have for it shows on my face, silencing Aria.

“You can keep going,” I tell her, fixing myself and then adding, “if you’d like.”

But the moment has passed and instead she takes her turn.

“Are things still the same?” she asks me.

No. The answer is instant and obvious in my head. Strong enough that I feel the word echo through my veins. “Do they feel different?”

“That’s not how this game is played,” Aria answers with the trace of a smirk on her face although the tiredness has never been so evident in her eyes as it is now. “I asked you first,” she tells me and waits for a reply.