Page 27 of The Devils' Darling

“Kirill,” I cry. “My neck. Don’t.”

He doesn’t stop. Shit. He’s losing it. Fight or flight has kicked in.

“Got to get out of this cage.” His voice is different. Animalistic. “I can’t fucking breathe.”

“You’re going to break my neck.” I scream the words at him.

The rattling stops, my terror getting through to him somehow and overriding his own fear.

“Please, come closer, I can’t feel you, and I’m scared.”

Verbalizing my own fear seems to make him calmer. I hear him crawling over to me.

He takes my hand, his thumb rubbing back and forth across the inside of my wrist. He’s shaking violently.

“Kirill,” I whisper. “What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”

There are so many things wrong, I don’t know where to start, but this is something new. Something different.

I suddenly find myself wanting to protect him.

“The lights are out,” he says, but I feel like he’s only speaking to himself. “As long as they had left the lights on, I’d have been okay.”

“You are okay. I’m here.”

He lets out a bitter laugh, and it’s as though he hasn’t heard me at all.

“He knows that, though. He knows I hate the dark. He knows what he’s doing. I fucking hate him. I’ll never forgive him. No matter what. Not for this, and never for what he did to you.”

He’s clearly talking about his father, and I’m glad I didn’t tell him exactly what Grigoriy did to me because I think Kirill would lose it completely.

“I’m here,” I reassure him again. “I’m not going anywhere.”

I almost laugh at that, but I don’t. This situation is way too fucked up for any humor.

“Will they put the lights back on?”

He sounds like a child. A scared little boy, not the confident man I know. I can’t lie to him. They’ve shut me in the dark a couple of times now, and there’s no reason they won’t do it again and again.

“We don’t need the lights,” I say. “We have each other. We’re not alone. It’s the same room, Kirill. We just can’t see it. Nothing else has changed.”

“It presses in on you. You can’t breathe in it.”

He’s talking about the dark, and he’s not wrong. It’s so pitch black it’s oppressive, but I can’t give in to my own fear, because Kirill needs me right now.

“Talk to me,” I say. “I’ve got you.”

Kirill draws a shaky breath. “When I was a young boy, my father liked to lock me in small, dark places, sometimes for days at a time. He did it as a punishment, trying to make me be strong, but it had the opposite effect.”

My heart breaks for him. How could any man treat his own son in such a way? I want to take his pain and absorb it, so it won’t be able to hurt him anymore.

“You’re strong, Kirill. Look at how you came to save me. A weak man wouldn’t have done that.”

“A strong man who is afraid of the dark?” He snorts at that. “I do not think so.”

“A man who is brave enough to confront his fears makes him strong in my eyes.”

I reach out, finding his face in the dark, and cup his cheek in my palm. He buries his face into my touch. His cheeks are wet, and I kiss his damp skin, tasting salt.

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