Page 51 of Kadra: The Unfeeling

I also notice that when he’s not locked inside my training room playing with the knives with either Crow or Vitali, he wanders the premises for hours with his knife in one hand and my favorite book in the other like he is right now.

The lovely little thief.

“Is that so?” I look his way for a second before focusing on the plants once again but still watching him from the corner of my eyes as he steps closer to where I’m kneeling on the grass.

Somehow every step he is taking my way is in tune with the beating of my heart.

“Yes.” He nods a serious look on his face while his brows furrow. I know what he’s seeing and what he’s possibly thinking. My hands are in the dirt and I’m not wearing my gloves.

I’m so used to being alone that I didn’t realize either Vitali or Azariel could see me without my gloves on while gardening. I’m never without my gloves unless I’m in the privacy of my own room but while other people are around me I wear them. Not because of what they’ll think but because I’m most confident when I have them on. Without them, I feel exposed. Vulnerable. Weak, even. But somehow here with this kid looking down at my hands and seeing my pain visible in them, I don’t feel weak or ashamed.

I stop what I’m doing, look up at Azariel and wait for his eyes to leave my hands and meet my gaze. “I’m sorry.” he suddenly says, rendering me speechless.

He’s sorry?

Thump.

Thump.

Sighing, I ask, “What are you sorry for?”

“Your pain.” His eyes dropped to my hands again.

“Did you cause it, Azariel?” I managed to ask him through the lump in my throat.

“No,” he whispers so softly I almost think I imagined it.

“Then you shouldn’t feel sorry,” I mumbled, looking away from his soulful eyes that seemed to see way too much for someone so young. “And never say sorry, little one. Sorry doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t heal wounds. It doesn’t turn back time. Sorry is useless, especially since you’re not to blame.”

A long moment of silence passes between us before he speaks again and this time he knocks the wind out of me with what he says next. “I could kill him or her for you.”

The flower in my hand falls to the ground while my eyes dart to his face. Kill. He’s offering to kill someone for me. This young boy who barely reaches my waist is asking to take someone’s life for me.

And suddenly a piece of the heart that I’ve been hiding for so long falls at his feet. I know it’s reckless. I know in the end giving a part of myself to this kid will not only hurt me but him as well.

I shouldn’t.

But like I didn’t have a choice with the Russian, it seems as if the story repeats itself. Azariel has been slithering his way into my system and my heart since the first time I saw his photo long before I rescued him from the streets.

Then I wonder just how much darkness this boy has seen and experienced. Has he… “Azariel.” I pick up the flower and I plant it with the others keeping my eyes trained on what I’m doing instead of looking at him.

“Yes?”

“Have you ever—” The words got stuck in my throat. “Have you ever killed a man?”

“Yes.” He says without hesitation.

Crack.

There’s pain in my chest. A pain that I’m unable to hide. Does he see it? Does he see me? I wonder.

Before I get to ask him, a deep and dark voice interrupts sounding close. “I didn’t know you gardened.”

I look at Azariel and find him eerily calm after his heartbreaking confession but then it shouldn’t surprise me. I was about his age when my father forced me to end the life of one of his men as if the man’s life was worthless. As if he was disposable. I guess to my father he was.

But the thought of Azariel staining his hands with blood when he’s not even ten years old hurts me in the deepest part of my soul.

Knowing I won’t get anything more out of him now, I look away and watch as the Russian walks closer to us looking the same as Azariel.

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