Page 133 of Obsession

I can’t. I won’t.

And, along with that initial rejection, is my anger. She made me for this. She took away my free will, and she has the gall to make requests?

No. No, I won’t bite. I won’t stay. I won’t do what Sem wants.

Then, I begin to second-guess myself.

I reason nervously: she created me. She made every part of me. Maybe this is another trick and our conversation was designed to make me think that she wanted me to bite and stay with Aris. I don’t know why she’d want me to abandon my task of entertaining Aris, but maybe doing so leads to something else, something she planned for. Or maybe she wants me to stay and I’m completely overthinking this! How the hell am I to know what the right choice is?

“Mary, open your eyes.”

Finally, frustrated, I look at Aris and am struck by the emotion on his face. He looks as hurt as I feel. Why? He can hear my thoughts and knows how uncertain I am; he should be eating up the conflict.

“You know that I…” He starts, then pauses, uncharacteristically uncertain. “You know that I care about you. You can’t give up just when the game is getting good.”

“The game. The game, the game, the game,” I repeat, until I’m practically moaning. There is a faint ringing in my ears that turns to a roar, and the light inside of me—call it what you want, hope or joy or perseverance—whatever it is, it flickers once, twice, and finally goes out.

The decision comes without thought, as natural as breathing, so maybe it is Sem speaking for me, but it’s what I believe is the right thing to say.

“You win,” I say, and his mouth falls open before he quickly shuts it, stunned. I continue in a wooden tone, “You’ve won the game. It’s over. So you can kill me now.”

He just stares, long enough that I would feel embarrassed if I could feel anything beyond self-hatred and resignation right now. His face is unreadable.

“Right,” he says, and it is clear in his tone that he doesn’t believe me. He sounds faintly amused, like I’m playing a joke.

I repeat, “Kill me. End this.”

His brows push together, eyes darting around as he resumes searching my mind to see if I’m serious, perhaps expecting me to change my mind, but I stay silent.

Eventually, he shifts from foot to foot. His eyebrows stay mushed together, but in concern, not confusion this time. “Mary…” he tries, then drifts off, realizing that there is nothing to say.

He has demanded this be a game, and fine, so it is; now, it is forfeit.

“Aren’t you tired?” I say, tears in my eyes again. “Aren’t you just exhausted? Don’t you want to…”

“No,” he replies. “I don’t want that.”

“What do you want?”

He continues staring at me, and then he shocks me into silence when he falls to his knees.

Aris is on his knees. Aris.

“Stay, Mary.” His throat bobs. “I want you to stay.”

For a few moments, my mouth flaps open and shut. I thought I’d seen everything—every part of Aris, at least—but this version of him is new. “I… I can’t,” I eventually manage.

“Mary.” He shuts his eyes and works his jaw, then he says the one word I didn't know he was capable of uttering: "Please."

This requires effort on his part; gods do not plead. Not to each other, and certainly not to mortals. And yet…

He used the word for me, maybe even learned it for me.

I hesitate. It does mean something that he would get on his knees and say such a thing. It speaks to who he was when he played with birds and held me when I had nightmares—the soft, amnesiac side.

Did some part of him survive, after all?

"Please," he says again, a new light in his eyes, encouraged by my thoughts. "Stay."

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