Page 101 of Sick Bargain

HAUNTING & LOVELY

KRYPT

“I choseto die from my life to willingly live in a nightmare,” Remiel mutters. “Ironic.”

He’s right, in a sense. He is going to die from his life, but I’ll be the nightmare he lives in. Not this mountain or these tunnels. Remiel is fucking mine, and our nightmare starts now.

Because he chose to find his way out of the tunnels. He picked himself. He picked me and a life we’ll live together. He discovered his way to this open cavern on his own, stumbled in with a crazed smile on his handsome face, and I didn’t hate the way it looked. It’s gone now, but I can tell it isn’t far away. He’s half gone, slipping into insanity because he’s learning to be comfortable there.

“Sit.”

“Aren’t I free?” he challenges me, taking wobbly steps because The Mad House is getting to him.

“Define freedom.” I tug on his shirt and push him to sit on the edge of a rock.

“Hell,” he says, staring at the cave instead of me.

It’s open and wide, has a high ceiling despite how deep within the mountain it is, and a fissure in the roof lets alittle moonlight in. Ah, me and Remiel, reflecting under the moonlight yet again.

“Whose hell? Yours or mine?”

“Mine,” he answers, watching me now that I’m taking his cello out of the case. “Your hell locked me out when you set me free with a fucking calling card. Coward.”

It was cowardly, but I growl at him anyway. “You think you deserve more than a calling card? You’re the only person I’ve ever sent one to.”

He looks at my eyes, but his are mostly blank. “Liar. You gave one to Gregory Malone.”

I grin, remembering that. “On your behalf.”

“You never told me what it said.” I did. I told him that it said Malone’s suffering would be everlasting if he so much as looked at Remiel again, and I’ll deliver upon that. “And yeah, I do think I deserve more than a calling card if you’re going to break up with me.”

“Break up?” I lift his cello out of the case. “You think this is a relationship?”

“Not a romantic one,” he scoffs.

“Then don’t expect romantic things from me. I claimed you with a calling card, so what’s more poetic than a calling card declaring your freedom?” I put the cello between his legs, and Remiel holds it on instinct.

“This,” Remiel says, motioning at the cavern. “This feels like true freedom.”

“How so?”

“Freedom from living,” he says. “Because it’s come to that, hasn’t it? You’re too much of a coward to admit how you feel, so you’ll end my life to avoid it. At least I’ll die playing nice music.”

I’m so fucking tired, but to see him spark up some sass just because he wants me to admit I’m not going to kill him has mycock hard. “Better get playing that nice music then, hero.” I hand him the bow.

He doesn’t ask questions or put up a fight, he simply starts playing quietly, letting the harmony find itself. I step back to watch him. Whatever he wants to tell me, it’ll come out in his music, and I know how to hear it now. But while he plays, he’s going to listen to me.

“You’re a hypocrite. You know that?” I ask.

He looks up, fingers and bow still moving. “I know. But how?”

“You claim I’m too cowardly to tell you how I feel, but it was you who said you don’t need me.”

“But that I want you,” he corrects.

“Mm.” I hum, undoing my jacket. “Yet I told you I shattered. I told you that my love is an obsession, and I’m obsessed with you. I told you that you are important to me, and I marked the proof of that into your skin.”

His music deepens, and his eyes shine wet and blue.

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