Page 61 of Bird on a Blade

Before I know it, I’m at the front of the church. The altar. Sawyer has his knives lined up, as always, and I stare down at them and sob.

Why did it have to happen like this? Why is it that the man who makes me feel safe and beautiful andlovedhas to be unhinged?

Emotion surges up in me, sudden and terrifying. I screech out my frustrations and swipe my arm across the altar, knocking the blades to the floor with a clatter. One of them cuts me, a thinsting that blooms red. My blood’s the same color as Logan Greer’s.

I slump down against the altar, choking back my tears. My whole body shakes, and I curl into myself as best I can, my breaths shuddery and thin.

There’s a creak and a scrape as the church doors open, the sound filling the space.

I look up, still weeping, and Sawyer steps into the doorway, silhouetted by the autumn sun.

He’s still wearing his mask. Still carrying his knife. He almost looks as if he means to kill me, especially as he walks down the church aisle, his steps slow and deliberate, his clothes dark with blood. I watch him, trembling, as he comes closer and closer.

He steps beside the front pew.

“You’re bleeding.” His voice is dark and raspy. A killer’s voice. “Did he do that to you?”

I tear my gaze away from him to look down at my arm. The blood vines around my wrist like a bracelet.

“N-no,” I say softly. “I—” I look up at him again. He hasn’t moved. He hasn’t put down his knife, either. “I cut myself on your knives.”

His head moves a little, looking toward the altar. “You’re afraid.” He steps closer. “Of me?”

He’s still speaking in his killer’s voice, but with that one question, I hear an undercurrent of?—

Sadness. Disappointment.

It twists my heart into ribbons.

“I’ve never—” The words barely come out a whisper, but I think Sawyer can still hear me, the way he tilts his head a little, the way he comes another step closer. “I’ve never actuallyseenyou?—”

I can’t say it. I can’t saykill. Instead, I choke on my own words.

“I will never kill you,”Sawyer says.

He says it harshly, and I jerk my head up at him in surprise.

“I was afraid I would,” he goes on. “At first. That I would—I’d be overcome. But not anymore.”

And then, as if to prove it, he marches up to where I’m sitting on the aisle and lowers himself down beside me. I can smell the blood on him. I can see the flash of his eyes behind the mask.

“But I won’t stop killing for you.”

My breath catches, and my tears bloom again. But it’s not for the reason he’s thinking. It’s because it never even occurred to me to ask him to.

And what does that say about me?

“If you want to leave,” he continues. “You can go. I won’t follow. Won’t send anyone to kill you or hurt you or even fucking scare you, do you understand?” He rises back up to standing and points at the church door with his still-bloody knife. “You can go right now.”

The sobs wrack through me, and I stare up at him through the veil of my tears.

“Go,” he says, and there’s something pleading in his voice. Something desperate. “Please. I can’t fucking stand to see you cry. Not over this.”

“I don’t want to!”

The words erupt. Sawyer looks back at me, but it’s not Sawyer. It’s that mask. It’s akiller.

Except they’re the same, aren’t they?

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