Page 161 of The Truths We Burn

And maybe that makes me some kind of psychopath or something, but all I feel is relief that he’s gone. That the man who was responsible for the sharpest pain I’d ever felt was no longer breathing, nothing but a pile of charred bones andseared skin. His body was destroyed, and I hoped his soul was headed to some form of internal torture. Where he would spend his years suffering for what he did to his own flesh and blood.

Rook referenced Dante’s Inferno when I asked him if he thought my father was in Hell. He said that those who choose the sin of greed are assigned to the fourth circle of Hell. Those who hoard too much money or choose wealth over anything else. But he believed that was too easy for him.

He said he’d be in the very last Ring, the ninth circle, those who betray their own kin. Where inside my father will spend eternity lodged inside of the frozen lake of ice headfirst. Contrary to most religious teachings, Dante said that the pit of hell was cold and without love.

Rook had told me this as we waited for the police and firefighters to arrive, and I distinctly remember smiling, recalling the times that my father would turn the thermostat up in our home because he couldn’t stand to be cold.

“Why are you on the floor?”

I open my eyes, seeing Rook wearing nothing but a white towel around his waist. His hair is wet and falling down his forehead, drips of water falling down onto his chest.

My body was tired, mentally exhausted from everything we’d just endured the past few hours. From the fire to the police, to the hospital afterward. But somehow, my legs find the strength to stand up and move towards him.

His skin is blistering red. He’d allowed himself to stand underneath the stream of searing hot water until it turned cold I’m sure. My fingers reach out to run across the top of his shoulder blade, sadness in my eyes.

“Rook—” I mutter,

“Don’t Sage.” He interrupts me, tightening his jaw. “I’m holding onto my promise by a thread here.”

“What happened to Silas tonight was not your fault,” I tell him anyway, even though he doesn’t want to hear it.

Angry at my words, he moves past me, walking towards our bed for the night, and falls to the edge of the mattress. With a sigh, he drops his head between his shoulders, looking at the ground.

I know he isn’t angry with me. Not really. He’s angry at himself because he felt like if anyone could have stopped this, it would have been him.

“Then whose fault was it? Hmm?” He grunts, emotion choking his throat. Rook had been so strong at the hospital. Stood his ground even when Silas’s mother, Zoe, broke down into a mess of tears in his arms.

He held her tightly, his spine stiff and jaw taunt at the hospital waiting room. For the first time since I’d met him, he’d been able to remove all the emotion from himself. The emotion that drives him was gone.

I knew he’d have to break down, eventually. He could only be strong for so long. And when he watched his best friend get wheeled into an ambulance for transportation to a facility, I could see the crack in his eyes.

This had broken him.

“I knew he wasn’t okay.” He presses his fingers into his chest. “I fucking knew it and I did nothing. That’s my best friend, Sage and I almost let him kill himself.”

His fingers turn into hard fists, he slams them into his chest repeatedly. Chasing the relief that comes from hurting himself.

I kneel between his legs, grabbing his wrists, hating to see him like this.

My fire god.

The one that burns so bright and so fierce, was dwindling out by the second.

“Rook, look at me,” I whisper, “Look at me,” I say again until he finally lifts his watery eyes to my own.

There is no hellfire inside them right now. Only a brilliant shade of hazel. There is no devil, no Lucifer. Only a man with a broken soul who does not know how to fix it.

“Schizophrenia.” I say, “That’s whose fault this is. Not yours, not mine, not anyone. Silas is sick and he just needs some help. There was nothing you could have done to prevent him from stopping his medicine.”

I’m trying to rationalize with him. To make him see that this was the sickness that lived inside of Silas. One that he had gotten too tired to fight against. But I should have known that would be impossible, not when the wound was this fresh.

All I could do now was hold pressure and hope he didn’t bleed out before I could stitch him up.

“I need to hurt, TG.” He chokes. “I need the pain. Fuck, I need it so bad right now. Someone needs to make me pay for this. Go get Thatcher. Call Alistair. Anything. Please, baby, I need to make it hurt.”

I felt like I’d been wrapped in barbed wire, which was slowly tightening around me the more he spoke. There was no way out of it without slicing myself to pieces. I couldn’t let him hurt himself. I couldn’t let him walk out of this room into Thatcher’s basement and let him cut.

I was stuck between letting someone else hurt him, letting him hurt himself, or taking this into my own hands. But the thought of causing him physical or mental anguish made my gut churn.

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