Page 108 of Darling Wildfire
“What happens if we lose again?”
“You’re not getting taken,” I said flatly.
“You can’t know that—”
“Yes. I can,” I turned to him and stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Because he’s going to take me instead.”
“What? No—T,” Nyx protested. “I—I can handle it—” I held up my hand to stop him.
“I’m not doing this because I think you can’t handle it—”
“I mean, I kind of lost it for a minute,” Nyx interrupted. “I’d understand if you thought that way.”
I stepped closer to him, my jaw clenched in anger. “It means you’re still human. I want you to keep that part of yourself for as long as you can,” I said fervently. “I see your shadows, I see who you become out there, we’re all a little fucked up like that—but you also still have a heart in there, Nyx. It’s black, and it’s a little beat up,” I gave him a smile. “But it still works.”
“And yours doesn’t?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “But it can only be me. I don’t want Atlas going either, because I fear what will happen if he’s subjected to that trauma again.”
“He told you?”
I nodded. “After you told me what happened to you, he shared his story with me. It can only be me.”
“But—”
“I’m not backing down on this, Nyx,” I said firmly.
“But what happens if you break?” He asked. “We need you, T.”
“No, it has to be me because I’m already broken,” I said. I hesitated to tell him everything. I’d said I wasn’t going to talk about my family in this place, but I needed him to understand. “His men shot and raped my wife—and then slit my son’s throat—in front of me.”
Nyx was silent.
“He was referencing my daughter that time in the showers with Yuri,” I continued. “I’d sent her into the woods to hide. But apparently he got to her too.”
Nyx pressed his lips together and instead of offering pity or an apology—he knew me better than that—he settled his gaze on the mansion.
“He has a lot to atone for,” he said coldly.
“He does. So let me deal with him.”
I was being honest; I didn’t think Nyx was weak. I thought he was stronger than all of us for actually allowing himself to feel and work through what happened instead of shoving it aside. I firmly believed the only reason he was able to come back to us for the next game was because he sat with his feelings and talked to Atlas and eventually me.
I couldn’t do that. I didn’t talk.
I boxed it up and shoved it into a corner and operated in the gray because I didn’t want to feel anything—good or bad.
Did my heart work? At one point I’d thought I knew what love was but the longer I was here and the longer I sank into my plans for revenge, the more it seemed to get farther and farther out of reach. Maybe, in a selfish way, I wanted Nyx and Atlas to keep their humanity so they could be my anchor, otherwise I was afraid one day I’d wake up and discover there was nothing left of me.
Not even the broken pieces.
“How’d you get your name, Preacher?” Kane asked.
We were inside for the night and Preacher was laying on the couch lost in thought. “You don’t ever say anything religious or nothin’,”Kane continued.
Nyx hid a smile at Kane’s blunt and personal question. Kane had a habit of not filtering his thoughts. He’d asked Atlas why he wore his hair in a bun when it was more practical to just shave it all off. Atlas had looked at Kane’s bald head and raised his eyebrows before shaking his head and walking off, refusing to humor him.
“I’m not religious anymore,” Preacher said.
