Page 7 of The Devil's Thorn
She nods and pours herself tea. The china clinks gently as she lowers the kettle.
“You look tired,” she says.
“Iamtired.”
“Tired of the chase?”
I look up sharply. Her gaze holds mine, steady. Calm.
My throat tightens. “I didn’t do it.”
She doesn’t ask what I mean. Doesn’t need to.
“I had him in my sights,” I whisper. “Everything we worked for. Everything I’ve become. And I still couldn’t do it.”
Her expression doesn’t change. She just sips her tea.
“Doubt is a funny thing,” she says. “It only grows when you water it.”
I study her. “You think I’m going soft?”
“I think,” she says gently, “that you’ve always carried too much heart for someone raised in the dark.”
I look away.
The tea burns my throat when I take a sip. Too sweet. Always too sweet.
“Do you think I’m wrong?” I ask. “For needing more than just someone else’s word before I end a life?”
She sets her cup down and reaches across the table, brushing her fingers lightly over mine.
“I think,” she says softly, “that whatever choice you make, it will be the right one. Because you’ve always trusted your soul, even when it was bleeding.”
It should comfort me.
But something about the way she says it… feels rehearsed.
Like she already knows what I’ll choose.
She walks me to the guest room later, the one with the soft blue walls and the cracked window that whistles when the wind hits right.
“You’ll sleep better tonight,” she says as she pulls the covers back for me.
“I doubt it.”
She smiles again. Brushes a hand over my hair.
And for a moment…
I let her.
Because it’s easier to believe in softness than to question it.
The hum of the ceiling fan is soft, steady, my mind focused on it when Anna walked away, closing the doors behind her with a soft tud. It used to lull me to sleep. Now it just matches the rhythm of my thoughts—never still, never quiet.
But tonight… the noise in my chest feels softer somehow. Muted.
Maybe it’s the tea.
