Page 98 of Fractured Allegiance
He reaches into his coat pocket. I tense, enough to feel it in the way my jaw locks.
He pulls out a burner phone. Slim. Unlabeled.
He offers it to me.
I take it. Don’t ask what number he pre-programmed. I already know it’s one of his.
“You’re not going to say it, are you?” I ask.
“Say what?”
“What you are. What this is.”
“No.”
“Because you don’t trust me?”
“Because I don’t want to hear it out loud.”
I nod slowly.
That, at least, I understand.
Words make things real. And once they’re real, you can’t walk them back.
We stand there too long.
He’s close enough now that I can see the pulse in his neck. See the line of his throat shift when he swallows. See the way his fingers twitch like he’s holding back a dozen things.
He says: “You weren’t wrong. About what kind of world this is.”
My voice comes quieter than I expect. “And what kind is that?”
“The kind that doesn’t forgive softness. Not in women. Not in men. Not in people like us who confuse control with survival.”
I look at him. “Then why keep showing up here? With me?”
“Because when I’m with you,” he says, “I forget that survival is supposed to mean being alone.”
The stillness that follows isn’t dead.
It’s alive.
It’s us.
Somewhere in the loft, the heat ticks on. A pipe shudders. The building reminds us we’re standing in the middle of something ancient and broken, and still trying to work.
Silas steps back first.
Not far. Just enough to breathe.
“You’re not his, either,” he says. I don’t have to search my memory to know he’s mirroring my own words back at me.
“That doesn’t make me yours,” I insist.
“No,” he agrees. “But it does mean you don’t have to be alone in purgatory.”
I nod. I don’t know if I believe it, but wanting to believe it, that feels close enough.
