Chapter 55 What Belongs to Me
RAVIAL
My little lamb pulled away from me.
I simply watched her.
Her eyes were swollen and red, lashes clumped with tears. Her nose was damp, her breathing uneven. It was unpleasant to look at, objectively so. But I felt no irritation. There was a difference between recognizing something as unsightly and feeling repulsed by it. I experienced the former. Never the latter.
“Mi look bad, right?” she asked.
She was looking for comfort. Reassurance. Those rituals still puzzled me. I didn’t instinctively understand them yet I had performed them before. In the elevator. When I held her and sang that foolish song. My behavior around this small, fragile thing often surprised even me.
“Yes,” I said calmly. “You look pitiful, little lamb.”
Her eyes went comically wide.
Something in my chest shifted, barely there, but noticeable. My lips twitched. A smile, perhaps. I had been doing that more often lately. Laughing, too. An irritation in itself.
Without breaking my gaze, I reached behind me and retrieved a handkerchief. When I brought it toward her face, she pulled back.
“Yu call mi pitiful,” she protested, folding her arms across her chest.
“Would you prefer I lie?” I asked evenly. “I can do that, if deception is what you desire.”
Her mouth fell open.
I moved closer anyway and pressed the handkerchief gently to her nose. After a second, she took it from me herself, wiping carefully, as if afraid of making a mess.
I watched the small, precise movements. Controlled. Childlike.
“Sometimes,” she said softly, “mi don’t think yu human… wit di way yu talk. So cold.”
It wasn’t an accusation. Just wonder.
I tilted my head.
“Would you prefer warmth?” I asked. “Smiles that mean nothing? Words spoken only to make you feel better?”
She frowned, confused.
I leaned in until our breaths brushed.
“I do not lie to you,” I said quietly. “I do not pretend. I do not soften what is sharp.”
My fingers lifted, brushing the damp track of tears on her cheek.
“This,” I said, touching it, “is pitiful only because it hurts you. Not because it is ugly. You could never be ugly to me.”
Her lips parted. No sound came out.
My thumb slid to her jaw, resting over the rapid flutter of her pulse.
“I am not kind,” I continued. “I am not gentle by nature. I do not feel guilt, or pity, or love the way people expect.”
I held her gaze, unblinking.
“But you…” My fingers tightened slightly. “You make me want to keep you safe. Not because it is good. Not because it is right.”
My voice lowered.
“But because the thought of anyone causing these tears makes me want to kill them.”
She shuddered.
“That is not human warmth,” I said. “That is mine.”
Her eyes shimmered, fixed on me.
I brushed my lips against her forehead, brief and possessive.
“I am cold to the world because the world is noise,” I murmured. “But you…”
I inhaled against her skin.
“You are the only quiet I tolerate.”
I pulled back just enough to see her face.
“So no, little lamb. I am not human the way you mean it. But I am yours in the only way I know how.”
She stared at me, breathing shallowly.
Human.
I had heard that word all my life, usually spoken in fear. Often before begging.
“I am human enough,” I said calmly. “Just not like you.”
She stiffened, then relaxed, deciding incorrectly that I hadn’t meant harm. That misplaced innocence settled something unpleasantly warm in my chest.
“You feel too much,” I continued, studying her like a solved equation. “You carry other people’s sins as if they are your own. That is why you suffer.”
Her brows knit together. “Feeling… bad thing?”
“For people like you,” I said, “it is a weakness. For people like me, it is unnecessary.”
She looked down, twisting the handkerchief between her fingers. “But if mi no feel… how mi know wat right?”
I watched her closely.
This was the point where she would either understand or cling harder.
“Right,” I said slowly, “is whatever keeps you alive. Whatever keeps you safe. Whatever prevents the world from tearing pieces out of you.”
Her lips parted as the idea settled.
“Your father hurt you,” I went on, voice levelled. “That is wrong. Not because it breaks a moral law but because he damaged something that belongs to me now.”
She flinched at the word. She did not pull away.
Progress.
“I removed you from him,” I said. “I gave you shelter. Food. Protection. A name that forces powerful men to look down when they speak to you.”
Her eyes lifted to mine, searching.
“That is not cruelty,” I told her. “That is order.”
“But Avery…” she whispered. “Mama…”
“They are not you.”
The words landed hard. Her breath caught.
“I will not pretend to care about everyone,” I added. “That would be dishonest. But I care about you. Enough to stop a car in the middle of the road. Enough to listen when you cry. Enough to destroy anyone who touches you without permission.”
Her shoulders trembled.
“Yu scare mi,” she said softly.
“No,” I said calmly. “I am being precise.”
Silence stretched between us, heavy and intimate.
Then she whispered, “Why mi, Ravial?”
Ah.
I leaned closer.
“Because you look at the world and still believe it can be gentle,” I said. “And when that belief finally breaks, I want to be the one holding what remains.”
Her eyes shone not with understanding.
With trust.
Dangerous. Beautiful trust.
She nodded, as if my answer satisfied her.
She rested against my side, fragile and unguarded.
She did not know what I was.
She did not know what she had bound herself to.
I allowed that ignorance to remain.
Ignorance is not difficult to preserve not once the door has already closed
and the lock has turned from the inside.
I stepped out of the car, my little lamb asleep in my arms. Her breathing was slow, trusting. Unaware.
I felt the eyes before I saw them.
At the edge of the stone steps stood the other one.
The copy.
Not an imposter in the way humans meant it, no stolen face, no deception but an error nonetheless. A reflection where there should not have been one. She wore the same shape, the same echoes of bone and skin.
That alone was unacceptable.
No one should resemble what belongs to me.
I did not dislike her.
Dislike required emotion.
This was simpler.
She existed where she should not have.
The Creator, in its infinite habit of meddling, had allowed duplication. A flaw. An indulgence. I would correct it when the time came.
Her gaze flicked from my face to the way my arm curved protectively around the sleeping girl. Her jaw tightened. Fear, confusion, resentment, human clutter I neither shar
ed nor respected.
I moved past her toward the door.
As I drew level with her, I spoke, my voice calm, absolute.
“Come with me.”
Not a request.
Not an invitation.
An instruction.