Page 110 of Ghost Ribbon

My hand against the door began to shake.

I never trembled.

Not when I was thirteen and a doctor diagnosed me as inhuman. Not when I watched my parents’ coffins lower into frozen earth. Not when I killed my first man or my twentieth or my fiftieth. My hands had always been steady.

Now I trembled.

My chest rose and fell too fast, suddenly unable to find enough air. I pressed my forehead against the door and waited for my voice to return, for my body to remember who I was.

“Open the door.” My voice was so fragile.

So vulnerable.

A voice I didn’t recognize emerging from my own body.

I heard him shift on the other side, then the lock clicked.

The door opened inward. There was no one home, so it was only the two of us.

Marco stood in the gap, backlit by the dark hallway behind him. His face was wet, rain and tears indistinguishable now, streaming down his cheeks and dripping from his chin.

Our eyes met.

“I love you.”

I stepped across the threshold and said it again because once wasn’t enough, because I needed him to hear it in every language I possessed, every register, every possible iteration until there was no doubt left in either of us.

“Ti amo.”

I took another step closer.

He stepped back.

I kept moving forward, into the hallway, dripping rainwater onto the worn floorboards, my hair hanging in my eyes, my hands open at my sides because I didn’t trust them not to grab him, not to hold him too hard, not to beg with my body what my words could not adequately convey.

“Ya tebya lyublyu.”

Marco’s back hit the wall.

He had nowhere left to go.

His tears were streaming faster now, his whole body shaking with the effort of holding himself together. He shook his head slowly, the motion barely perceptible, and whispered, “Please… don’t…”

“Don’t step away from me,” I said. “Don’t push me away. I’ll beg you if you want me to. I’ll get on my knees right here in your hallway. I’ll beg, Marco. I’ll do whatever you need. Just don’t—” My throat closed.

I reached him.

My hands came up to frame his face, my thumbs brushing the tracks of his tears, my fingers sliding into his curls. His skin was burning hot beneath my palms, or maybe my hands were just that cold from the rain.

He closed his eyes. “I’m dying, Alexei.”

I shook my head immediately.

“No.”

I lowered my forehead to his, needing the contact. “No. You’re not.”

His breath stuttered. I could feel it against my mouth.