Page 86 of Dark Night of the Soul

And then I was stomping out into the late morning, slamming the door behind me, moving down the steps of the porch and pausing at the tree line.

He didn’t follow.

He probably thought I’d explode. And, for a second, that cold place in my head flared, as if my rage alone activated it. So even my own emotions could trigger it now. Perfect.

And, indeed, I wanted to hit something. I wanted to feel pain in a different way. I wanted to release that pent-up anger. I let myself sit with the rage. Feel it. Wallow in it.

And then I shoved it back down, pushing it away. Controlling it. I sucked in a lungful of air, taking deep, cleansing breaths.

And that’s when I decided.

If I could control it, perhaps I could become Vormund’s worst nightmare.

I don’t know how long I was outside. I walked the perimeter—totally got why he did it every day because the place was peaceful—until I was ready to go back.

This time, I didn’t slam the door behind me.

He sat at the table, the whiskey bottle in the center and two empty glasses. Waiting. And I thought of all those times we shared a glass of whiskey when something terrible happened. And sometimes when nothing terrible happened at all. He’d even tried to give it to me in the first safe house, and I flat out refused.

Because accepting it then was accepting defeat.

He poured the two glasses, then rose and walked over to me, handing me one. I took it. I looked down at it, trying to reconcile everything that’d been taken from me in a few short weeks.

“He still hasn’t won, you know,” he said, breaking the silence.

“Then why does it feel like he has?”

“Because it’s raw right now.”

He was probably right. It was raw pain slicing through me. The realization that I’d lost the one thing that defined me. The one thing that made me special.

“I think you’re still pretty special,” he said softly.

My head snapped up, and I looked at him. He’d heard that? Had he turned on that part of himself where he could hear my thoughts once again? Or was he good at reading my expression and body language?

It told myself it was the latter.

His expression didn’t reveal anything because he never wanted me to see that part of himself. But sometimes—on rare occasions—I could tell. His eyes flickered between green and gold and I wasn’t sure what to make of that. Or I knew what it meant and didn’t want to face it. I glanced at the bottle on the table to gauge the level.

“I didn’t start without you.”

My gaze drifted back to his. There was something unreadable in them. No, that wasn’t right. I denied what I saw there because I didn’t want to acknowledge he was looking at me like that.

I downed the whiskey. A distraction.

It burned. It felt good. Made me feel alive again. Like I was me again. He went back to the table and grabbed the bottle, then refilled my glass.

“We can get drunk if you want,” he said, amusement in his voice.

I laughed. “You’ve never been drunk.”

And I’d seen him drink plenty. The man had a high tolerance for alcohol. He had a high tolerance for everything. He could deny himself anything and still stand there like everything was fine.

“There’s a first time for everything.” He clinked my glass, then drank in one gulp. Then refilled.

I was aware of how close he stood to me, and nothing inside me wanted to lash out. Not that cold place deep in my head. Perhaps, the whiskey was doing something—burning the edges off, blunting the alarms. Enough that I wondered if I really did need to get drunk.

We sat on the sofa. We drank. We didn’t talk about anything. And that was fine.