Chapter 121
- Becky -
We didn't fall, but it was like we were pulled sideways through a memory that wasn't strictly mine: this time, instead of the images playing on glass like a television or illusion, we walked as though we were there in time. A child crying with a scraped-up knee, and no one is coming to his side—a hospital IV drip with a woman who looked very unwell and pregnant. A small child was screaming at his father as a maid took the crying baby away.
This must have been Josh's childhood. All before three, he watched his mom suffer, and his baby brother was taken away, so after the death of his mother.
"Oh...Josh," I whispered as my heart ached.
Josh thudded against the inside of the ice I'd built. His silhouette in what felt like slow motion: Fist and flame hit the wall. His mouth was moving, saying something. He was safe, but my chest tightened. I had locked him away to shield him and prove my worth, but the guilt wrapped around the center of my chest. Was I being too harsh?"
Before I could make my next move, the demon hit us again in a blast through the seam. I didn't want to fall anymore into this space; I had to fight back!
The hunger and desperation were ragged all over her face. She couldn't stand that I was making peace with my grief.
"You think you will starve me? I see you figured it out. But you will still die; I will still devour you both!" She snarled breathlessly.
"I will not die, not today," I said, my voice strong as iron. I was tired of living in the shadows of everyone else. I stitched this life with these hands, and I know I can stitch it better.
She lunged. Space struck like a saw. Her claws skimmed, and for a breath the world split into white. The light swallowed us and spat me on one knee on the floor, which felt cold. The demon was a weak, breathless creature that had been shaken.
She was not as grand and intimidating as she had been. The edges of her form had been scraped raw. She was still dangerous—oh God, still dangerous—but the sheen had a patchiness now. I won't underestimate her, but this was my chance to close the gap. Her smile was still sharp but not smooth. She was born a predator and frightening.
"You sew," she said, her odd voice full of awe and envy. "You try to hold everything together, but as you hold it, you will meet the inevitable. I will destroy you and everything and everyone around you!"
"You will try, but even if you succeed, then I will unmake and remake it," I answered. No matter what you try."
She moved like a knife. I froze her again, this time at a larger range. The demon slashed with everything she had. I took the hits; blood spattered and iced, pain like a bell. But every hit I took, she could not convert into food. Every time she tried to turn grief into growth, I redirected it into a choice. Her words no longer affected me, and all she wanted was to take me out now.
I thought, absurdly, of the bull demon—how I had reversed a creature's existence out of time. That power had taught me a terrible truth: to change the past is to create absences that other things can slip through once I'd nearly erased something into nothing. Once the Creator had put hands on me and given me a different mercy: not a perfect fix, but a graft. Josh had the armor our prayers built, a prosthetic woven of divinity and scar. He had to learn it. I had to learn how to hold him while he learned to carry himself.
My spirit was bound to him; he was woven into me. I tried to keep him safe, as his next steps would help steady him. But I wasn't playing fair. Just like Evan and Kaysi, I wove my failures into the rope that would not be anyone's prey to a monster again. The demon screamed as my icy net of power and strength, a peace she could no longer feed from, dug into her now exposed skin. The sound echoed, making the seam shiver.
The seam collapsed inward like a ring snapping shut on a bind. We were thrown back into the warehouse—rubble and frost and that steady, ragged air rushing slowly back. The vacuum erased it as the stitch held together this time. The demon staggered and then slid between the folds of space, a shimmer that showed her retreat. She left a seam like a white scar in the air.
She did not vanish. She left with a promise instead: a space between breaths as it faded away.
That wrote, "I will return."
I sank down on broken floorboards and ice dust. My limbs shook. My ribs burned with thousands of needles. My hair was wet with sweat and frost. The ice that held Josh hummed like a living thing. I pressed my palms flat to the surface and felt the trace of his hand as it pulsed through the crystal.
He was alive and safe. He wasn't free yet. I felt like screaming, but held it in as I lay my head against the glass to rest. His fire lit the crystal in the dark, and I could now see his face under its little glow. He lay his head on the crystal, panting. His eyes found mine through the fog.
He had been holding everything for so long; deep, stubbornly holding everything. He looked like a man seeing something he'd been afraid he would never deserve: the courage to remain, to stay, and not hide. A release that made him feel somewhat helpless.
I felt the demon's shadow hung at the edge of the world. She had been wounded—but not destroyed. She would come again. A monster of space, she cannot die as other things can. She lurks in the seams of reality, watching, preying on the holes in your life you leave open.
I had chosen to close many of them today. I stop letting my pain be her banquet. I felt cruel to Josh, but I was kind where it mattered.
The demon's message echoed in my mind. (I will return!)
And when she does, I will be ready. I thought as I used the last of my powers to pull the world back together.
I pressed my palm flat to the ice again. I will teach him, and he will teach me. We will learn together not to be tangled in our failures again. The work will be long and hard, but we will weave the fabric of our bond together.