Starfall

Chapter 17 - Elyse

I do my best to keep my voice even, but it sounds weak. "Peter. You have to understand."

"There is nothing more for me to understand," he snaps, slamming his hands into the bars. His next words come slow and shaking. "You took everything from me."

My throat closes up. There's nothing else for me to choke but a simple, "I'm sorry."

He just shakes his head again, stepping back and staring distantly at the ground. "I knew I shouldn't have helped you all those years ago. I knew it in my bones." His fists clench in what looks to be regret and frustration. "But I chose you. Over my own family, I chose you. I tried to help you; tried to keep you safe from that . . . that monster." He pauses, seemingly lost in his head. "Do you even know what she said in that message she sent me?" He doesn't let me answer, even though I know what he's going to say. "She told me that if I left, I would regret it for the rest of my life. She told me that it would be easier for me to give up, and to let her take my soul. I thought I was smarter than her. I thought I could escape her. But then you came crawling out of her shadows."

The hot sensation of tears pricks the backs of my eyes. Through a shuddering breath, I whimper, "I was just a kid. I didn't have any choice—"

"Children don't murder friends!"

"—Please, you have to understand! I didn't—I wasn't—" A sob throttles my words right out of my mouth. My eyes pinch shut and I shake my head, over and over again, forcing the memories out of my mind's eye. I don't want to relive it. I don't want to do it again.

When I open my eyes again, he's there, within my cell, crouched down in front of me. My breath turns to ice in my lungs.

He's freakishly calm now as his old, wrinkled stare burns into me. "Do you remember what she said to you as you put a knife through her heart?"

My mouth has turned to a desert, and my bulging head can't seem to scream the answer loud enough. I know exactly what she said to me. But I can't say it. I won't. It hurts too much.

"Say it," he growls. His eyes don't leave mine as he pulls a dagger from his belt.

Everything in me is frozen. My tightened lips quiver with the words I don't want to speak.

I watch in terror as he lifts the blade up to my chest. His gaze follows it as he touches the point to my shirt, right above my heart.

"This is where you did it," he says softly, turning the knife gently in place. I can feel the sharp point cutting through the fabric and digging into my skin. "See, when you put your blade through my Amelia's heart, you thought you'd killed her right then and there. But you were wrong." Now his eyes drift up to meet mine. "You missed. She spent three more minutes choking, unable to breathe, unable to . . . to stay alive. Not only did you kill her, you made her suffer."

He pushes the blade ever so slightly into my chest. With the sting of the knife's point, a stifled sob scrapes its way out of me.

"Say it," he snarls. "Say it or I make you suffer like she did."

My tears roll up my temples before disappearing into my hair. My breath shakes with both pain and regret.

Somehow, my lips part, and I manage to whisper his wife's words. "You were like a daughter to me."

He stares me down, the blade still stuck in my skin. Blood soaks into my shirt. Before he takes his knife out of me, he twists it quickly, and I hear myself gasp in pain.

Peter stands, and as he leaves my cell, he wipes my blood from the tip of his blade. With the door locked securely, he looks back at me.

"You took . . . everything from me." He stares down at me in disgust for a long moment. "And now it's time I take everything from you." Without hesitation, he snaps his fingers and calls, "Simon!"