Page 69 of Violent Possession

He pulls his hands away from me. I want to ask him not to.

“I needed to talk to you,” he says. It sounds intimate, low.

After so many years, Sera.After so many years picking up the pieces of what you left, alone.

I try to find the anger. It’s my armor, the only thing that protects me. I open my mouth to ask why he took so long, to tell him he can go to hell.

But I’m still holding his face. He’s still looking at me. And he’s here.

The twitch of a smile appears. I can’t.

“I always need to talk to you,” I say.

I look down. The only light I ever had was him. Suddenly, I’m a teenager again.

His hands find the pendant of my necklace.

“You kept it,” he says.

I force the courage to look at him again. Andfuck, that smile.

“You are a part of me,” I say.

He closes his eyes. In pain.

“I know,” he whispers.

He lets go of the necklace. I let go of his face. It burns where I touched him.

He takes a deep breath. Then, an urgency surfaces in his tired eyes. The urgency of when things were about to go very, very wrong.

“Listen,” he says. “I came to warn you.”

None of this feels real. Seeing him again is…distant.

“About what?”

“I saw your escort,” he says. The black cars. That’s why we’re in the back. “You’re… in a difficult spot right now.” He pauses. Even with his urgency, with everything that burns in him, he speaks with a calming firmness. It’s always been like this. “Vasily Malakov is digging into you.”

Fucking uncanny valley:Seraphimsaying that damn name. The now and the before merging into a temporal paradox, in tangled threads of yarn.

A spot hurts between my eyebrows. I squeeze it. “Who the fuck is that?”

“You were seen with his brother. Alexei Malakov.”

I never knew any of those Malakovs’ names before Alexei.Vasily. I repeat in my head.

“They’ve been at war for some time. I don’t know what your arrangement is, but the Malakovs are unstable. It’s not worth getting involved, Myrddin, for either of them. Vasily will try to kill you if he thinks you’re a problem, no matter what protection the Malakovs have promised you. The bullet always comes from within.”

The image of the dinner, the fake smiles, the contained hatred. Of course the fucking bullet comes from within. But Alexei seemed focused on hiscousin. Why didn’t he say anything about his brother?

Seraphim opens his mouth and hesitates.

“...I’m selfish. And I… I’d feel good if you stayed alive.”

I feel it again. The spasms, the contractions threatening to return.

“Please,” he whispers.