Wounded

Silas:

I didn’t sleep. I never do.

I just lay there—silent, still, eyes open to the dark. Not because I’m guarding the room, or waiting for something to strike, but because sleep is a language I never learned. It doesn’t speak to me.

The room is colder than it was an hour ago. I feel it in the air, in the tightness of the space around us, in the breath she exhales like fog. Not from the cracked window or the thin blankets. It's me. It’s always me.

The chill that clings to corners. The frost that kisses the windowpanes even in early autumn. The silence that settles like ash when I walk into a room.

The cold sting of death.

I cause it. I am it.

And I hate that she’s shivering because of me.

Isadora’s curled in a tight little shape beneath her threadbare blankets, her knees drawn to her chest, her shoulders hunched like she’s bracing herself for a blow that never comes. I watch the rise and fall of her breath. Slow. Gentle. Delicate. She looks so breakable like this.

I shouldn’t be here.

I tell myself that over and over.

I shouldn’t linger in rooms where people sleep. Shouldn’t watch them with this hollow ache in my chest. Shouldn’t want things I can’t have. Things I don’t deserve.

But I do.

Especially when it’s her.

There’s something about the way she moves. The way she exists. Her presence cuts through my emptiness like light through fog. She carries the scent of life, not just the mundane beat of a mortal heart, but something alive. Vibrant. Reckless. Fierce. She walks through her days with fire in her bones, even when her hands shake. Even when she looks like she’s about to crumble.

I watch her from the far edge of the room, back pressed against the wall, arms folded loosely over my chest. I don’t blink. Don’t breathe.

She shivers again.

And I do nothing.

Because I can’t.

Because I know what I am.

No one cuddles into death.

And yet… I feel it. The small, sharp sting in my chest when he moves.

Rhett.

He shifts where he’s been laying in a makeshift pile of blankets at the end of her bed. I watch him sit up slowly, cautiously, like he doesn’t want to startle her. Like even in sleep, her comfort is his priority.

There’s a pause—hesitation. Then, he slides into the bed beside her.

I shouldn’t watch.

But I do.

I watch as the mattress dips, as her body responds to the heat of him instinctively—like a flower leaning toward the sun. She relaxes. Uncoils. Scoots back until she’s pressed to his chest, like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

Like it’s home.

My jaw tightens.

And still I don’t move.

Because what would I do?

Pull her away?

Lie beside her, let her nestle into me the way she just did with him?

She’d flinch. Her breath would hitch. Her skin would pull tight from the cold I bring with me. Even in sleep, I think she would know. Know that something wrong was pressed against her.

No one seeks warmth in the arms of a ghost.

I watch as Rhett wraps his arm around her—so gently it almost hurts to see. His hand comes to rest just on her ribs. Her breathing evens out under his touch. Her body sinks deeper into the mattress. Safe. Comforted.

Something cracks inside me.

Jealousy.

That’s what it is.

That bitter, burning ache I thought I’d carved out of myself decades ago. The one I buried beneath logic and detachment and all the broken promises I never let myself make. I haven’t felt it in so long I almost don’t recognize it.

But it’s here now.

Sharp.

Ugly.

And entirely undeserved.

Because he’s alive.

He’s warm.

He can hold her without hurting her.

And I can’t.

I never could.

I learned early on what happens when I get too close. The people who love me don’t last. The ones who try to hold me end up marked. Cursed. Hollowed out.

So I stopped letting them try.

I taught myself not to want. Not to yearn. Not to ache for softness I was never meant to have. I built walls. Routines. Let the cold be my constant companion.

But she…

She makes me want again.

Want stupid things.

Want her.

Not just her presence. Not just her strange magic or the mystery I can’t unravel. But the feel of her hand brushing mine. The sound of her laugh in a quiet hallway. The shape of her eyes when she looks at something and forgets to guard her expression.

I want what Rhett has.

What he doesn’t even realize he’s holding in his arms.

And I hate myself for it.

I glance toward the window. The moon is high now. Full. Brighter than I’ve seen it in weeks. It casts a silver glow across the room, spilling light onto the edge of the bed, catching in her hair like strands of frost.

She looks like a dream.

Or a memory.

Something just out of reach.

And suddenly I wonder—if I could be warm, would she curl toward me too?

Would she sigh softly and melt into my chest?

Would she trust me with her sleep, with her breath, with her quietest moments?

I close my eyes.

For a second.

Just one.

And I let myself imagine it.

Her fingers brushing my jaw. Her voice whispering my name like it means something. Her laughter rising like wind chimes in spring.

Her heartbeat not skipping when I come too close.

But the moment shatters before it can fully form.

Because it’s not real.

And it never will be.

I open my eyes again. The chill in the room has deepened, like the air itself is mourning something it can’t name. I watch the way Rhett's breath fogs slightly near her skin, how her body seems to draw life from him, like roots soaking up warmth through frozen soil.

And I can’t look away.

I’ll never be that for her.

Never be the warmth.

Only the shadow that lingers in the corner. The presence she sometimes senses when the lights go out. The one that leaves the room colder than it was before I arrived.

I shift quietly, rising from where I’ve sat unmoving for hours. My joints don’t ache. My body doesn’t complain. I’ve forgotten what those things feel like.

But I feel something.

An ache that lives in the empty space between ribs. In the hollow part of me where my humanity used to live.

I move toward the door.

Not because I’m unwanted. No one asked me to leave.

But because I can’t watch anymore.

Can’t keep standing here pretending I’m made of stone.

I pause with my fingers on the knob.

And I look back.

Just once.

She’s still nestled into him.

Her face soft and untroubled in sleep.

A kind of peace that I’ll never be able to give her.

And yet...

And yet I would still burn for her.

Even if she never knows.

Even if she never looks at me the way she looks at him.

Even if she never whispers my name in anything but fear or pity.

Because for a moment tonight, I let myself imagine it.

And now I’ll carry that image like a wound.

A wound I’ll never let heal.