By my own hands
Lia stabbed a man and then he dropped to the floor like a lump of flesh. Dead. A few seconds before he was just alive, breathing, fighting. With just a flicker of an eye, he was gone. All life drained from him. She drained it from him.

She sat in the corner, her back against the bed and her head leaned on the wall as she stared outside the broken balcony door. She hugged her knees to make herself small as if the gravity of what she had done would be as small as her body. Her body shivered but it was impossible to tell if it was because of the night breeze coming inside the room or from something else entirely.

That moment kept on repeating inside her head like a broken disc. She shut her eyes and covered her head. But the moment she brought her hands to her face, she froze and saw her hand holding a dagger, pressing it against his body, watching it sink within layers of skin and muscles.

A pair of big hands covered hers and gripped them tightly, pulling them away from her face. Without blinking, she lifted her gaze and found Eldric kneeling in front of her.

“I killed him,” she rasped. She repeated the words as the reality of what happened sank in deep.

Eldric gripped her hands tighter and leaned closer. “We both do.”

Lia shook her head and wanted to cover her head again, hide against the world. Maybe disappear altogether. But she felt hands on both sides of her head pulling it up and making her look at Eldric directly.

“We,” he said in emphasis and let it hang in the air for a few seconds before continuing, “killed him. We did it. Not just you. We. If you think that’s your mistake, your sin, it’s not. It’s ours. I won’t allow you to take it alone.”

She did not know what she wanted to hear. But Eldric’s words were just what she needed, what she wanted to hear at that moment. Large teardrops fell on her eyes and they showed no signs of stopping.

Eldric pulled her towards him as she tumbled in his embrace and the two of them were a tangled mess of limbs on the floor. Lia cried, not knowing if she was crying out of guilt, of fear, or what.

“If you didn’t stab him, he wouldn’t think twice about killing us. It’s either him or us. We did what was necessary.” Eldric brushed Lia’s hair as she continued to sobbed on his chest. “We can’t die yet.”

Lia cried until she could not cry anymore as if the well had dried up. After all that wailing what was left behind was emptiness. She remained slumped on the floor, against Eldric’s chest. He did not show signs of moving either.

“Is it…does it always feel that way?” Lia flexed her hand as if she was still gripping the dagger.

Eldric hummed as if remembering a long-forgotten memory. “Honestly? I don’t remember. The Unseen taught me how to kill before I was even a teen. I’ve done it hundreds, thousands of times since then that it felt natural.” After a long silence, he added with a shrug. “I felt nothing. It was either them or me.”

Lia looked up at that tone. He used it before when he told her about his life within the Unseen. She could not imagine a young Eldric being forced to take someone’s life to the point that he was now indifferent about it.

Eldric felt her gaze and smiled at her sadly. “Maybe Pen was right. I am a monster.”

Lia felt a lump in her throat and the tears were bursting before she could stop them. She felt and understood the feeling of loss the young Eldric must have felt. That confusion, yet the world urged you to move on and move fast. Not giving time to grieve or heal.

He carefully wiped the tears. “Ah, I made you cry again.”