Chapter 317: Silence
KAEL
From the moment I carried her out of that hospital bed, I knew. Something was wrong with Aria, something deeper than exhaustion, heavier than sickness.
It clung to her like a shadow I couldn’t peel away. She didn’t fight me the way I expected. No fire, no claws. Just silence. And that silence cut deeper than any of her words ever had.
In the car, I kept glancing at her. Her face turned toward the window, pale against the glass, eyes blank like she wasn’t even here. I would’ve given anything for her to scream at me, to curse me, to shove me away. At least then she’d be present, alive. But this—this was her drifting, and I had no way of following her into whatever hell she’d fallen.
So I told myself the only thing I could bear to believe: Get her safe first. Fix the rest later. But even as I repeated it, I felt the lie in my chest. What if there was no fixing this? What if I’d already lost her, and I was just carrying around a body that didn’t want to breathe anymore?
By the time we boarded the jet, my nerves were raw. I laid her down on the bed in the cabin, the hum of the engines filling the space between us. She curled onto her side, small, too small. My hands hovered over her, aching to touch, to hold, but afraid I’d crush what was left of her.
"Aria..." I tried, voice rougher than I meant. No answer. Her breathing was steady, shallow. "How are you feeling?"
She said nothing.
"Say something," I begged under my breath. I would’ve taken anything, an insult, a whisper, even just my name. But nothing came.
Her silence hollowed me out, scraping bone from the inside. I clenched my jaw, swallowed my own panic, and forced myself to sit there. To stay. To wait. I couldn’t push her, not now. All I could do was guard her in this fragile, devastating quiet.
But the truth gnawed at me: I was terrified. Terrified that she was slipping further away, into a place I couldn’t reach, a place she might never return from. And if that happened, if she truly left me this way, I knew, I wouldn’t survive it.
So I stayed by her side, helpless, waiting for the moment she might reach for me again.
The silence stretched like a blade between us, long and merciless. I sat there, every muscle wound tight, watching her chest rise and fall. Waiting. Praying.
And then—finally—her voice cut through. Soft. Piercing.
"Why did you come for me, Kael?"
The question nearly stopped my heart. I opened my mouth, but before I could breathe out a word, she kept going.
"I don’t understand you," she whispered, still facing the other side, her voice as thin as glass. "I don’t understand what I am to you. What exactly am I?"
What was she to me?
She was everything.
"Aria—" I tried, but she didn’t let me.
"I really thought I was just a convenience to you. That’s what you said. Disposable. Something that ran out of time, so you had to make room for the next best thing. And I believed you."
Her words twisted into me like knives. My own voice, my own cruelty, replayed in my head, her face the last time I saw her, my tone like ash in my mouth. And now, here she was, broken, fragile, yet still sharp enough to cut me deeper than any blade could.
But still, behind her words, my memory betrayed me, the video of her with Sylas flashing back like it hadn’t burned me enough the first time. It seared into my mind like hot steel on skin. His hands on her, his mouth too close, her not pushing him away.
I’d hated him for it. Hated myself more for caring. For wishing I could hate her too. For wishing I could sever whatever she had tangled around me. But I couldn’t. I never could. And truth be told, I didn’t want to... even if I tried to convince myself otherwise.
My jaw clenched until it ached. My throat burned. Apologies were never something I knew how to give. People apologized to me, not the other way around. But here I was, stripped of every defense, scrambling like a man drowning in his own sins.
"I’m sorry," I said finally, the words quiet, raw, unsteady.
The silence after was brutal. A heartbeat. Two. Her shoulders shifted faintly, but she didn’t turn to me.
"That wasn’t the answer I was hoping for," she murmured at last.
I almost broke then. Almost.
But she rolled onto her back, and for the first time her hollow eyes met mine. "I want to use the bathroom," she said, pushing herself slowly upright.
When her face tilted toward me under the cabin light, I caught a glimpse, and my stomach dropped again. Her lips pale, her eyes rimmed in shadows like bruises. She looked carved down to nothing, like she’d been hollowed out and left half-alive.
This couldn’t possibly just be exhaustion, could it?
I caught her wrist before she could move past me, my hand trembling despite the steel I tried to hold. "Tell me what’s wrong," I begged, my voice breaking despite myself. "Please."
Her gaze flickered away instantly, as if even looking at me cost her too much. "What did the doctor tell you?" she asked instead, flat, distant.
I froze. For a second, I didn’t know what to say, I wanted to just keep her here with me a little longer, just to keep from confirming the fear chewing at my chest. But I forced the truth out, quiet, careful.
"Extreme exhaustion. Severe anemia. And..." I swallowed, "...a blood-weakness condition from prolonged neglect."
The truth felt like a lie. I had noticed the way the doctor spoke like he was making up things. It didn’t sir right with me. And I could get the truth with other doctors but I doubt she would allow them near her. P
She gave the faintest, humorless laugh. "Then that should answer your question."
And with that, she slid her hand from mine, slow but final, and pushed herself toward the bathroom.
I sat frozen in the silence she left behind, watching her move like a ghost across the cabin, my chest screaming that she was lying to me. That something was buried deeper, something she didn’t trust me enough to say. And all I could do—pathetic, powerless—was follow, paranoid and terrified, clinging to the hope that if I nursed her back to health, maybe, just maybe, she’d let me back in.
The silence between us lasted the entire drive, the entire flight, the entire ride through the gates of my estate in Spain. Her eyes stayed fixed somewhere beyond the cabin and I couldn’t reach her. Not with words. Not with anything.
When we finally arrived, I tried to lift her again, but she pulled back, her voice flat. "I can walk."
So I didn’t argue. I just guided her instead, my hand brushing her back, terrified she’d collapse if I let go.
Everything was already in place. Food, medicine, the doctor’s instructions, my men had moved faster than ever, and still it didn’t feel enough. I watched her disappear into the guest room... my room now, because there was no way I’d let her stay anywhere else, and heard the water start running.
I busied myself plating food, placing it neatly on the nightstand upstairs. The motions were mechanical, but my mind was miles away, stuck on the hollow look in her eyes.
And then it struck me... the shower.
It had been running too long.
My chest tightened. I waited another thirty seconds, telling myself I was overreacting, but the panic clawed higher. My body moved before I even thought. I pushed the bathroom door open.
"Aria—"
Steam billowed out, fogging the glass, curling against my skin. She stood under the spray, fully still, her dark hair plastered down, water soaking her clothes, not moving. Not flinching. Not alive, it looked like.
Her head turned at the sound of my voice, slow, deliberate, water dripping down her pale face. Her expression was flat. Empty.
I froze, words tangling uselessly on my tongue. "I— I’m sorry, I thought— I thought something—"
Her voice cut me off, soft but sharp enough to slit through my panic.
"You need to learn some manners."
The words hit harder than a punch. She wasn’t startled. She wasn’t anything. Just quiet, cold rebuke, as if I was an intruder in her world, not the man who’d carried her across countries.
I stood there, drenched in my own helplessness, watching her not even bother to shield herself from me. And I realized with a sick weight in my chest—she wasn’t even trying to live in this moment. She was just... enduring it.