Buried For Her

I cannot stay here long. I have stayed too long already. The town has started to know my shape. Her father knows my strength. Marcy knows my silence. Petals knows my face well enough to draw it.

That is danger.

A smart man leaves before roots form.

A weapon does not grow roots at all.

"What do people call you?" she asks softly behind me.

Subject 249.

Asset.

Animal.

Monster.

The Russian word one guard used before I broke his jaw.

A memory of a black-haired man snapping something over my shoulder with blood on his hands.

Mikhail.

Alexei.

The name Alexei sits somewhere deep, but it is not reachable. Not fully. It feels like a locked door. It feels like a man who died at twenty-one and left me wearing his bones.

I cannot give her that name.

Not when I do not know if it is mine.

Not when saying it might wake things that should stay asleep.

So I choose the one I have used at the docks, the one written on no paper, the one old fishermen can pronounce without questions, the one that feels borrowed enough to abandon.

"Nicholas," I say.

Her voice is careful. "Nicholas."

My hand tightens on the curtain.

The name sounds different in her mouth.

Less fake.

That is dangerous too.

"Nicholas," she repeats, softer this time, like she is testing the shape of it, like she is sketching it in the air.

I let the curtain fall and turn back toward her.

She is watching me with tired eyes, frightened but curious, still in pain, still too cold, still too beautiful for the small room.

Every time I look at her, the plan changes.

That is the problem.

Before the store, I was leaving before deep winter.

Before the drawing, I was leaving within a week.

Before the snow, I was leaving tomorrow.

Now she is here, wrapped in my blanket, her ankle in my bandage, my name in her mouth, and tomorrow feels impossible in a way I do not understand.