Page 74 of A House of Gold
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only answer I have.” I run a hand through my hair. “Look, I can’t talk long. I’m not supposed to be calling you. I just wanted to let you know I’m alive.”
“Raven...”
“I have to go.”
“Wait.” His voice softens. “Are you coming back? After the year? Are you coming home?”
Home. To my shitty apartment with the water stains and the broken heater. The ritual room carved from a closet. The life where I barely scrape by and every contract is a risk and I’m always one bad absorption away from dying alone on my floor.
Is that home? Or is home becoming this place, the House of Gold with its impossible architecture and its angel who looks at me like I’m the only thing he’s ever wanted and can’t have?
“I don’t know,” I whisper.
Silence on the other end for too long. “Jesus, Raven. What’s he done to you?”
“Nothing. He hasn’t done anything. I’m just...” I stop. Take a breath. “I’m just tired, Ash. That’s all. I need to go.”
“Raven, wait.”
I hang up.
Sit there in the dark, holding the phone, feeling like the worst person in the world.
Ash deserves better than this. Better than my calling him at midnight just to confirm I’m alive before hanging up without explanation. Better than whatever mess I’m becoming.
Luna deserves better too. Deserves a sister who isn’t slowly forgetting what normal looks like. Who isn’t starting to prefer gold over daylight.
And I deserve... what? To be owned by an angel for a year? To kiss him back and mean it? To tell him I belong to him and feel relief instead of horror?
I don’t know anymore.
I don’t know anything except that I’m changing, and I can’t figure out if I’m becoming who I’m meant to be or losing who I was.
Maybe they’re the same thing.
I don’t sleep well. Keep waking up from dreams where I’m drowning in gold, where chains wrap around me, and I can’t tell if they’re trapping me or holding me together.
At around three in the morning, I give up and go to the library.
Nat is there. He looks up from his book when I enter, takes one look at my face, and closes it.
“Can’t sleep?”
“Something like that.” I sink into the chair across from him. “How do you do it? A hundred years of this. How do you stay yourself?”
“Honestly?” He leans back. “I’m not sure I have. The person I was in 1924? He’s gone. Dead. I’m what’s left after a century of service, the parts that were too stubborn to die.”
“That’s depressing.”
“That’s the truth.” He studies me. “You called someone tonight. Someone outside.”
I freeze. “How did you…“
“I can see lies, remember? And guilt. You’re wrapped in it.” He doesn’t sound judgmental, just tired. “Does Croesus know?”
“No.”
