My Silent Devotion

Chapter 3: The Silent Wraith (Blade)

I watched her go, the rhythmic click-clack of her heels against the tile sounding like a countdown to a disaster I wasn't sure I could stop.

The air in the kitchen felt stagnant the moment she disappeared into the winter night. I didn’t move. I didn't chase her. I knew the look in her eyes; it was the look of a woman who had been gaslit until the floor felt like quicksand. To her, I was just another man trying to dictate her reality.

"Yeah, walk away!" Josh’s voice broke the silence, high and shrill. "Go on, Nora! Run to your 'imaginary' stalker!"

I turned my head slowly toward him. The room went silent again. The rage I’d suppressed while Nora was looking at me bubbled up, cold and heavy.

Josh scoffed, taking a frantic step back. "Or what? You're gonna do something? I've got fifty witnesses. Plus, you still haven't told anybody your name.”

"Witnesses only matter if they see the hand that strikes," I said, my voice dropping to a level that made the air feel thin. I took one final step into his space, forcing him back until his spine pressed into the kitchen faucet. I leaned down, my lips inches from his ear. "My name is Blade. And I don't need witnesses to make you disappear. I just need a reason. You've given me ten in the last five minutes. Don't give me an eleventh."

I pulled back, watching his pupils dilate with primal terror. He didn't scoff this time. He didn't even breathe.

I turned my back on him and shoved through the heavy oak door. The transition to the biting winter air cleared the red from my vision. Nora was a silhouette against the streetlights. I didn't call out to her; I didn't want to be another ghost in her night. Instead, I stayed in the shadows, a silent wraith making sure she was safe.

Later that night, I'm lying in bed thinking about the first time Nora and I met. How our connection was almost instantaneous.

Back then, I was just a boy in the back of the classroom. I watched the way the light caught the gold in her hair. I’d watched her go to prom with a boy who didn't deserve to tie her shoes. I’d even followed her to this city, shifting my entire life like a planet orbiting a sun it could never touch.

It reminded me of 12th grade. I could still see the afternoon sun slanted through the dusty windows. She had tripped—a loose strap on her backpack catching the corner of a desk. Her binders had splayed across the linoleum. People walked around her. People laughed. Josh had just kept walking.

I was moving before I could tell my brain to stop. I knelt down beside her. My heart was a drum. I reached for her notebook—the one with the blue floral cover—and our fingers brushed.

The contact felt like a live wire.

"Oh, thank you," she’d said, looking up. She’d actually looked at me. Not past me. Not through me. For three seconds, I existed in her world.

"No problem," I managed to choke out.

"I'm Nora," she said, offering a small smile.

I knew. I knew her name, her middle name, her birthday. But I just nodded like a fool. "Elias," I whispered.

"See you around, Elias."

She vanished into the crowd. It was a brief exchange, but it was the only thirty seconds of my life that truly mattered. But Elias is dead. He died when I realized that being "Elias" wasn't enough to keep her safe. Elias couldn't stop a psychopath. Elias couldn't stand in a hallway for ten hours with a combat blade hidden in his sleeve.

I looked at the wood of her door. "I'm still here, Nora," I thought. "I'm still the one who picks up the pieces when you fall."

The floorboard groaned, pulling me back to the present. The sun was coming up. Today was going to be the day Nora and I actually got to know each other.