Kill Me Softly

Chapter Nine

My combat skills improve greatly over the next few days. I'm re-learning all the skills I used to have mastered faster than I thought I would, but not fast enough. Ryder is a patient teacher. He quietly tells me what I've done wrong and corrects me with gentle hands; a very different approach than the one he'd been using previously. I'd gotten used to the angry, violent Ryder but after the encounter with Archer and his confession when I nearly died, he hasn't been the same.

We haven't talked about him selling out Archer to get back at me or his uncharacteristically heroic act of giving Archer a chance to escape and letting me out of our deal. Nor have we talked about his sorrowful confession that Octavian broke him and how he can never trust me again because I let it happen to him.

For the first time in my life, I find myself ashamed of the pain I've caused my enemy. I watch as Ryder dislodges a dagger that had buried itself in the wall and feel a wave of guilt. When I left Grimm Haven, I never thought that Octavian and my parents would take out their anger on Ryder. My only thoughts were on escaping. Two years ago, I realize with a sinking feeling, Ryder hadn't offered to go with me as some plan to reveal my actions to Octavian. He'd only been trying to escape his father. He'd said he loved me because he honestly thought his father might kill him for letting me go and he wanted to have said the words at least once in his short life. The things Octavian must have done to him when he let me escape again . . . I shudder. Yet he was still willing to let me go once again, risking his life for a girl that had caused him nothing but agony. Why? Why did he do it?

"Why did you give Archer a chance? Why did you . . . let me go?" I whisper with a small frown turning down the corners of my lips. We've both been avoiding the topic for days, but I need to know why a born and raised villain would do such a selfless thing.

Ryder turns, dagger still in hand, with surprise in his icy blue eyes that quickly turns wary. He stares at me for a moment, standing still. He appears guarded when he asks in retort, "why did you come back?"

He starts to turn away, not thinking that I'll respond, but I surprise him by saying, "because I realized I wasn't as good of a person as I thought I was. I'm still the monster our parents made me."

Ryder turns back to me with a purposefully blank expression, his walls carefully in place. His attention is all the encouragement I need.

"If I left with Archer, I'd be hurting you just like I did when I left you behind before, subjecting you to the wrath of your father. You may be an unbearable ass most of the time, Ryder, but you don't deserve that. Not after you gave Archer a chance," I take a deep breath and stare the unmoving incubus in the eye. "Thank you, Ryder. I'm sorry I couldn't be the person you needed me to be before. I'm sorry I'm still the selfish person I was at Grimm Haven."

Ryder's lips twitch and a small smile slips onto his usually frowning lips. He chuckles softly, shaking his head.

I frown at him. "What?"

He smiles a genuine smile and I lose the breath in my lungs.

"Sometimes," he says softly, "you need someone to tell you you aren't as terrible as you think you are."

He shakes his head again and walks away. The heavy feeling that seemed to follow him seems to lift with every step he takes. He pauses in the doorway and glances back at me. "Oh, and Viridian?" He sticks me with the firm look he always gives me when teaching an important lesson. "Never be sorry for who you are."

He leaves me standing here, staring after him with a small smile on my lips and a blossoming of hope in my heart.

Maybe there's hope for Ryder after all.