xviii.

Eri returned home that night full on the feeling of him, the weight of his goodbye kiss lingering all throughout her body. They'd crossed a defining line together – before and after, knowing perfectly well that things would be very different from now on. Now that Eri was his; knowing as she did now how desperately, how tenderly and delightfully she wanted nothing more than to be just that. His. How long would it be? Days? Weeks? How long would the afterglow of their shared moments sustain her? Minutes? No. Seconds. Mere seconds before she'd be longing for Mirio once more.

Indeed, her heart had returned to him constantly as she'd crossed the street, though she dared not glance back over her shoulder – knowing that to see him there in the window would break her completely, that she'd be able to do nothing to stop herself from turning back. Even now, circling out of sight around the back of her and Kai and Chrono's home to the entrance she wasn't supposed to know about, it was the most terrific and difficult thing she'd ever done not to give up everything and go back to him. To Mirio.

Mirio, Mirio, oh god, Mirio.

The thought of him made her smile, though her smile made her want to weep.

Her skin was still warm and blushing where his hands had touched.

He'd told her he loved her when nobody had ever loved her before. She'd told him she loved him too without having realised the words were leaving her lips, and she knew she'd been telling the truth – that she loved him entirely and clearly – even if before she'd only given love in half-measures and the form of fear. It felt good. Terrifying. But good. To love somebody.

Eri propped open the kitchen window with a tight, measured quietness, and pulled herself into the house's darkness as though it were her greatest talent to be sneaky and subtle. Really, it kind of was. She'd had years to learn how to slip out from Kai and Chrono's hawkish grips, whether it was simply to hide away when she was in trouble or to avoid getting into trouble at all. She'd mastered it now in a matter of months, slipping away from them in the most literal form she'd ever managed.

Closing the window again, she grinned to herself. Feeling proud. Feeling whole. A little sleepy too, and thirsty.

"Eri?"

Everything crashed against her like a bullet.

She spun around, and there in the shadows by the sink – glass of water glinting in hand, eyes bright with utter horror at the sight of her – was Chrono. Faintly outlined. Enough so for Eri to see the shape of his hand fly out, strange and murky in the lightlessness. Drained of any feeling she may have had before, Eri crinkled before the motion.

But there was no blunt force coming down against her. Only the kitchen light turning on. And she was forced to bear the scrutiny of Chrono's mortified expression in yellow-white definition.

He was in a night gown and socks speckled by cartoon geese. Eri had chosen those socks for his birthday two years ago.

He was frozen, and looking her up and down as though she may have been a ghost. She must have been. Because the real Eri would not have dared to be outside at this hour; because the real Eri wouldn't have taken obvious advantage of the fact that the security cameras in the garden were blind to the kitchen wall and its precarious proximity to the back entrance. Yet, here she was. The real Eri. Facing down the real Chrono no matter how she may have pleaded to whatever fairytale creature or god that this be a nightmare.

Maybe he saw in her eyes how she scrambled for a story to tell him. Because suddenly, cracking through the confused hush, he looked angrier than he'd been in a long time. "What is the meaning of this? What were you doing out there?"

"I–I–" And suddenly, Eri forgot how happy she'd been.

"Where did you go?"

"For a walk," she spluttered.

"A walk?"

"Yes. Just up the road and back. I was… I was struggling to sleep and I–"

Chrono placed his glass down on the counter, and pierced through Eri with his ashen, frosty stare. "Don't you dare lie to me."

"I'm not, Kurono-san."

He was up close before Eri could catch a breath. "Let me ask you again, Eri. Where did you go?"

She didn't reply. Couldn't.

"Have you done this before?"

"Not– I haven't–"

"Anya told me to keep an eye out for you," he said, somehow conspiratorial and possibly sort of disappointed. "That you were acting strangely. I've noticed it, that you've been edgier than usual and saying some odd things. But I only thought–" He cut himself off sharply. Narrowed his eyes. "Was this what she was talking about?"

Everything in Eri's chest began to hurt, like she was being crushed from the inside out. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm sorry. Please don't tell Kai."

"What were you doing?" They stared at each other. Chrono's face flared a sick colour when Eri didn't reply. "There's this, Eri – you can tell me now, or Anya will tell me later. And trust me when I say that it will be worse for you if–"

"I've just been visiting somebody."

He didn't seem to have been expecting it, even if Eri knew he had been. "Who?"

"A friend. An important friend."

"Who?"

"It's nobody."

"Nobody. Nobody like the man from the market?"

Eri started to shake.

Chrono's eyes widened so that he looked a little manic. "Is it him?"

She nodded.

"How long?"

"Since then."

"That was months ago, Eri!"

Shocking herself, she looked at her hands and smiled a small, guilty smile. "I know."

Drawing a quivering breath, simmering, Chrono pressed his hands into his hair and looked away – as though to see Eri now was too much for him. Like he was genuinely a disappointed parent. He swore under his breath. A harsh, jolting fuck. And the weight of the word had power enough to snap Eri's spine in half because Chrono never swore. Never – except for when he was with Anya, apparently. And in moments like these.

He didn't say anything else for a while, and turned away to lean his hands onto the counter. When he did speak again, it was sinisterly soft. "You'll tell Overhaul when he gets home. You'll tell him the whole truth because he won't take kindly to anything else once he knows you've been lying to him. I'll be there with you, though my presence won't help much at this stage."

Eri felt her face blanch. "No…"

"You brought this on yourself."

"No. Please Kurono! He can't know!"

"You've been sneaking behind his back for months, Eri. He's your husband."

"But… but…" Mirio! "But I don't love him."

"Then learn to."

"Is Anya supposed to learn to love Dimitri-san? Do you not love her?"

"You watch your mouth," Chrono spat it like a snake. No, not a snake. He spat it with venom, indeed, but he may as well have been wearing that awful bird mask from years ago. "Anya has nothing to do with–"

"I'll never forgive you." Eri's heart broke without her having to do anything. "If Kai finds out, I'll never ever forgive you."

He shook his head, furious. "You're not in a position to be forgiving anybody."

"Then I'll tell Dimitri-san." In a million years, Eri would never have been able to dream up the look on Chrono's face as it appeared then. And in a million years, she would never have dreamed that she'd be able to be so cruel. "I'll tell him that you and Anya have been going behind his back for eight years, and that Anya called him stupid, and that the only reason you've ever been kind to me is to make Anya fall in love with–"

With slicing poise, his palm collided with her face. Thwack! Hot. Then icy. Kai had only ever punched her, or broken her bones, or ripped her apart, and those were all heavy oppressive sensations. This was much sharper. It prickled numbly across her cheek like a thousand alcohol-dipped needles. Eri, breathless, lifted her fingers as though expecting to find blood. Perhaps even some remnant of Chrono's hand. But there was nothing other than her skin, and Chrono staring at her with a new sort of horror on his face.

"Eri…" he began quietly, the air having sunk around them into a cold, close shattering.

She didn't let him finish. There were tears in her eyes. "I hate you," she said. "I hate you."

Then she ran, out from the kitchen and through the still-dark twists of passage and stairs. Crying. Breathing hard, the throbs of her heartbeat muffling the hard crack of the bathroom door as she shut it behind herself. There, slipping down along the wood, she shrank. She sat curled upon the tiled floor for a long time, only half-despising Chrono and half-waiting for him to come find her like he always did. To hug her, stroke her hair, tell her things weren't as bad as all that like he always did even though this time things certainly were all that bad and he probably hated Eri just as much as she hated him. Even if she only hated him a little bit. Though she wasn't really sure she hated him at all.

Not him. Not when he was the only one who'd ever held her when she'd cried.

Once, when she'd been twelve or thirteen, Kai had broken both her ankles because she'd been dancing with a boy out on the lawn. He – the boy, who was one of the Russian men's sons – had come to visit the compound with his father; he was only a little older than Eri, and had tried talking to her the entire day but to no avail (being as it was that she ran away from him like he was a monster out from under her bed); however, he'd caught her in the garden and had shown her a silly Russian dance. Had offered to teach it to her. Had held her hands and swayed her about until she was laughing herself stupid.

Why the memory came back now with so much painful clarity – the smell of the azaleas by the wall and the watery mess of sunlight after rain, the freckles that she'd spotted on the boy's knuckles – it was hard to say. But it all blended suddenly with the memory of Kai's cold glare when he'd caught them. And the feel of his naked hands. His body, massive and muscular, bent against hers, thin and small and pathetic, later that night while he'd snapped her ankles against the bed and then fixed them, and then snapped them again like bird bones. Reminding her that she was his. Nobody else's his. His only.

Then there'd been Chrono, who'd snuck into her room after Kai went to bed. He'd pulled Eri into his lap and had held her to his chest.

"He's only scared to lose you. Nobody understands you like he does," Chrono had whispered like a lullaby. "It hurts, I know. Ssh, Eri. It hurts, I know. But if you'd just be good, it wouldn't hurt so much."

Feebly, Eri whimpered and stood.

She wanted Chrono to tell her now that it wouldn't hurt so much, because somehow she'd always believed him. But no – she locked the bathroom door behind herself, and turned on the water to run a bath. Steam began to rise. Eri peeled off her clothes, and it was uncomfortable enough to have been her own skin that she was shedding.

She threw her shirt into the corner of the room, though not before whiffing it deeply to relish any lingering dews of Mirio's smell. So followed her bra. Her jeans. And so dazed was she, reeling on the light-headedness of having threatened and cried all in one breath, she was little bothered by the splotches of blood like droplets of thick red wine in her underwear.