He Was Supposed to Kill Me, But Now He Says I'm His

The dust was the first thing, and the last. It coated everything, a fine gray powder that tasted of concrete and ghosts. It settled in my hair, in the lines of my hands, and in the back of my throat. Each breath was a reminder of what we had lost. What I was failing to escape.

My mother, Anya, leaned heavily on my arm, her own breath a shallow, rattling thing in the oppressive silence. Her feet shuffled through the debris, dislodging pebbles that skittered into the street. Every few steps, she would stumble, her grip tightening on my bicep with a painful, bird-like strength.

“Slower, Elle,” she wheezed, though we were already moving at a crawl. “You rush. Always rushing into things without thinking.”

I didn’t answer. There was no point. Instead, I shifted the weight of the canvas bag on my other shoulder, the straps digging into the bone. Inside, our world had been reduced to a single bottle of water, half-full, a packet of stale crackers, and the thin wool blankets we used for warmth. I had rationed it all in my head a hundred times. Two sips of water each, every hour. Two crackers for the evening meal. It was a bleak and brittle arithmetic.

We passed the skeletal remains of a bakery, its sign hanging by a single hinge. The smell of burnt sugar still lingered, a phantom sweetness in the acrid air. Anya stopped, her body trembling with a fresh wave of coughing that shook her small frame. I held her steady, my jaw tight, waiting for it to pass.

When she finally caught her breath, she glared at the street ahead, at the endless vista of shattered buildings and twisted metal. “A son would have found a cart,” she said, her voice thin but sharp. “He would have been strong enough to carry me. We would be at the border by now.”

The familiar ache bloomed in my chest, a dull, heavy thing I had carried since childhood. It was a wound that never scabbed over, one she picked at with casual, constant cruelty. I imagined this hypothetical brother—strong, decisive, everything I was not. He existed only in her disappointments, a perfect shadow against which I was always measured and found wanting. I pushed the thought away, locking it down with the others. Thinking about it was a luxury, as wasteful as spilling our water.

My focus had to be on the ground in front of us. On the next safe step. I scanned the pockmarked facades of the buildings, looking for deeper shadows, for any alcove that might offer shelter from the open sky. My eyes were raw from the dust and lack of sleep, but they were all we had.

“There,” I said, my voice rough from disuse. I pointed toward a large structure a block away. Its stone front was scorched and half of its roof had collapsed inward, but the entrance looked like a dark, promising mouth. “We can rest there. Away from the street.”

Anya followed my gaze, her expression pinched with doubt. “It looks ready to fall down. Another of your brilliant ideas.”

“It’s better than this,” I said, my patience fraying into a single, taut thread. I gave her arm a gentle tug, urging her forward. “We need to get out of sight.”

She resisted for a moment, a small, stubborn act of defiance, before finally relenting. Her weight settled against me again, a familiar burden. As we moved, my hand went to the water bottle in the bag, the smooth plastic a small reassurance. I would not let us die here. I would not give her the satisfaction.

The building was, or had been, a public library. Carved letters above the door, half-shattered, spelled out the promise of knowledge and quiet contemplation. Now it was just another tomb. We stepped inside, our footsteps muffled by a thick carpet of fallen plaster and charred paper. Sunlight streamed in through a gaping hole in the ceiling, illuminating swirling motes of dust in long, cathedral-like shafts. Books lay everywhere, their spines broken, their pages splayed open and coated in gray grit. The silence was immense, a heavy blanket that absorbed all sound, making my mother’s next cough seem as loud as a gunshot.

She sank onto the base of a toppled statue, a headless figure that might have been a poet or a statesman. “This is your plan?” Anya’s voice was a dry rasp. “To die surrounded by useless paper?” She pulled her thin blanket tighter around her shoulders, her gaze sweeping the destruction with disdain. “We’ll be buried alive when the rest of it comes down.”

“It’s solid stone, Mother. It’s safer than the street.” I slid the heavy bag from my shoulder and let it drop to the floor with a soft thud. My own body ached for rest, but the gnawing in my stomach was a more urgent command. We needed more water. More food. Anything. “I’m going to look around. Stay here.”

“Don’t wander off,” she snapped. “I don’t want to have to come looking for you.”

I ignored her, the words bouncing off the thick wall I had built inside myself. I moved deeper into the library, navigating through overturned shelves and heaps of ruined books. I checked behind what was once a main circulation desk, finding nothing but splintered wood and scattered, empty drawers. My fingers probed through the debris, searching for a forgotten bottle, a lost tin, anything salvageable. There was nothing. The place had been picked clean long before we arrived.

Defeated, I turned to go back when my foot caught on something. I looked down and saw a book, smaller than the rest, lying face-up. Unlike the others, its cover was mostly intact, protected somehow by the larger volumes that had fallen around it. The illustration was of a young woman with a wild braid of dark hair, standing on a cliff’s edge. She wasn’t wearing a crown or a flowing gown. She wore sturdy boots and held a simple, unadorned sword, its point aimed at a stormy sky. Her expression was not one of fear, but of pure, stubborn defiance. The Unconquered Princess.

Something tightened in my throat. I picked it up, my thumb tracing the outline of the girl’s determined face. It was a children’s story, the colors faded but still vibrant. It felt impossibly heavy in my hands, a weight of something other than paper and ink. It was a story I had never been told, of a girl who did not need a brother or a father to save her. She saved herself.

A cough echoed from the front of the library, sharp and impatient. My mother. Without a second thought, I slid the book inside my jacket, tucking it against my ribs. It was a foolish, useless thing to carry. It offered no sustenance, no warmth. But as I zipped the jacket closed, the firm rectangle pressing against my side felt like a shield. A small, secret piece of armor that was mine alone.

A man's voice, rough and guttural, shattered the library's quiet. It was distant at first, but sharp enough to make my blood run cold. Another voice answered, closer this time, punctuated by a short, harsh laugh. They were speaking the language of the occupying army.

My body froze for a single, stark heartbeat, my hand still pressed against the book hidden in my jacket. Then adrenaline surged through me, hot and clean. I spun around, my eyes darting across the rubble-strewn floor, searching for cover, for any shadow deep enough to swallow us whole.

My mother’s head snapped up from where she sat slumped on the statue base. “What was that?” she whispered, her eyes wide with a familiar, helpless alarm.

My gaze landed on a section of wall near the back, where the decorative plaster had crumbled away, revealing the dark, narrow space between the original stone foundation and a newer interior wall. It was a crawlspace, intended for pipes or wiring, barely large enough for one person, let alone two. It would have to do.

“Get up,” I hissed, rushing to her side and grabbing her arm. “Now, Mother.”

Anya resisted, pulling back with surprising strength. “Where are we going? I can’t run.”

“We’re not running, we’re hiding.” The voices were closer now, accompanied by the distinct sound of heavy boots crunching on glass and plaster just outside the main doors. There were several of them. A patrol. My grip on her arm tightened. “Over there. Move.”

I pulled her, my urgency overriding her protests. She stumbled, her breath catching in a panicked sob as she tried to keep her footing in the debris. “I can’t fit in there, Elle. It’s a tomb. It’s filthy.”

“It’s better than a grave,” I snapped, the words harsher than I intended. We reached the opening. The thud of combat boots echoed from the library’s main entrance, loud and definitive. They were inside.

There was no more time for argument. I shoved her forward, forcing her to her knees. “Get in,” I commanded, my voice a low, desperate whisper. I practically bundled her into the opening, ignoring her gasp of pain as her knee scraped against the broken lath. I scrambled in after her, pulling my legs in just as the long shadow of a man holding a rifle fell across the floor a dozen feet away.

The space was suffocatingly tight. The air was thick with the smell of damp earth, rot, and ancient dust. My mother began to whimper, a thin, terrified sound that would carry through the walls like a death sentence. Without thinking, I clamped my hand over her mouth, my fingers pressing into her wrinkled cheek. Her body was rigid with fear, trembling against mine in the claustrophobic dark. I could feel her heart hammering against my palm. She tried to pull my hand away, her nails digging into my wrist, but I held firm.

The boots drew closer, slow and methodical. Thud. Crunch. Thud. They were sweeping the room, their movements deliberate and deadly. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to will us into invisibility, trying to slow the frantic beat of my own heart. The book under my jacket dug into my side, a hard, useless rectangle.

A beam of light from a rifle-mounted torch cut through the darkness outside our hiding spot, tracing a path across the floor. My mother’s whimper turned into a choked sob beneath my hand. The heavy footsteps stopped. They stopped right in front of the opening. We were trapped. The silence that followed was worse than the noise, a stretched, terrible moment where all I could hear was the frantic beat of my own blood in my ears. A shadow fell over the hole, blocking what little light had filtered in.

The darkness was absolute for a second, a solid blackness that meant he was right there, his body blocking the entrance. Then the light hit us. It was a searing, white beam that erased everything, a physical blow that made me flinch and squeeze my eyes shut. My mother made a strangled noise against my palm, her body going rigid.

I forced my eyes open, squinting against the glare. Behind the blinding circle of light, a face slowly resolved itself from the shadows. He was young, younger than I expected. His helmet was pushed back slightly, revealing a line of sweat-damp hair on his forehead. His face was streaked with grime, but his features were clear. Set jaw, a day's worth of stubble. And his eyes. They were fixed directly on mine.

Every muscle in my body locked. This was it. This was the end. He would shout, and his comrades would come, and they would drag us out into the ruined library. I could feel my mother’s frantic, silent plea through the thin bones of her jaw. My own breath was trapped in my lungs, a stone weighing me down.

But he didn't shout. He just stared. The light from his rifle didn't waver, but his gaze was not the cold, dead look of an executioner. It was something else. Conflicted. The barrel of his weapon was inches from my face, a black circle of finality, but his eyes held me. They saw me. Not as vermin to be exterminated, not as an objective to be cleared. They saw a woman with a dirty face and terrified eyes, holding her mother in a dusty hole. His gaze flickered for a fraction of a second to my hand, pressed hard against Anya’s mouth, then back to my face.

An eternity passed in that silence. It couldn't have been more than a few seconds, but my entire life seemed to unspool and then rewind in that small, suffocating space. I saw the defiance of the princess in the book, a stupid, hopeless thought. I saw my mother’s lifelong disappointment. I saw the rubble of my home. And I saw this soldier, this enemy, who held our lives in the space between one breath and the next.

Then, with a movement so deliberate it seemed slow, he pulled back. The blinding light vanished, plunging us back into near-total darkness. The shadow was gone.

“Anything?” another voice called out from the center of the library.

My heart stopped. I waited for the betrayal.

“Nothing,” the soldier said. His voice was steady, almost bored. Utterly professional. “Just a hole. It’s clear.”

The words hung in the air, impossible. I heard the rustle of his gear as he turned away. The heavy thud of his boots resumed, moving away from us, joining the others.

“Alright, let’s move out. This sector is empty.”

The footsteps receded, growing fainter and fainter until they were swallowed once more by the immense, dusty silence of the library. They were gone.

For a long moment, I didn't move. I couldn't. My hand was still clamped over my mother’s mouth, my fingers numb. The trembling started in my arms and spread through my entire body, a violent, uncontrollable shudder. I finally let go of my mother and pressed my forehead against the cool, rough wall, dragging air into my lungs in ragged, silent gasps.

My mother didn't move either. She just stayed there, curled into a small, tight ball.

He had seen us. There was no doubt. He had looked right at me, and he had seen us. And he had walked away. My mind refused to process it. It was a trick. A trap. Or something worse, something I couldn’t begin to comprehend. I was left breathless, not from fear of death, but from the dizzying, terrifying confusion of being spared.