Chapter 428: Runis [2]

"Perhaps Dullahan does not create every part of you," she said. "Perhaps it brings certain feelings closer to the surface. Makes them louder. Harder to bury."

"A scumbag who adds women left and right to his roster of lovers and feels happy about it?"

The White Lady burst out laughing.

Not a small laugh, either.

She covered her mouth for a moment, then shook her head as if I had said the most ridiculous thing possible.

"You truly are sensitive."

"Can you stop laughing?"

"I am trying."

"You are not."

"No, I am not."

I glared at her until she managed to settle down. She drew in a breath, wiped at the corner of one eye, and looked at me again.

"The world ended, and somehow you still judge yourself by rules that were built for a world that no longer exists," she said. "You speak as though you have ruined these women’s lives merely because they care for you and choose to remain close to you."

"That is not what I said."

"It is what you are afraid of."

I looked away.

She continued.

"Do Sydney, Rachel, or Cindy look unhappy beside you?"

I did not answer.

"Did Maribel come to you against her will tonight?"

"No," I said quietly.

"She chose to."

"Yeah..."

"And Elena?" the White Lady asked. "You saw her leave in that helicopter. Was she happy when she had to go?"

I thought of Elena’s face before she left.

The way she had looked back. The way neither of us knew when, or if we would see each other again.

"No," I admitted.

"She was heartbroken."

"Maybe," I said, though my voice lacked any real argument.

The White Lady stepped closer.

"Ryan, I am not telling you that every desire is good simply because you feel it. I am not telling you to chase women, collect them, or treat affection like a reward handed to you for surviving."

Her dark-green eyes stayed fixed on mine.

"I am telling you to stop pretending that all closeness is corruption."

I swallowed.

"Maribel chose to come to me tonight," I said.

"Yes."

"And the others chose too."

"Yes."

"But it keeps spreading."

The words came out sharper than I wanted.

"What about Summer? Carmen? Is this just going to happen with every woman around me who is even remotely attractive?"

The White Lady’s expression changed.

"You still do not believe yourself capable of restraint."

"I do. I just—"

"You fear you will not stop yourself before you hurt someone."

That shut me up.

She was right.

It was not only about whether I found someone attractive. It was not only the warmth or the Symbiote’s reaction. I was scared that I would keep making excuses until I crossed another line.

Like I had with Summer.

The White Lady lifted one hand, not quite touching me.

"It is not every woman," she said. "You know that already."

I looked at her.

"There are reasons you reacted so strongly around Summer and Carmen."

"They are both kind to me."

"Exactly."

I frowned.

"That sounds worse."

"Only because you keep hearing it as an accusation."

She lowered her hand.

"Summer worried over you. She brought you water, cleaned your injuries, and stayed beside you after her father hurt you in training for days. Carmen gave you food, a place in her home, and treated you as though you belonged at her table. Their care reached a part of you that has been hungry for a long time."

I stared at the floor.

"They are different people," she continued. "Their kindness is different. Your feelings toward them may be different too. But you are drawn toward warmth because it matters to you. That alone does not make you dangerous. You do have principles."

"Principles..." I muttered.

"Yes."

I gave a humorless laugh.

"You think I have some after all this?"

"I know you do."

The White Lady’s voice was firm.

"You feel these urges around Summer and Carmen, but you do not confuse that with a right to them. You know the difference between a passing thought and an action. You know when someone is vulnerable. You know when someone’s care does not belong to you. And you are certainly not feeling toward every women showing you love otherwise you would have felt such urges toward Shannon right?"

The idea of ever seeing her in that way made disgust crawl through me.

"There is no way I would ever feel anything like that toward Shannon," I said.

The words came out fast.

"I would rather die than touch her in the wrong way."

The White Lady smiled.

"There. That is what I mean."

I looked at her, still tense.

"Shannon cares about you, does she not? She is affectionate. She wants you around. Yet your mind does not turn that affection into desire. You see her as someone you want to protect."

"Of course I do."

"Then you are not controlled by some mindless hunger."

I stood quietly for a moment.

She went on before I could argue again.

"The same applies to Linda."

"Linda?"

Martin’s wife.

"The married woman who gave you care and warmth."

I nodded slowly.

"Yeah."

"You do not feel this pull toward her because you know she is happy with her husband. You see the boundary. You respect it, even when Dullahan makes every emotional bond more intense."

The White Lady’s gaze softened slightly.

"You do have principles. They have not vanished. You simply fear they are weaker than your urges."

I thought about Carmen.

About Summer.

About Maribel, Sydney, Rachel, Cindy, and Elena.

The feelings were not all the same. I knew that. I had been trying to stuff them together under one ugly word because it was easier than examining any of them.

"You mean..." I started, then stopped.

The White Lady waited.

"Y...You mean I love Summer and Carmen?"

She looked at me for a few seconds without answering.

Then she brought one hand to her chin, considering it with far more seriousness than I wanted her to.

"Hm. Love is a large word," she said. "I would say you have strong feelings for them. Crushes, perhaps. Feelings that could become love if you keep letting them grow."

I stared at her.

"That does not make me feel better."

"It was not meant to make you feel better."

She smiled when I groaned.

"The urges are not inventing feelings that were never there, Ryan. They are dragging buried feelings into the open and making them harder to ignore."

"I want them buried," I said quickly. "I want to keep things good with both of them."

Her expression turned amused again.

"I think it may already be too late for Summer, do you not?"

"I...I will apologize again."

"You should."

"I know."

She did not mock me for that answer. She only watched me, her green eyes more focused than before.

"Ryan," she said, "since you awakened three months ago, you have changed a great deal."

I folded my arms.

"That is not exactly news."

"No. But you have reached the point where your current way of living will not carry you farther."

I frowned.

"What do you mean?"

"You have grown stronger. You survived battles that would have killed you before. You made allies. You created Sub-Hosts. You have begun to understand Dullahan’s connection to the people who share it."

She took a step closer.

"But you keep trying to separate yourself from all of it. You use Dullahan’s power when you need it, then resent the parts of yourself that come with it. You want strength, yet you are afraid of what it says about you to want anything at all."

I looked away.

"That is not true."

"Is it not?"

"It is not like I hate who I am."

"Then why do you act as though anger makes you a monster?" she asked. "Why do you fear love? Why do you hide every relationship that matters to you, every feeling that makes you vulnerable?"

I did not have an answer ready.

She continued.

"You are terrified of people looking at you and seeing something wrong. Something unnatural. That fear is why you keep holding yourself so tightly."

"It is not only fear," I said. "If people found out about my relationships, it would create trouble we do not need."

"Would it?"

"Yes."

"Or are you afraid of their judgment?"

Her question hit harder than I expected.

I kept my eyes on the white ground.

"Both," I admitted.

She nodded once.

"At least that is honest."

"Sydney does not care," I said. "She is different."

"Indeed. Sydney does not care because she knows what she wants." Her expression turned faintly amused. "You care deeply about what other people think. More than you let them see."

"That is normal."

"It is human," she corrected. "But it can still become a cage."

I looked at her again.

She did not look amused anymore. Her long hair drifted around her shoulders despite the stillness of this place, and the light around her seemed dimmer near her feet.

"You have the potential to become a greater Host for Dullahan than I ever was," she said.

I blinked.

"What?"

"I mean exactly that."

"But you were a King Host. You knew how to speak with Dullahan. You understood all this stuff. I can barely stop myself from making a mess of things around the people I care about."

"Power is not only knowledge," she said. "It is growth. Adaptation. The ability to form bonds and survive what those bonds demand from you."

"Sounds like a lot of pressure."

"It is."

I let out a breath through my nose.

"Great."

She smiled slightly, then her face became serious again.

"As long as you reject Dullahan completely, you will struggle against yourself. It has been inside you for seventeen years. It is part of your body now, part of your senses, part of the way you connect to others. You cannot simply call it a parasite whenever you dislike what you feel and expect to grow stronger."

"So you want me to embrace every urge I get?"

"No."

Her answer came immediately.

"I want you to understand them before you act on them. There is a difference."

I stayed quiet.

"Accepting Dullahan does not mean becoming ruled by it," she said. "It means recognizing what it has changed in you. Recognizing where your feelings end and its influence begins. Recognizing when you need distance, when you need restraint, and when you are merely punishing yourself for wanting to be loved."

I thought about Summer again.

The look on her face after I crossed the line.

Then Carmen. Maribel. The others.

"I do not want to hurt Summer or Carmen," I said.

"You do not have to."

"I already hurt Summer."

"Yes," she replied. "And you must deal with that honestly. Apologize because you understand you made her uncomfortable, not because you want her to forgive you quickly. Give her space if she wants it. Do not turn your guilt into another way of making her take care of you."

The bluntness of it made my face heat up.

"I would not do that."

"You might, without meaning to. Humans often do."

I hated that she was probably right.

She then walked past me, her hands clasped behind her back.

"To begin with, these urges should not be controlling your behavior this much," she said. "You have women who care for you. Women you are already in relationships with. Yet you restrain yourself because you are afraid that wanting them too often will make you seem like a beast."

I felt awkward just hearing her say it.

"You do not have to say it like that."

"Why not? It is the truth."

"It sounds bad."

"Only because you make it sound bad in your head."

She turned toward me.

"You fear that if you openly admit desire, the women close to you will think you see them as objects. So you suppress it until it becomes unbearable. Then the pressure spills into the wrong places, toward people you do not want to burden with it."

I swallowed.

"Yeah," I said quietly.

"It is dangerous, is it not?"

"Yeah."

"Then stop treating your own relationships as though they are something shameful."

"That is easier said than done."

"Most important things are."

I sighed and looked into the white distance.

"Are you telling me any man with several beautiful girlfriends would want to be with them all the time?"

Her mouth twitched.

"I am saying that a man in relationships should be able to speak honestly with the women he loves rather than acting as though desire itself is a crime."

"That sounds a lot less insane."

"I am capable of being reasonable when I choose to be."

"You have not shown much proof of that."

She laughed, and despite everything, I smiled too.

For the first time since I had appeared in this place, the knot in my chest had loosened a little. Not gone. I still had to face Summer. I still had to figure out what I felt about Carmen, and what Dullahan was doing inside me, and whether I could ever trust myself around people when my body kept reacting before my mind caught up.

But at least I was not standing in the dark with no explanation anymore.

"You have been helping me a lot," I said. "Can you at least tell me your name now?"

She looked pleased by the question.

"Runis."

"Runis," I repeated.

The name sounded strange in my mouth. Old, maybe. Like it belonged to a world I did not know.

"Are you alive, Runis?"

Her expression grew distant.

"No."

The answer came without hesitation.

"This is only what remains of my consciousness inside Dullahan. A memory with enough of myself left to think, speak, and remember. My body is gone. I died a long time ago."

I did not know what to say.

She had been standing in front of me the whole time, smiling, teasing, answering questions. It was easy to forget that she was dead.

"Will you tell me more about yourself one day?" I asked. "About Dullahan, the Starakians, all of it? I still do not understand half of what is happening."

"You do not understand even a quarter of it," Runis said. "You are not ready yet. Knowing more would mean accepting responsibility for more. It would mean taking action against threats you cannot imagine. You think Callighan and Gaspar are your greatest problems because they are the enemies in front of you."

"They are still serious problems."

"Of course they are." Runis looked past me, and the blank world seemed to deepen around her. "But they are not the scale of threat I know."

I went silent.

My greatest enemies were Callighan and Gaspar. One controlled people through fear, weapons, and supplies. The other had a Symbiote and power I still did not understand.

They were already difficult enough.

If Runis had fought things worse than them, an entire race worse than them, then I was nowhere near ready for the future I kept talking about. I wanted to avenge my mother. I wanted to protect Earth from the Starakians.

But wanting something and being ready to do it were different.

I was still struggling against one collar built from their technology.

Entering a war against a superior alien race sounded laughable when I could not even fully communicate with the creature living inside me.

"Well," Runis said, breaking the silence, "it was a good talk. But you need to wake up now."

"I barely slept."

"You need to wake up, Ryan."

Her tone had changed.

The humor was gone.

I looked at her.

Runis’s face had become serious. The white light around us began to shudder at the edges, as if the entire place was being disturbed by something outside it.

"Your night is far from over," she said.

"What?"

Before I could ask what she meant, the white ground dropped away beneath me.

My consciousness was pulled backward, torn from the empty world as Runis vanished from sight.