The Oath
Twelve candles, myrrh thick in the air, and a chest already mapped with grief. Ink mixes with blood, a vow enters through the wound rather than the ear, and for a breath the room holds three.
He lit twelve candles before we began.
He didn’t rush them. He struck the match, sheltered the flame with his palm, touched each wick with a care that felt older than either of us. The room filled at once with the scent of wax and myrrh, a sweetness with weight to it, the kind that clings to fabric and hair and the small soft places beneath the ribs. The light settled low and gold. It made the steel tray look almost warm.
I sat bare from the waist up, the wounds of past weeks mapped across me like constellations. Some had flattened to pale lines. Others still lifted when I breathed. A faint glow seemed to pulse beneath a few of the older letters when the candles leaned our way, as if the body had learned to keep a small fire under the skin.
He chose the chest again.
His fingers traced along the scars, following their softened edges, pausing where two curves met, lifting when his touch found the tender places. He didn’t ask if I was sure. He’d stopped asking. He nodded once, as if the lines themselves had told him where to go.
“Same name,” he said quietly.
“Always.”
The machine woke with a low, obedient sound. The first cut stung. A clean, swift pain that made the breath jump in my throat. The second found rhythm. The needle’s hum joined the soft hiss of the candles and the faint creak of the building, all of it folding into one steady measure.
I closed my eyes.
Behind them, the world of the studio slipped. I saw him kneeling in a church aisle, not quite the same as the memory from before, yet close. His jeans were dusted with chalk from work. Someone had tried to scrub paint from his fingers and left a faint blue near his nails. He clasped my hands in both of his. We were meant to be invisible in that place, two men keeping a decent distance, but he wasn’t good at caution. He leaned our heads together until his forehead touched mine.
He whispered something I couldn’t hear.
The needle went deeper. The line crossed an old scar and the pain rose, bright and exact. It opened a door inside the chest. The whisper entered through the wound, not the ear. It wasn’t sound. It was certainty.
Promise you won’t forget what was never finished.
My breath caught. It felt as though someone had slipped a hand beneath the bone to touch the heart directly. Not a squeeze. Not a claim. A touch like a reminder of where it lived.
The machine paused. He looked up, eyes searching my face. “You’re bleeding more than usual.”
“Let it come,” I said.
He hesitated, the old professional caution surfacing. Then he nodded. The needle returned. Ink mixed with blood, dark and thick, the two shades folding until they were one. He wiped with the cloth and the letters showed old, as though they’d been waiting under the skin for years and were relieved to be seen.
The candles burned low and steady. Myrrh gathered in the back of my throat. I let my eyes stay closed and watched the church memory widen. We were no longer alone in the aisle. A spill of light fell from a high window. Dust drifted like small planets. He kept hold of my hands. He wasn’t speaking to God. He was speaking to our future, that uncertain, narrow road we’d tried to walk with heads up. He pressed our palms together and pushed our knuckles to his mouth.
“Say it,” he breathed. “Please.”
I’d wanted to ask what he meant. The needle reached a fresh edge and the pain answered for me. I said yes to a dozen things I couldn’t name. To the little lies we’d keep for safety. To the mornings we’d never get. To the ways the world would try to make us smaller. To the way we’d push back and laugh anyway. To the sea. To the river. To the chair in this room.
When I opened my eyes, I was still there, bare and breathing under candlelight. He was bent over me, jaw tight with concentration. A thin line of sweat ran from his temple to his cheek. He didn’t notice it. He was listening with his hands.
“Hold still,” he said softly.
“I’m here.”
He worked slower as he neared the place where the sternum lifts like a small hill. The needle traced the curve and my whole body knew it, a bright arc that rang down the spine. My palms grew damp. The air above my chest felt warmer, as if the skin itself threw off heat to meet the metal.
The vow shifted inside me. It moved like a new word learned by a child at last. It settled and began to pulse with the blood. I could sense it now without drama. A presence under bone, willing to endure the ordinary. It didn’t ask for spectacle. It asked for repetition.
He cleaned again. The cloth came away red, then less red, then only grey from the last faint haze of ink. He set the machine aside and pressed a fresh square of gauze to the wound. His hand stayed there longer than necessary. Through the layers I could feel the tremor in his fingers.
“Do you believe in vows?” I asked.
His gaze flicked up. He didn’t answer, but he didn’t pull away. His hand kept its gentle pressure. The question hung between us with the weight of myrrh and the small smoke that rose from a candle that had just guttered lower.
The air shifted.
It wasn’t a draft. It wasn’t the building settling. The light trembled and steadied, then trembled again, the way a person steadies after deciding they won’t fall. A cooler breath grazed the skin near my collarbone, not the touch of the living hand that held the gauze, but something kin to it.
For a heartbeat we were three.
Not a vision with edges, not a figure to fix with a finger and say look. A joining. His warmth on my chest, the ghost’s cool near my throat, my own heat rising to meet them both. The room found one rhythm and stayed there.
He drew his hand back slowly and taped the gauze into place. His eyes had changed. They held that shy brightness people get when they realise they’ve witnessed something and can’t quite say what it was.
“You’ll need to keep it clean,” he said at last, the voice of his trade returning like a tide. “No soaking. No sun.”
“All right.”
He tidied the tray, set the machine to rest, trimmed one of the wicks. He blew out the last match and the smoke curled up soft and sweet, carrying that resin scent that lingers on skin all day.
Before I left, I touched his wrist. He let me. His pulse knocked gently against my fingers, quick, then slower, then steady. The vow under my sternum answered. Two small beats, then one.
