Book Two: Chapter 153

“Wait... what?” She turned toward him. “You want me to stay?”

“Only if you want to. I know you have mixed feelings about what happened, and you’re certainly free to go. I just didn’t know which room you wanted and was trying to make conversation. You can stay in the tower, but that might make you nervous about getting trapped again, so I didn’t want to assume anything.”

“You realize what you’re asking, right? You want me to stay here, to live with you, even after everything I’ve done.”

His face darkened and he lowered his voice. “I want you to stay because of what you’ve done.”

Yuki blinked a couple of times, unsure of what she had just heard. “You want me here because... because I tried to kill you?”

“Kind of.” He kept his eyes on the distant rats. “I keep thinking about that shadow thing and it makes me wonder. What else is tucked away in the house, waiting to try and manipulate me? What if something causes me to hurt somebody one day, like Emily did?