Chapter Fifteen
Theodore
For once in my life, I wake with the morning birds, and I do not feel the weight of the world heavy on my chest. I lay in bed long after the sun crests the horizon, enjoying the warmth of it on my skin from the open window.
My mind lazes about in the worlds I've created within it, playing with words and phrases, characters and stories.
I itch to write them down, but there is something content and soothing in the action of just laying here and letting myself imagine.
Perhaps it's due to the lack of hunger rumbling away in my stomach. It is never truly gone, not really, but as of late it has been... quieter. Softer.
Placated.
I try not to think too hard about why that is, but the image invades my mind regardless. Bare skin the colour of rich, brown clay; silken hair that falls in waves of chestnut across thin shoulders; sharp eyes, whiskey-brown and freckled with glittering rubies.
Azizi.
I've been aware that she is a beautiful woman since that first day I stepped into the Chateau de Klein and found the bust of her carved and detailed and immaculate. But it is one thing to see her as beautiful and graceful, and another to see her.
Every time I close my eyes, she is there, staring back at me.
Half-bare atop a faceless stranger, her pupils a deep expanse of empty darkness, so large I could barely see the brown that surrounds them.
Her front covered with rivers of fresh blood, lips parted in surprise and pleasure when she sees me standing in that doorway.
And then again, in the kitchen only a week ago. The way she looked at me as she fed me the contents of her glass, as she held my chin and guided me down the path of damnation without so much as a hint of guilt.
The beast inside me wants more, but if it's more of the blood that it wants, or more of her, I cannot say.
Then there is Kolfina, who stood there and watched it happen. Who encouraged, regardless of how sinful an act it was. Who did not judge, but instead held some kind of curious hunger of her own in those pretty, hazel eyes of hers.
Even now, I can almost taste the blood on my tongue and in my throat. Can almost feel it settled in my stomach, even so many days later.
Since that morning, Azizi has given me a glass every day. She does not pressure me to drink, and she has not fed it to me the same way she did that morning, but it is always there, sitting on the nearest surface of whatever room I am cleaning or resting in.
Only a few times have I picked it up and drank from it, and each time I do, a war wages within me—the pleasure of my hunger finally being sustained after near twenty-six years of starvation, and the vile disgust that surges like waves of self-hatred with every thick swallow I take.
I wonder what God thinks of me now. Does he blame me?
God has no say in this.
Azizi's voice is clear as day in my ears, the ghost of her breath warm on my cheeks as I let my eyes close and imagine her there before me in that kitchen. The heat of her, the scent of oil paint that always seems to cling to her skin.
My chest grows tight, my breath short.
Delicious, isn't it?
Before I have a moment to let the shame sink in, I plunge my hand between my legs and lose myself in the memory. In the way she stared me down as I swallowed each drop from her glass. The way she arched and rocked against my hand as if the cock inside her was not enough to satisfy her.
I imagine Azizi's lips on my throat, her hands on my hips. I imagine my tongue running between her breasts and my fingers in her hair. Would she taste of the lifeblood she so readily consumes if I kissed her again? Would she devour me as she devoured that man in her parlor that night?
Perhaps Kolfina would be there too, with her wide-eyed innocence and her plump curves. She could not touch, but she could watch, enjoy.
Ecstasy spikes through me, and I slap a hand over my mouth as I work my fingers into my dripping heat, the heel of my palm pressing hard against my clit with every thrust. I have never imagined what it might be like to be watched in the throes of passion, never had the luxury of safety to afford such shameful sins.
And yet the thought of the three of us in that kitchen, Azizi pressing me hard into the countertop as Kolfina watches her take me apart, watches her claw at my skin and dig her teeth into my throat—
My orgasm pushes me over the edge with a violent shudder, and I just barely manage to shove my face into the pillow to muffle my groans.
It quakes through my legs, pulsing low and heavy in my core, and I cannot help the whine that spills from my lips as I work myself through it, imagining they are Azizi’s fingers inside me.
Imagining it is Kolfina behind me as a cool breeze drifts in through the window and across my flushed skin, guiding me down from the peak.
"God forgive me," I whisper once my breath has steadied and my throat remembers how to speak. "I fear perhaps I am more damned than even you might have known."
Sometimes, I wonder if God is not some great, ineffable being who watches us from the heavens and judges our souls, but instead a feeling.
An emotion. I wonder if he is the grief that doesn’t quite fit within our bodies and floods the world in great, heaving sobs.
The guilt that fizzles in the back of our throats until it bursts from our lips like the heralds of the end.
The love that carves maps into our skin in the shape of veins, so that no part of us can touch another without it leading back to our center.
Because what greater burden is there than a heart?
And what is God, but a burden upon the soul?
It is guilt that drags me out of my bed and into town, searching for answers I do not know if I can find. Answers to questions I do not even know how to ask.
Or at least… I think it is guilt.
Do I feel guilty for dreaming of Azizi and Kolfina? Not necessarily. I have spent nights with women before, have found pleasure with them plenty of times over the years without such a heavy buzzing beneath my skin.
Perhaps it is the hunger I feel guilty for then, but then again, no.
I have lived with that particular guilt my whole life.
I know the shape of it inside me, know the exact curve of its claws and the sharpness of its teeth.
It is still there, as it always is, but something else nestles beside it, curled in the gaps between its ribs so effortlessly that I cannot quite see what it is.
Not guilt then, but a sense of uncertainty instead. A fear that prowls in the darkness, waiting for the right moment to strike. A hint of the unknown. A whisper of the truth hiding beneath layers and layers of denial.
“You planning on staying up there all night?”
I blink away the thoughts crowding my mind and glance down at Louis, struggling to focus on the blurry image of him standing on the ground below me.
I do not have to ask how he found me. Ever since we were children, if no one knew where I was, Louis could always find me tucked up in the old oak tree behind the schoolhouse.
There is a junction there, a spot where two of the thicker branches split off from each other and curve upwards, forming the perfect spot to sit and relax for as long as I please.
I spend a lot of time here, curled over my journal as I scratch away at my thoughts and ignore the world spinning beneath me.
It is no surprise that I’ve lost track of time enough for someone to send Louis after me.
“There’s plenty of light left,” I call down to him, though the sun has long since started setting, and my eyes already ache from squinting too much at the small letters across my page.
Louis must think the same, as he just scoffs at me before jumping up to grab the branch above his head. He scales the tree with the ease of someone who has been doing it as long as he could walk, then plops himself down on the same branch as me, his back pressed up against the thick trunk.
“Been a while since I’ve seen you moping up here. Father Thompson finally let you off the hook?”
“When has he ever?” I shake my head, twisting the chord back around my journal before tucking it into my bag. “I’ve just been thinking.”
A smirk trips across Louis’ lips. “Dangerous practice, that.”
I do not feel guilty for kicking him, though his rakish laugh softens some of the anxious nerves buzzing in my fingertips. “As if you would know. I doubt you’ve had a single thought in that pretty head of yours since the day you fell off Madame Fleur’s flower cart when we were six.”
“You pushed me!”
“And I’ll push you again if you keep teasing me,” I threaten, raising my foot as if to do so.
Before I get the chance to follow through, Louis wraps a hand around my ankle and pulls, ignoring my shout of protest as he tosses my legs over his thighs and all but sits me in his lap.
“You wouldn’t dare. And don’t think I didn’t hear you call me pretty, Theo.
” His smirk widens, his hands landing on my hips as he leans forward, not stopping until my back is arched against the branch beneath us.
“It’s been a while since we’ve had any fun.
I’m flattered you still think so highly of me. ”
“You’d be flattered if a cow blinked at you,” I counter, though I do not push him away.
I’m not entirely sure why. Was it not just this morning that I was imagining someone else’s hands on my hips? Someone else’s eyes staring down at me?
Louis and I have never been exclusive, but there is something about him now that feels so oddly out of place. His body is familiar against mine, but his hands are too gentle on my waist. His words are playful and jesting, but his teeth are not sharp enough to sting when he nibbles at my jaw.
“Louis—”