Chapter Thirty-Two
Theodore
Sirens live in the deepest water,
that’s what my father said.
Keep your feet on land, my wandering boy,
For their songs cannot go where sirens cannot stand.
He did not warn me of the ones who crawl.
The ones who ride the waves to the rocky shore.
The ones who lurk beneath my own reflection.
I hear their songs, carried along the ocean’s breeze.
I let them drown me in the shallow waters.
The yellow wallpaper in the attic is peeling off the wall.
It should not be possible. It was not that long ago that Mr. Allard and I replaced it, but the top corners have begun to darken with age and curl in on themselves once more. Like a dandelion withering from the lack of sunlight.
I cannot help but wonder if it's due to the absence of the soul that once gave this room life. As if the room knows that its tenant is missing. As if the house knows.
It's been weeks since Kolfina collapsed at Lord Macabre’s dinner party. Weeks since I watched her borrowed face pale and her eyes roll back in her head. Weeks since I watched her body die.
“She was a bit out of it when I bumped into her,” the gentleman with her had said, “but she seemed otherwise alright. I’m so sorry, I’ve no idea what happened—”
It was only after Lord Macabre and his cousin shuffled everyone out of the house that I learned the gentleman with her had been Lord Walden de Klein.
While it had been clear the man didn’t recognize Kolfina, he’d seemed genuinely distraught over the sight of her passing out right in front of him. Still, I cannot help but think that something happened, that he had done something to her to cause her to react in such a way.
It all left me with more questions than answers, and the frustration has only bubbled and grown the longer Kolfina remains missing.
"Theodore, sweetling, you must eat."
I swallow the lump in my throat and fight back the gnawing in my stomach as Azizi appears beside me, the scent of blood lingering on her breath.
"The wallpaper is peeling," I tell her, reaching out to press my fingers against one of the fading flowers, trying to will it to stick back to the wall where it belongs, regardless of how much pain it's caused Kolfina.
"The oil lamps aren't burning as bright.
The stairs are warping. The doors don't shut correctly. "
"Theodore—"
"What if it means she isn’t coming back?"
I've never had people to care about before, outside of my father.
Louis, perhaps, but not so wholly, so devotedly.
I have known Kolfina and Azizi nearly a year now, and I cannot imagine my days without them.
I cannot imagine a future where I have to return to that dark, empty life back in Sainte-Falaise.
Where I am forced to live in endless prayer and repentance again and again with no hope of true redemption.
No hope of finding this kind of love again.
I cannot lose them. Either of them. I need them both nestled inside my chest and tucked up against my heart where they belong. I need their souls cradled in my mouth, protected behind my sharp teeth so I can bite at anyone who dares to take them away from me. I need them here.
Warm fingers dust across my cheek, and I lean into the touch instinctively, following the slick wetness of blood that has become so familiar between us now.
I still do not feed as often as Azizi would like, can't bring myself to gorge on the lives of others when for so long I've been beaten into holy starvation.
But she is patient with me, eternally so.
Kissing me with bloodied lips until my hunger demands more.
Pressing bits of flesh and muscle to my tongue until I have no choice but to swallow.
I cannot stomach it now. The worry gnaws at me more than the hunger, and I cannot think of anything aside from where Kolfina could possibly be. If she's alright. What happened. Why the house seems to be falling apart in her absence.
Still, I let Azizi turn me around, and I let her kiss me. I chase the sweet, metallic ambrosia on her tongue until she pulls away and gives me a fond smile.
"We have no way of knowing where Kolfina is," she says quietly, brushing my unruly curls away from my eyes with her clean hand.
"We can only hope that she is well and can find her way home to us. In the meantime, we keep vigil. You recall what Zagreus said in my brother’s letter all those months ago, yes?
That she is likely clinging to an anchor of some sort?
Perhaps she has simply become untethered and now drifts about the open sea. "
"I've tried speaking to her like before," I assure her, though she is very aware of my attempts.
I have spent many hours tucked away in Kolfina's music room since she disappeared, speaking to the air, to the walls, to her portrait.
I have read from the books on the shelves, read lyrics from her manuscripts and poems from my own journal in the hopes that she would grow curious enough to come listen.
Yet nothing has worked. "I still haven't seen her. "
Azizi licks the leftover blood from her fingers and pulls a handkerchief from the pocket of her robe to clean the rest. She takes a moment to scrub at my face, wiping the blood from where she'd painted it across my cheeks and my chin and my lips.
"Then, my darling monster," she whispers as she kisses me once more, "we must continue to wait and have hope that she will come back to us when she is ready."
"What if she's never ready?” I ask. “What if she’s lost? What if the sea has dragged her too far away and she doesn't know which is the way back home?"
She considers the question for a moment, before her eyes drift to the back of the room and land on the pianoforte. "Perhaps we light the way for her then, yes? A lighthouse in the darkness for her to follow home."
Azizi has not played the piano since we found a way for Kolfina to have her own body again, but she takes to it like she never stopped, sitting prim and straight-backed, her polished nails clicking atop the ivory keys as she settles her hands in the proper placement.
And then she plays.
I do not know how long we sit in that room, me listening as Azizi plays Kolfina's music.
Time passes strangely when there is nothing to do but wait—seconds ticking by too slowly, hours rushing by too quick.
Mr. Allard wanders in a few times to replace the decanter and glasses on the desk next to me, sending us both pointed looks before absconding off to wherever it is he spends his time.
I feel a wave of guilt every time he leaves, as I’ve shirked my duties for too long now, what with my spiral after the festival, our visit to the city, and now Kolfina’s disappearance. Though in truth, I am not sure my employment under him is even relevant anymore.
Still, as much as the guilt lingers in my chest, I cannot bring myself to do anything but watch as Azizi makes her way through Kolfina’s manuscript with clumsy grace.
I wish I knew how to sketch as she does, so I might waste the time away trying to capture her beauty in charcoal.
A few half-formed lines of poetry pass through my mind as I watch the loose strands of her hair caress her shoulder and the dark lashes that frame her eyes rest upon her cheeks, but I do not move from Kolfina’s writing chair, too weary from the long days of pacing a hole in the floor and too frightened to break the quiet peace that hangs in the air between us.
At some point my eyes fall shut, and I find myself drifting. Not quite asleep, but not quite awake either. Somewhere soft in between, where the music washes over me like waves and the woven blanket around my shoulders cradles me like feathered wings.
It is easy to imagine Kolfina there with us when my eyes are closed.
Easy to picture her sat beside Azizi, correcting her finger positions and patiently demonstrating chord progressions.
Each time Azizi’s hands fumble, Kolfina’s smile would grow wider behind my eyes.
Each time she huffs in frustration and begins a section over again, Kolfina’s head would toss back in playful, silent laughter.
And when I open my eyes from a restless slumber, she would be there with her unblinking eyes and her longing smile, reaching out for me, just as she is now.
Just as she is now…
“Kolfina!”
Azizi jumps in surprise, fingers fumbling on the keys, and I am on my feet and across the room before the discordant notes have stopped ringing.
She is here, standing in the threshold of her music room, just as she had that first day I'd seen her.
She looks tired, worn down. Her flaxen curls are more limp than usual, weighed down by what appears to be water dripping to the floor around her, soaking her torn gown.
Her pale skin is practically translucent; heavy bags press into the space beneath her eyes like bruises. Her feet are bleeding.
But she is here.
I long to reach out and touch her, to draw her into my arms and hold her close in the hope that she'll never disappear from us again. I lift my hands to frame her face, the image of her shifting slightly beneath my palms like a reflection on the water.
She smiles at me.
"There, darling, you see? Returned home to us just as I said she would.
" Long arms wrap around my waist as Azizi rests her chin upon my shoulder.
Her warmth is as comforting at my back as Kolfina's chill is at my front, and she reaches her own hand out and rests it just below Kolfina's chin.
"Welcome home, our love. You've been dearly missed. "
A pretty blush dusts across her cheeks, and Kolfina leans into our touch as much as she can. She does not try to speak, but I can see the apology in her eyes, in the way her lips tilt down in a frown and her brow furrows just so. I long to smooth it out and kiss her worries away.
"Can you tell us what happened?" I ask. "The man at the party... You recognized him—I mean you—did you—"