Chapter 15 #2
‘Give it to me!’ she snarled, and it sounded less like a shout than a clap of thunder, her hair rising around her face as if blown back by wind, her features half consumed by shadows. And Esther saw, in the centre of her chest, a curious, swirling blackness—a void that seemed without end.
‘What—what are you?’ Esther asked in horror, the hairs on her arms standing on end. ‘What is that in your chest?’
‘My chest?’ Miriam asked. ‘Oh. That is my soul—or lack of it, I suppose.’
But you must have a soul, Esther thought, recalling Thomas’s words. All creatures have souls.
It was not the time to argue the point. Instead, she said, ‘You are no witch, Miriam Richter. I ought to have realised that earlier.’
Miriam gave her a pitying look.
‘It doesn’t matter what I am, my dear,’ she said. ‘Your last hope; your greatest regret. It doesn’t matter, because I am all you have.’
I am all you have.
Esther felt the truth of that in the marrow of her bones.
How often had she wished to find someone like the monster standing before her?
Someone immune to the cruelties of the curse, the cruelties of Esther’s own heart, her hostility and her regrets.
No one had ever accepted her as Miriam had. No one else ever would.
That realisation felt miraculous and terrible. It was a cauterisation, a cure that hurt more than the wound. And Esther found, suddenly, that all she wanted was to go to bed.
‘Take me back,’ Esther asked the shadows.
‘No—!’ Miriam snarled, reaching for her. But she was too late. Esther had already disappeared, the grimoire still in her arms.
Esther slipped inside the townhouse enshrouded in darkness, invisible and intangible.
It was too late to ask the servants for a bath, so she looked down at herself, at her mud-stained gown, bedraggled and waterlogged, and paid a sliver of soul for the chance to be clean.
The shadows draped over her: the fabric of her dress brightened; her hair dried.
When she lifted her wrist to her nose, she even smelt faintly of lilies.
The salt was on her windowsill, just as Miriam had said.
It was invisible, but Esther ran her finger over the surface and felt a minuscule, jagged ridge.
The grains didn’t shift at her touch. Esther realised they had been glued down, but it would be easy enough to scrape them off with a nail or needle.
And it would be just as easy to slide into bed, and leave Miriam’s request unfulfilled.
A shape formed in the darkness outside, then hopped closer to the windowsill. It was her Little Shadow, feathers oil-slick dark, head tilted to watch her.
Esther managed a hesitant smile. ‘I have you, also,’ she told the bird. ‘My dear friend. Forgive me for forgetting that.’
The crow ruffled its feathers.
Esther pressed her finger more firmly against the salt. The crow hopped closer, tapped the glass of the window gently with its beak. She watched it, considering the darkness of its eyes, and the familiar glint of intelligence within them.
She knew that darkness. She had known it her entire life.
Realisation fell as softly as a shroud. Esther didn’t even feel surprised. She just felt tired: as tired as if she’d never slept at all, as if she’d been awake for centuries.
‘Will you kill him, Miriam?’ she asked the crow. ‘Once I let you in?’
The crow didn’t reply. It stood on the windowsill with its wings half outstretched, as if preparing for flight.
‘I did not give you the grimoire,’ Esther said. ‘I know, if you come in, you will take it from me. And I am afraid.’
On the wall to her left, shadows fluttered and trembled—were they nervous or excited? Had they warned her of this, once, and she had ignored that warning? Their demands were futile, either way.
Perhaps Esther’s resistance had been, also.
‘You once said I deserved to be loved. Will—will you love me?’ She pressed her palm against the frigid glass. ‘I do not know what you are, really, or who you are—but I think I need that now. I can’t pretend, anymore, that I want anything else.’
The crow bowed its head.
Esther made a furrow in the salt with her thumb.
The crow shifted, bled into the night, seeping, gone liquid—the shadows swarmed through the glass of the window, through that tiny crack in the salt, a steady stream that pooled at Esther’s feet before growing tall and opaque and material.
Then Miriam was there, and she caught Esther’s wrist with her hand.
‘I’ll love you,’ she said. ‘Of course I will, darling.’ And then her mouth was on hers.
The kiss was brief and violent, teeth and tongue, and Esther’s eyes fluttered closed. As Miriam pulled away, her fingers pressed into the hollow of Esther’s back. Her smile was triumphant.
‘I will make you mine,’ Miriam said, and Esther felt shadows rising to wrap themselves, cool and inquisitive, around her wrists and ankles.
They tugged her towards the bed as Miriam stood watching, still smiling—and Esther didn’t resist as she was pressed down into the mattress, as the cool hands of the darkness ran like water across her chest and thighs.
She gasped something—she wasn’t certain herself what she was saying, perhaps Miriam’s name—and Miriam came to stand beside the bed, stooping over her, pressing a finger to her lips.
‘Hush,’ she said. ‘I know what you need.’
The shadows parted as Miriam, with gentle reverence, pulled away Esther’s dress.
The corset beneath was the work of seconds, fingers working deftly, and then Esther was left in her white chemise.
The shame of her arousal was evident in her laboured breathing, the cherry-dark rounds of her nipples stiff and visible through the fabric.
Miriam ran a finger over her breast, chuckling when Esther whimpered.
‘A little death,’ Miriam said. ‘That is what I’ve heard some people call it. Will you die for me today, my love?
’
Her fingers skimmed the top of Esther’s thighs. ‘Do I have a choice?’ Esther asked, half gasping.
‘Certainly. This, I want willingly. I want to ruin you, Esther, and I want you to beg me for it.’
‘I won’t beg.’
Miriam lifted her hand away. ‘No?’
Esther could have snarled in frustration; she bit her lip to stop herself from doing so. ‘You demean me—’
‘Demean?’ Miriam laughed sharply, and she ran her nails down Esther’s side, through her chemise. It felt painfully good, and Esther arched over the mattress, swallowing a wail. ‘Darling, I will worship you. Ask me to do so, and I shall.’
Esther felt her resistance slipping.
‘Please,’ she bit out, trying to push herself into Miriam’s hand.
Miriam’s lip twitched; her hand didn’t move. ‘Pardon?’
‘Please,’ Esther said, craning her head to look at her. ‘Touch me. I need you to.’
Miriam said, ‘As you wish,’ and then her hand pushed up Esther’s chemise, and somehow her fingers were everywhere, between her legs and pinching her nipples, and her mouth was on her neck and she smelt like river and iron and it was so good that it was unbearable.
Esther’s eyes closed. She thought, I shall die, I might simply die from this.
The movement of Miriam’s touch, her fingers rocking back and forth, not enough but almost enough—Esther knew nothing but skin and warmth and pleasure.
She was on the edge of a cliff, and she wanted, so desperately, to step forward and fall, fall into the water, disappear beneath it and drown.
And then, briefly, in the darkness behind her eyelids, Esther was suddenly somewhere else. She was someone else, in another place, another time: she was running through the serpentine corridors of an echoing building, a shadow following behind her, the great windows rattling from the storm—
Her pleasure peaked, and all else was forgotten.
When she came, it was brutal and demanding, her back arching, a curse on her lips.
Miriam worked her through it without hesitation, fingers still moving, whispering encouragements in her ear.
When, finally, Esther batted her hands away and opened her eyes, she realised that—for some reason—she had been crying.
Miriam rose over her and kissed her tears away.
‘My love,’ she said. ‘Your dissolution is the loveliest thing I have ever seen.’
Dissolution. That was a good word for it, what Esther felt. She was unmade, undone. Miriam had broken her into pieces and left them scattered over the bed.
They stared at each other, Miriam’s face hovering over hers.
Miriam said, ‘I think I must love you, Esther Harding. There must be no other word for what this is.’
‘Love is supposed to be a kind thing, a beautiful thing. That is what the world has always told me.’
‘The world lied,’ Miriam said.
‘Yes,’ Esther replied. ‘It did.’