Chapter 2 #2
I guess it was too much to hope that their elopement would go unnoticed, not after I was found zip-tied to my office chair the morning after.
Sedge would have stayed silent, I think, preferring to let his dislike of my bride and bodyguard fill the quiet cracks of conversations and linger in the pale gray flicks of his gaze.
But Andrea has always hated this part of the plan, the Tristan and Isolde part of the plan, and perhaps, given everything that’s happened, she was right to.
At any rate, she saw no need to preserve either Isolde’s reputation or Tristan’s, and within a day, it had spread far past the club, past DC, all the way to the edges of the globe.
Lyonesse members from S?o Paulo to Singapore knew.
Other kink club owners knew; Isabella Beroul’s dominant reached out to me from Montreal; Nimue called me with advice that felt like something from a fortune cookie or maybe one of Tristan’s novels about dragons.
Good rulers are merciful, Mark, as well as just.
The fucking president of the United States called me to offer his condolences. And he just laughed when I asked him through my teeth if he hadn’t been the runaway bodyguard in this scenario. Yes, but the difference is that Greer’s husband would have never let us run away , he’d purred.
So anyway, the entire world knows what happened that night.
I’m cuckolded. I’m spurned. I’m humiliated.
The young bride and the bright-eyed bodyguard, always such strange choices for a man like me, have stolen themselves away in the night along with my pride and my heart (although I’d rather be zip-tied to my office chair again than admit that last part to anyone else).
So , my singing Tristan, who tied whom to the kitchen chair?
Who stole the throne and cut the hair? I thought I was every villain, every Saul and every Delilah, and yet here I am, the broken one, the overthrown.
Watching the two people I reluctantly—oh God, they have no idea how fucking reluctantly —offered my affection to while they kiss each other, while they wear my clothes, while they carry my sticks.
Isolde stands in the middle of the house as Tristan disappears into the library, her hand drifting to her collarbone as she seems to stare at nothing in particular.
The T-shirt she wears is far too big for her, and it exposes her slender throat and the dip of her clavicle; it hangs from the compact curves of her shoulders.
You’d have no idea that under those baggy clothes were the coiled muscles of a predator, that the elegant hand at the base of her throat is the same hand responsible for the scar on my own.
The same hand that has severed arteries, started fires, poisoned drinks, and has unflinchingly done so.
My little demon, my little murderess. A swell of fond pride surges in my chest when I think of how she fought me in my office the night she left.
Tristan interrupted us (and stole my attention for a crucial second), but I could have happily fought her for hours.
The very first time we met, she was still learning how to hold a knife, how to face someone else holding one, and taking her down had been as easy as walking forward. And now look at her.
I step back into the gloom of a magnolia tree just as she lifts her eyes, abruptly alert. She searches the shadows through the conservatory’s windows as she steps closer, every line of her taut and alert, and oh God, how I’d like to come closer and show my face, just to see what she does.
Would she fight? Flee?
She wouldn’t freeze or fawn, not my wife.
Tristan would come and—and what? Help her run away again? Try to fight for her, which would be as adorable as it was unnecessary?
But I don’t step forward. I stay cloaked in darkness, utterly still, until she closes her eyes and shakes her head once, like she’s chastising herself for seeing things.
She shouldn’t—she is correct that danger lies outside her door—but this close, I can see the dark smudges under her eyes and the sharp cut to her jaw.
The last month has worn away at her like it’s worn away at me.
I don’t bother to suppress the bitter satisfaction I take in that.
She goes into the library then, and I sigh up at the magnolia branches above me, low and sprawling, and lumped with half-melted snow. My hand goes to the small chess piece I’ve taken to carrying everywhere with me. A queen made of cold, hard crystal.
What am I doing here? What did I hope would happen? That I’d stroll inside and they’d drop to their knees and beg my forgiveness? That they’d apologize for the one thing worse than their infidelity, which was their absence?
That they’d accept that I had planned to kill Isolde’s uncle—that I planned to kill him still? That I’d manipulated them both, and in Isolde’s case, that I’d done it for years?
No. Isolde might have spared my life, might even have meant it when she said she loved me, but she still ran. All those confessions of love from her and Tristan, all those promises of faithfulness, and all it took was one opened safe, and they were gone.
If Isolde had slit my throat, it would have hurt less.
No, I suppose I’m too realistic to have hoped for anything by coming here. I don’t deserve their forgiveness or understanding, and I won’t deserve it at any point in my life, because I would do it all again. I’m going to keep doing it.
I came to Morois because yesterday, I had a dream where I stood in a wind-haunted garden and stared at honeysuckle leaves caught in the dead grass.
I can still smell the wet stone of the garden walls.
I can feel the damp earth soaking through my clothes.
I can feel the leaves between my fingers, brittle and light, so different from the velvet petals of summer.
So much for the honeysuckle. The bad luck came anyway.
I woke up from the dream and booked a flight to England. For no other reason than to reassure myself that they were still alive, my sweet adulterers. Than to see with my own eyes that they were not buried near the sea.
But now that I have seen them, I should go, I should leave. That’s what a logical person would do. I don’t have time to check on two people who think they’re good at hiding.
In fairness, Morois was an inspired choice on their part, because it’s unknown to my enemies, only impersonally known by Sedge and my bodyguards, and only personally known by Blanche and Melody.
The security system is closed, so I don’t have eyes on the property when I’m not there, and it’s isolated enough that there are no neighbors to notice if it’s occupied or not.
Unfortunately, all the inspired choices in the world wouldn’t have changed a thing. It wouldn’t have changed the little blue dots on the screen of my phone…or the pretty rings on their pretty, perfect fingers tracking their every move.
I’ve known they were at Morois since the minute they boiled their first kettle of tea, but I resisted coming, because what would have been the point?
And there’s still no point—except that I had a bad dream, and there was no sleeping, no eating, no thinking , until I knew they were both alive and that their traitorous little hearts still beat in their dear, duplicitous chests.
So I should slip back through the trees and over the moor to my car. If I’m already on the other side of the Atlantic, I might as well see to some business, and I should see to it quickly.
But I don’t move. I stay where I’m at, watching the doorway Isolde went through, rooted like a tree. Rotting like old fruit.
From the library window, a fire flickers.