Chapter X #2
“So you came here. To me.” Sabine sounds bemused, as if it’s such a strange idea. As if she has not been the sole source of Charlotte’s comfort these past two months.
“I know it’s wrong to simply show up. But I did not know what else to do, or where to go—”
Sabine holds out a hand to halt her nervous movement, and it stops her, as sudden as a cage door swinging shut. And now there is nowhere else to look except Sabine. Her gaze is flat as glass, her expression unreadable. “Would you marry him?”
Charlotte recoils at the question. “I did not attend those balls for him. I did not dance each night hoping he was watching. I did not lie awake and hunger for his company. I—oh, do not look at me like that.”
Sabine inclines her head. “Like what?”
“Like I’m some foolish child. A silly girl who’s spent the entire Season clinging to your skirts.” For the first time, she is brave enough to find Sabine’s burning gaze, and hold it. “You told me to come find you, when I knew what I wanted. Well, I do.”
She swallows. How hard it is to say the words, even when they’re true. How much it feels like standing on a precipice, like the smallest wind will either push her back, onto solid ground, or forward, into an abyss.
“I want you.”
Sabine’s cool hand settles on her cheek, and she holds her breath, waiting to see which direction she will fall. “Do you?” she asks, and there is a faint barb to the question, a challenge in her voice that fills Charlotte with fury.
“Yes!” she snaps, her voice ringing through the empty house.
“I have wanted you since the night we met, and every moment since. I want the life you speak of, that belongs to no one else. I want to feel and love and live as boldly as I please. I want to be like you.” She closes the gap between them, lifts her hands to cup Sabine’s face, is shocked again by the coldness of her skin, but she doesn’t pull away.
“But most of all, I want to be with you.”
Sabine’s expression clouds, as if the strange light in her eyes is guttering. “I do not know if you are ready.”
Charlotte feels her balance falter. But then, a strange thing happens. Anger comes rushing up to steady her. “How dare you—I am here ! I have just fled my own proposal to lay my heart bare at your feet.”
“There are things you do not know.”
Charlotte glares defiantly. “I know there is nothing you could tell me that would make me love you less, nothing that would make me want to leave.” She swallows. “Nothing, save that you do not feel the same. That you do not want me, too. Is that it?”
Sabine’s brow furrows. “No.”
“Say it, then,” demands Charlotte.
Sabine’s mouth twitches. She lifts her cool hands and rests them over Charlotte’s on her face. “I want you,” she says, the light rekindling behind her hazel eyes. “I have wanted you in ballrooms and in parlors, in crowds and behind closed doors. I have wanted you since before we ever met.”
Charlotte feels like a window flung open. Fresh air rushing in.
And then Sabine turns away, toward the stairs, but she is drawing Charlotte with her.
They have wandered through a dozen houses arm in arm, but every time the halls were crowded with bodies, with music, with life.
Now as Sabine leads Charlotte up the stairs, there are no onlookers, no pretenses.
They are together. And they are alone. No gloves, just their laced fingers, Sabine’s cold, and hers hot.
Her heart hammering inside her chest with fear and hope and want and wonder, and maybe Sabine was right, and her feelings are so loud that they spill out of her, because she looks back and smiles as if she can hear every single one.
Sabine leads Charlotte to a chamber with the curtains drawn.
The room is plunged into such a heavy darkness that even with the light spilling in from the hall, Charlotte can barely make out the outline of the furniture, the bed. She crosses to the window, reaching for the curtain’s edge to draw it back, but Sabine is there to catch her wrist.
She twists round, breath catching at the sudden closeness, Sabine’s body tangling with hers, as it did the night before, only this time, they are face-to-face, her mouth inches from Sabine’s, the air between them humming with want, and at last, Charlotte closes the distance and kisses her.
Their lips brush, and this is the part where Jocelyn pulled away.
But Sabine doesn’t.
Instead, she answers, deepening the kiss, pressing Charlotte back against the curtained glass. Her lips part, teeth skimming Charlotte’s bottom lip. A pricking pain.
She flinches, and draws back, touching her lip.
Even in the dark, she can see the stain against her fingertips before Sabine brings them to her mouth and swipes her tongue over the blood.
And smiles. Not the secret smile, the ghostly tugging of her lips.
She smiles showing teeth, two of them sharper and longer than the rest.
Something flashes through Charlotte then, something that is and isn’t panic. Something that is and isn’t fear.
There are things you do not know.
Everyone has choices.
They only have to make them.
You make it sound so simple.
Simple? No.
Sabine doesn’t let go of Charlotte’s hand. Instead, she turns it, exposing the soft inside of her wrist, the pulse visible beneath her skin.
“Do you trust me?”
How easy it is, to see danger once it’s passed. But she is young, and filled with dread and want, both warring in her chest. And she has come this far. “Yes.”
“You’re afraid,” says Sabine, bringing her hand closer to her face.
“Yes,” says Charlotte. Then, “But not of you.”
Sabine’s smile widens, right before her teeth sink into Charlotte’s wrist.
She gasps, stiffens at the brightness of the pain, the way it lances through her flesh, followed by the sudden animal urge to tear free, to pull away. But to her surprise, she doesn’t. This moment, she knows, is a kind of test. The pain spreads up her arm, leaves her feeling dizzy, faint.
Years later, she will ask Sabine what would have happened, if in that moment she had fought, or screamed, or fled, and her love will only stroke her cheek and say, “Why dwell on things that did not happen?” and Charlotte will know, then, with grim certainty, that one way or another, she’d have never left that room alive.
Sabine’s teeth slide free, a strange ache pooling in their wake, and when she looks up, her eyes are burning brighter than they ever have, candles behind painted glass. How could Charlotte have ever thought that they were human ?
“What are you?” she asks at last, and Sabine’s mouth twitches in that old familiar way.
“What am I?” she muses, almost to herself. “A widow.”
She tugs Charlotte forward, turns her in her arms as if they’re dancing. “A feral rose.”
She lets go suddenly, and Charlotte stumbles, catches herself against the bedpost. But in the next breath, Sabine is there again, cool hand cupping her chin.
“I am free.” Those lantern eyes, the only thing she can make out in the dark.
“Free from pain. Free from rules. Free from death. Free to live as I want. Free to take what I want. Free to be who I want. With whomever I want.” Her fingers slide through Charlotte’s hair, come to rest at the nape of her neck. “Is that what you want, Charlotte?”
The word leaves her, as easy as air. “Yes.”
It is all she wants. All she has ever wanted.
Sabine’s eyes flick to Charlotte’s injured wrist. “There is a cost,” she says, but when Charlotte looks down, she finds the wound closed, the bite marks fading, the pain already gone.
Her skin is still hungry. Her heart is still racing.
“I understand,” she says, even though she doesn’t, can’t. “I want more. I want this. I want you.”
Sabine draws her close, lips brushing Charlotte’s as she says, “Remember that.”
And then Charlotte is being pressed back, and down, into the bed, and Sabine is on top of her, her hand where Charlotte’s was the night before, making its way beneath her dress, and up her thigh, and then at last, between her legs.
Her thumb grazes the darkness there, and Charlotte gasps, her entire body bright with longing.
She grips Sabine, not to push her back, only to drag her closer, digging her fingers into the woman’s arms, clutching at her as the heat builds between her legs.
She arches in pleasure, clenching around Sabine’s wrist, and every time her mouth grazes Charlotte’s skin—laying kisses on her shoulder, her collar, her breast—she braces for a bite that doesn’t come.
Sabine only smiles, her fingers sliding deeper, and when Charlotte finds the breath to speak, the word that rises to her lips is please.
And perhaps this is all it is, she thinks. This is how to take what you want, to live as you want, this is how to be free. And then, right as the heat crests, Sabine’s mouth finds the curve of Charlotte’s neck, her lips part, her teeth grazing skin.
And she bites down.
Charlotte shudders, the pleasure rolling through her first, and for an instant, she has two heartbeats, one at her throat, and one between her legs. But then the latter fades, and in its wake, she feels the pain, that heavy ache spreading through her limbs, behind her ribs, around her heart.
And it hurts.
Worse than the teeth biting into her wrist, because this time, Sabine doesn’t stop.
If anything, her teeth sink deeper, and Charlotte whimpers, the pain no longer hidden in the shadow of the pleasure.
Fear steals through her, then, sudden, and animal, and sharp, but even if she wanted to fight back, it is too late.
Her heart is kicking but her limbs are leaden, and Sabine is made of stone, and the fear is already fading with the edges of her sight.
And her heart, her heart, which has gotten her into trouble all her life, her heart, which feels too much, and beats too hard, now falters.
It trips, and stumbles, weakly, to a stop.
And Charlotte feels like she is falling—no not falling, sinking.
Down through the bed, into someplace quiet, empty, dark, like the stillness at the very edge of sleep.
And too late, she understands that it is death.
That she is dying.
And she doesn’t even feel betrayed.
This is what she asked for, isn’t it?
After all, death is another kind of freedom.
At least, she thinks, she’s not alone.
Sabine is with her, in the dark.
And then, distantly, she feels the weight of something against her mouth, and hears Sabine’s voice, so far away and just beside her ear, telling her to drink.
Charlotte is too tired to move her lips, and yet, somehow she does, and then the liquid hits her lips, and it is something earthy, rotten, sweet.
It slides across her tongue, and down her throat, and branches there, tendrils spreading through her chest, coiling around her heart, which now begins to beat again.
A single drum, then two, then three.
The pulse, so loud in Charlotte’s chest, echoing like footsteps through an empty hall.
Alive, alive, alive, it says.
Before the rhythm fades, and the darkness folds over her again.
Erasing everything.