CRIMSON DEBTS Chapter 27
Chapter 27: The Offering of Ash
Kaelen didn't argue. He didn't shout back.
The silence that followed Julian's outburst was more suffocating than the gunpowder smoke had been.
He looked down at the damp cloth in his hand-now stained pink with Elena's blood and Julian's tears-and realized that for the first time in his life, his power was useless.
He could force Julian to stay, but he couldn't force the "lover" to come back.
Without a word, Kaelen turned and left the room, locking the heavy oak door behind him.
Julian stayed curled in a ball for hours, waiting for the monster to return with more lessons. But when the door finally clicked open again late that night, it wasn't a gun Kaelen was carrying.
Kaelen entered with a heavy wooden crate.
He moved with a strange, frantic energy, clearing a space on the expensive mahogany desk near the window.
One by one, he began to lay out items that looked like relics from a past life: high-grade brushes, jars of linseed oil, a fresh palette, and tubes of pigments-the expensive kind Julian used to save up months to afford.
"What is this?" Julian's voice was dead, his eyes still fixed on the wall.
"I had my men go to your old studio," Kaelen said, his voice sounding raw, as if he'd been swallowing glass. "I brought the canvases you hadn't finished. I brought the easel you liked."
He stood back, gesturing to the corner of the room that he had hastily transformed into a mockery of an art studio. "Paint, Julian. Paint the flowers. Paint the mountains. Paint whatever you need to... to find that person again."
Julian slowly sat up, his gaze moving from the brushes to Kaelen's face. The irony was a physical blow. Kaelen was offering him the tools of his soul while the blood of his first kill was still under his fingernails.
"You think this fixes it?" Julian asked, his voice trembling with a new kind of horror. "You think you can buy back my innocence with a few tubes of paint?"
"I am giving you back your world," Kaelen stepped toward him, his eyes searching Julian's for a spark, a glimmer, anything. "I did what I had to do to keep you alive. Now use this. Use it to stay who you are."
Julian stood up, his legs shaking. He walked over to the desk.
He picked up a tube of "Crimson Lake" paint and stared at it.
It was the exact shade of the foyer floor.
With a slow, deliberate movement, he squeezed the tube until the thick, red oil oozed out over his fingers, staining his skin all over again.
"I can't paint anymore, Kaelen," Julian whispered, letting the tube drop to the floor. He held up his stained hand, the red pigment dripping like fresh blood. "Every time I look at a canvas, I won't see art. I'll see the target. Every time I hold a brush, I'll feel the weight of the trigger."
He looked Kaelen dead in the eye, a cold, hollow smile touching his lips.
"You didn't save my world. You just gave me a more beautiful cage to rot in."
Kaelen flinched as if Julian had struck him. He reached out to touch Julian's shoulder, but his hand stopped inches away, hovering in the air. He realized then that he was the poison. The more he tried to provide "light" for Julian, the more his own shadow extinguished it.
"Stay," Kaelen choked out, the command sounding more like a plea.
"Where else would I go?" Julian replied, turning his back on the art supplies and climbing back into the bed, pulling the covers over his head. "A ghost doesn't have a home. It just haunts the place where it died."
The Permanent Mark
Kaelen didn't leave. He couldn't. The silence of the room felt like a predator closing in on him. He looked at the red paint Julian had squeezed onto his hand-the "Crimson Lake" that looked too much like the life they'd spilled.
"You're wrong, Julian," Kaelen said, his voice dropping to a low, vibrating hum.
He walked to the bedside and did something Julian didn't expect. He didn't reach for Julian; he reached for the discarded paint tube on the floor. He dipped his own thumb into the thick, red oil.
Before Julian could pull away, Kaelen grabbed his chin with a grip of iron and smeared the red paint across Julian's bottom lip, then dragged it down his chin in a jagged line. It was a mockery of a caress.
"You aren't a ghost," Kaelen hissed, his face inches from Julian's.
"And you aren't a Thorne. You're a debt that I am never going to mark as 'paid.
' If you won't use those brushes to paint a world you like, then you will be my masterpiece.
I will be the only one who looks at you.
I will be the only one who hears your silence. "
Julian stared at him, the red oil tasting like chemicals and bitterness on his lips. He realized then that Kaelen wasn't trying to "fix" him for Julian's sake. Kaelen was trying to fix him so he wouldn't have to look at the mirror of his own sins.
Kaelen stood up, looking down at his own red-stained thumb. He didn't wipe it off. He pressed it against his own white dress shirt, right over his heart, leaving a bloody-looking thumbprint on the expensive fabric.
"Sleep, Julian," Kaelen commanded, turning toward the door. "Tomorrow, the lessons continue. But from now on, I won't ask you to look at the targets. I'll just make sure you can't look away from me."
As the door locked with a heavy, final thud, Julian lay in the dark. He reached up, touching the wet paint on his lip. It was cold. Everything was cold. He realized with a shuddering breath that Kaelen didn't want a lover anymore-he wanted a monument to his own possession.
The porcelain hadn't just turned to dust. Kaelen was now mixing that dust with blood to make something new. Something much, much darker.