Chapter 23
CHAPTER 23
WENDY
I hear nothing that happens during the rest of the dinner. When the guest on my right attempts to talk to me, my mouth reverts to my mother’s training. Judging by the man’s pleased smile when our conversation is over, I’ve answered his questions just to his liking.
When a servant escorts Astor and me to our rooms, I don’t mark the path down the hallways. My feet simply follow, and I don’t stop them.
It’s only when the servant shuts the bedroom door behind us that Astor says, “Something’s wrong.”
I offer him a smile, and he sneers.
“I don’t want your mother’s fake smiles, Wendy.” My heart thuds at his use of my given name.
“Right. Of course.” I wander over to the desk in the corner of the room and pull out the chair before collapsing into it.
Astor goes still, his shoulders tensed in his suit coat as he stares at me from across the room. “If you’re worried over the bed, I won’t force you to share it with me.”
I let out a shrill laugh, staring at the ornate bed draped in silken sheets. The bed itself is too small for two to sleep comfortably, not without holding one another. Like the Carlisles are playing a private joke on us. “I don’t know how you can stand to touch me at all.”
Astor traces his fingers over the bedsheets. “What did you and Lady Carlisle discuss during dinner?”
My mouth goes dry as I stare into the windowed wall, made entirely of golden-ribbed glass. A taunting reminder that they’re always watching. That nothing we do is private.
“We’ll have to sleep in the same bed. They’ll know if we don’t,” I say, nodding to the looming glass panes.
Astor curls his nose in disgust, but he doesn’t argue with me.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “You shouldn’t have to do that.”
He’s fisting the bedsheets now, steadying himself on the frame of the bed as he squeezes his eyes shut. “How much do you know?”
I open my mouth, but I can’t find the right word. Everything doesn’t seem true.
“Enough,” is what I end up settling on.
“That’s not particularly specific, Darling.”
“I didn’t think you’d want me to recount it.”
He cuts his eyes to me. “I’m accustomed to having to do things I don’t want to do.”
My heart pounds, bruises, breaks, then repeats the cycle over again. When I speak, my voice trembles. My limbs are as feeble as a wilted daisy petal, as brittle as dried bone. “She said your wife—Iaso—was special. Said she was a healer, but not the traditional sort. Whereas most healers’ powers are transferred through touch, Iaso’s worked differently. She had to use her own blood.”
Astor isn’t looking at me anymore. He’s staring out the window, his grip rattling the bed frame.
“Lady Carlisle said the rumors are that Iaso was called to Jolpa during the plague. That she visited as many households as she could manage, but she could only work so many at a time, because she had to mix her blood into the medication. She didn’t want anyone to know how her healing worked. Was afraid the truth would put her in danger. Make her blood valuable. Besides, she had to rest often in between healing sessions.
“According to Lady Carlisle, Iaso received word that an aristocrat’s daughter had fallen ill. That she was close enough to taste death. Iaso was supposed to be resting, allowing her blood to replenish. She told the messenger she couldn’t come, but her compassion won out in the end.
“What she didn’t know was that the aristocrat knew her secret.” My throat closes up, because this is the part of the story Lady Carlisle didn’t know the details of—who told the aristocrat that Iaso’s blood would heal the child. That it was the Sister’s voice that whispered from the shadows. The Sister who had betrayed Iaso’s secret. I’d always been told that when my parents made their bargain with the Sister, it had been the Sister’s power that healed me. But they’d lied. The Sister had fulfilled her end of the bargain through Iaso. “When Iaso visited the girl, she wept over her and told the girl’s mother it was too late. She’d never succeeded in healing someone so close to death.”
Astor is heaving now, supporting his weight on the bed with his fists digging into the sheets.
The next part comes out hollow. Stiff. Like I’m reciting the script of Cressida Rivers’ fact sheet. “Lady Carlisle didn’t know which one of the parents slit Iaso’s throat. Which one of them bled every drop of blood from her body and bathed the child in it, making her drink of it too. All she knew was that Iaso died, and the little Darling girl lived.”
When I’m done, the silence is the worst part. I would have thought letting the story out, expressing it like an infected wound, would relieve some of the guilt bearing down on my chest, but it only allows it to infiltrate the surrounding air, threatening to suffocate me.
I know it’s foolishness, but it’s as if I can taste Iaso Astor’s tangy blood in my mouth, as if I can hear her gurgling cries, feel her sticky blood against my bare skin as my mother bathed me in it.
Astor clenches his teeth. There’s no life in his eyes. The flicker has gone out. “You weren’t supposed to know that.”
“Why not?” I don’t know why there’s so much accusation in my tone, but it’s there all the same. “I’m the one who got to live, didn’t I? You don’t think I deserve to know the price that was paid so I could… So I could…” I frown, unsure of what I’ve done with the life that should have been Iaso’s.
Surely I’ve done something, but all I can remember is dancing with her husband at the masquerade, hoping his Mating Mark was the match to mine. All I can feel is the heat of his touch against my cheek as he stroked my Mark, the burning in my chest every time he looks at me. In my heart, I know I love Peter, that my soul belongs to him. But as the guilt weighs down on me, all I can see is every time I’ve looked upon Nolan Astor, and the wicked girl within has craved the man whose wife died for me.
I tell myself never again. Never again will I betray Peter like that. Never again will I betray Iaso Astor like that.
“It wasn’t your fault.” The way he says it is like he’s trying to convince himself as much as he is me.
“But you hate me all the same,” I whisper, loathing myself for how that of all things is what’s bothering me right now.
I wait for him to confirm it. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s told me he abhors me. But it stings all the same when he swallows and admits, “Despite all logic, yes.”
“I wouldn’t say it’s despite all logic for you to hate the girl who got to live because your wife was forced to take her place.” I sink my face into my hands, but I can’t bring myself to cry. It doesn’t feel fair to the captain’s pain to have to watch me suffer over something that ripped him to shreds.
“I don’t know how you even stand to look at me,” I whisper.
Slowly, I hear the captain’s weight shift. The subtle scuff of boots against the floorboards as he approaches me.
When he leans over the desk, placing his palms flat over the wood, I make myself examine his rotting Mating Mark. The ghostly tendrils that snake to hide underneath his sleeve. His wedding ring glints underneath the lantern light. The sight of it makes me nauseous. Tonight I’ve been playing the part of his wife, the ring she placed on his finger assisting me in getting what I want.
When he finds me staring at it, he grimaces. As if he too senses the betrayal of how we’ve used that ring tonight, he pulls it off his finger and tucks it into his pocket with the solemnity of an apology.
“Would you really like to know?” he whispers, taking his finger and knotting it underneath my chin, craning my head up to look at him.
His expression is gentler than it should be. His eyes softened, his posture tender, almost adoring. It takes me a moment to realize he’s putting on for whoever’s watching us from outside the window.
The realization doesn’t serve to blunt the sharp barbs of his words. “When I look at you, do you know what I picture?” he asks, trailing a finger across the furrows and bends of my Mating Mark. I hate the way my chest fills with flames, despite my begging it not to. “I picture you sinking your teeth into my wife’s bleeding throat.” He dips his thumb to my lip, exposing my canine and running his fingerprint over its tip. “When I hear your voice, I make myself imagine what it sounded like when she cried out and I wasn’t there to save her. When we touch, I feel her cold skin against my flesh the night Maddox and I found her body washed up on the shore of Jolpa. If you move, if you breathe, if you laugh in my presence, I mark it as a reminder of how still, how lifeless her body was when we took her back home to bury her. Every moment with you I use to commemorate all the ways I failed her when I let her leave the ship that night. That, if you must know, Darling, is how I stand it.”
When he withdraws, I let out a pained gasp, but he’s already turned back to the bed, so I can’t measure his reaction. He only dims the lantern light beside the bed and turns down the sheets.
Then he gestures with an open palm and says, as if we’ve been discussing the quality of tonight’s soup, “You first, Darling.”