Chapter 11
PENELOPE
Breed.
That’s the word that sticks inside my skull, a flesh-eating parasite eating away at my brain.
The other ones Billy just used, used in warning mostly.
Trials.
Rituals.
Blood.
None of them really strike fear into me the way that first one does.
Even though they should.
Even though they will.
But breed, it feels sooo… “Clinical.”
“Nellie.”
“No. It is, Billy. That’s so sciencey and weird.”
“Weird?”
I can tell he’s frustrated, blowing out his breath, flicking his eyes up onto the ceiling.
We’re in the Orangery.
Brick walls full of floor length, gothic style arched windows, the glass set in thin metal white frames, a high pointed glass ceiling.
Nothing but thick, heavy grey clouds hanging low, full of rain, maybe hail, but something wet and cold all the same.
It sets the tone for the conversation we’re having.
“It’s weird to you, it’s not to me. This is just how things are done. We Pair, we marry, we reproduce. It’s actually always been a fairly normal concept in lots of places around the world.”
“Yeah, in the 1940s.”
“Penelope.”
A lump sits in my chest, not quite my throat, but it chokes me all the same.
I’ve spent my life thinking of Billy. Of what we could have had. I dreamed of the family we could build. I didn’t think we’d ever get it. Be together. Find one another again. Something all our own.
Ours.
Not theirs.
I don’t trust anyone here.
“I don’t want to have children.” I see his bright eyes lift to mine, the blue like ice, but deeper, glacial, too much hiding beneath the surface. “For a cult.”
“Penelope,” he warns, smiling this smile that isn’t really a smile at all.
I smile back, my chin dipped, eyes lifted, lashes fluttering as I feel a dimple divot my cheek, my lips closed, no teeth showing as we both just keep smiling at each other. So many words not being said but felt instead.
I the lamb, he the wolf.
Leaning forward where we sit opposite one another. Billy drops his elbows from the arms of the high-back, antique wooden chair, carved with ravens and woodland, that we both sit in, to his knees.
“Don’t keep flinging that word around, Little Lamb.” He bends in closer, our faces almost touching. “Everything here has ears.” His lips brush the shell of my ear, his hands smoothing up the arms of my chair, his fingertips just brushing my ribs. “And all of them are listening.”
His lips come to my cheek, and he kisses me chastely, his plump lips soft, breath warm where it glides down the side of my neck.
The tip of his nose is beside my ear and he inhales deeply, his hands still on the arms of my chair, all the way at the back of them where I’m pinning myself to the back of my seat, my spine digging into the dark mahogany.
“Blasphemy is punishable by so. Many. Things,” I repeat his words back to him, something he told me when we first arrived here, my words not much more than a whisper.
Billy draws back just enough to see me, our faces angled just the right way for us to fall into a deep kiss, but neither one of us moves, is going to move.
“All of this is so new,” I inhale as I say it, Billy nodding slowly in agreement.
But Billy is not.
I look into his eyes, silently sighing, my breath leaving me in a rushed huff.
He’s my everything.
My forever.
But I never thought it would be so forced.
“I want you to be happy here.” It feels almost like a confession, the way Billy breathes the words out, exhaustion trying to hide behind them.
“I want you,” he says then, so serious, so flat, so unfeeling, but with an intensity that could start wars, break peace, and set the entire world aflame.
“I want you, Nells. I want you to want to be here. I want you to like it. I want you to find your home here.” He swallows, breathing in so deep I feel his chest touching mine. “I want you to want me.”
“I do want you,” I reply quickly, my hands finding his cheeks, my eyes hard on his. “I just-”
“I know,” Billy cuts me off, straightens up, pushing back into his own chair, and I feel so startled by his sudden distance that I have to grab the arms of my chair to stop myself flopping out of it.
“And it doesn’t matter anyway,” he says coldly, his eyes shooting everywhere but to me.
“We have to do it whether you like it or not.”