Monarch

16. Elena

16

ELENA

A ll next week, I do an excellent job of avoiding Atlas. I only speak to him twice in passing and only in the most polite, mundane way.

The problem is, I suspect Atlas is allowing me to avoid him. And only for a limited time.

It’s the sensation that used to creep over me when I’d play chess with my mother. She’d act calm and mild while instigating her sneakiest plots. It taught me to fear when people withdraw unexpectedly, luring me into a false sense of security.

I don’t think Atlas has given up at all. He’s just waiting.

Lorne is playing the opposite strategy.

He’s been twice as attentive since putting the ring on my finger. He compliments me whenever I wear my new clothes and showers me with gifts and chocolates. After he spat in my mouth, he sent six dozen star lilies up to my room. The vases sit everywhere, two to a table, filling the air with the scent of their blooms.

Lilies were my mother’s favorite flower. I ordered them for her funeral…and have hated them ever since.

Scent welds to memory. However much I loved the smell once, associating it with Easter and my mother’s birthday, moments when my parents looked happy and in love, that one cold morning of their funeral forever bound lilies to the darkest dread and sorrow I’ve ever known.

I know I’ve told Lorne that my favorite flowers are roses.

In fact, I’m quite certain I even mentioned how much I dread the smell of lilies.

As the sickly sweet scent of death seeps through my hotel room, it starts to feel more and more like a message…

A reminder from my fiancé to stay away from Atlas.

Lorne is in a great mood all week long. Mostly because the workmen are making progress on the house ( I mean, castle ).

“It could be finished in a couple more weeks!” he tells me as I slip my feet into my shoes, preparing to head downstairs for dinner.

“That’s great.” I smile back at him, though inside, I’m as frozen and spiky as the rose garden beneath my window. The vines look glazed in metal. The ocean beyond is black as ink.

Sometimes Grimstone is even more depressing than Lviv.

Lorne brought over a whole stack of wedding magazines and set them on the coffee table. Even though the ceremony will be small, he wants me to pick the color of the flowers and the style of the cake so Mrs. Cross can throw us a little party.

He’s thoughtful. I should be grateful.

Instead…I’m filled with dread.

“Who are you inviting?” I ask Lorne, after spending way too long wondering if I should.

Something I’ve learned about my fiancé is that he only likes certain types of questions. Mostly ones related to his interests and his work. Those he’ll answer for hours. What’s your favorite movie? Where have you travelled? Which authors have influenced you? Questions about friends, family, and his past…not so much.

This query is easily batted aside. “Why invite anybody? I’d rather it just be you and me and Ivy. And the priest, of course.”

Lorne leans forward, smiling at me. He’s handsomer than ever with his hair combed back, his stylish black horn-rim glasses giving him that extra air of intelligence and importance, especially when paired with his favorite cashmere turtleneck.

Lorne pays a lot of attention to how he looks. And to how other people look. Now that I know this about him, how long he spends on grooming, how carefully he selects his clothes, I have to rethink my first impression of Lorne as a cute, dorky tourist.

No.

Lorne was dressed as a cute, dorky tourist. Because my fiancé picks his clothes carefully. Always. And he knows how to dress for an occasion. To make a certain impression.

I’ve never seen him dress quite like that ever again. Or talk like he did that first day, stuttering and sweet.

It’s interesting.

Some things you only notice with time, with distance. When you see what comes after. And how everything changes.

The man sitting across from me on the sofa at this moment is different from the man I met in Lviv. And different from the one who picked me up at the airport. Lorne’s changing. Or my perception of him is changing.

If I ask Lorne about his family, I already know what he’ll say:

That’s boring; you don’t want to hear about that. Let’s talk about that later. I want to hear about you…

Lorne is never more interested in me than when I ask awkward questions about him .

I know what will happen. But I ask anyway.

“You really don’t have any family to invite? Not a cousin, or…”

Lorne’s jaw stiffens, his mouth a thin line. “No, I told you. I’m an orphan like you.”

“Okay, sorry.”

I seem to be tacking apologies onto most of my statements these days. It’s almost become automatic.

Now we’re seated in a cozy corner of the Reinstoff, tucked away by the fireplace, and Lorne still seems irritated. He might be extra irritated because Olivia isn’t serving us. She’s standing by the bar looking sulky. Which I’m guessing means that Atlas warned her away.

I try not to let my satisfaction show. Or look at Atlas himself.

He’s standing by the pass-through to the kitchen, which is his new way of pretending not to watch me. He has not stopped stalking me through the hotel and staring at me wherever I go. He just does it from a bit farther away now.

If I look at him, Lorne will notice. He watches my face all the time, following my eyes wherever they look. He can also repeat back anything I’ve said to him, word for word, like a lawyer.

Sometimes it feels like an interrogation when I slip up. When my statements don’t match.

But that doesn’t happen if I’m careful.

I’m careful not to look at Atlas. No matter how huge and dark he looms in my periphery, a six foot six granite block.

I’ve been well-behaved enough to make Lorne relax. I’m playing the perfect good girl.

It shouldn’t be that hard to make Lorne happy. He’s quite clear about what he wants, a tough but explicit boss. And since I’m unemployed at the moment, I have plenty of time to meet his demands.

It’s not too difficult to dress up for him. Or to run his little errands, even when I bring Ivy along.

How much I enjoy having a bossy partner is a separate question.

Sometimes I can handle it.

Sometimes I’d like to punch him in the teeth.

Cooler heads prevail…for now.

A sick giddiness sweeps over me. I’m tense, so keyed up around Lorne that I’m losing all sense of what’s safe and what’s normal.

I haven’t had a solid night’s sleep since he put that ring on my finger. It’s like it’s cursed. The nightmares have me sitting up in my bed three or four times a night, shrieking into the wadded-up blankets.

Lorne told me to never, never take my ring off in case I lose it. But I disobeyed him, superstitiously slipping it off my finger before bed, refusing to even set it on the nightstand and instead tucking it inside a drawer.

But then I put it back on my finger this morning. Because I spoke to Mina, and she told me that trucks are lined up all along the curb outside the bookshop. Construction crews could be walking through there tomorrow. Through every last room.

So I’ve had to come to terms with certain realities.

Yes, Lorne is picky and demanding. He’s jealous and…intense. But how bad is that, really? He’s also paying for everything without complaint. He’s generous and attentive. He sent me flowers twice this week (though possibly as a threat ) . How do I balance these things?

I know what my mother would say: Nobody’s perfect. You can’t get everything you want.

Still, I’m not sure Lorne is what she had in mind.

The times when he’s kind are beginning to unnerve me almost as much as his moods. When he’s extra attentive, when he fawns over me, it’s like I’m waiting for whatever’s coming next.

The little things he says bother me. Small jabs, but they’re like slivers of glass that burrow in deep. The critiques. The ways he brushes aside what I want, what I say.

And when he spat in my mouth…that was more than a sliver. It festers and bubbles under my skin. Why he did that to me. What it means…

“What?” Lorne’s smiling, but his eyes are sharp behind his glasses.

I’ve never worried so much about what my face might be giving away. I never used to even think about it. Now my expression feels stiff and masklike as I try to prevent my emotions from slipping through.

“What?” I say back to Lorne, wooden and stupid.

Something flickers in his eyes. Irritation? Suspicion?

“I don’t know,” he says. “You look…”

“What?” This time I force a smile.

“Nothing.” He lets it drop. The mood relaxes but only a little, a leash without much slack.

I feel drained in a way I can’t explain. The food doesn’t smell as good, and the noise of the other diners is irritating. All the colors in the room seem dingy and dull.

My head is pounding. I’ve been having dreams that I’m trapped in coffins, in boxes. Dreams of chains wrapped round my limbs and a long fall out my window into the ink-dark ocean below, where I’m dragged down and down and down…

It doesn’t take Freud to explain that I’m feeling anxious. And maybe not entirely excited for my upcoming wedding.

My eyes want to return to Atlas, over and over. I’m tired of fighting them.

“Are you excited?” Lorne speaks so softly you have to listen carefully for the snares.

“For what?” I say carefully.

“To be married.” He smiles patiently.

I’ve already learned not to trust that smile. That question has a hook in it. I can’t just answer it—I have to answer it correctly. With the appropriate level of enthusiasm.

I aim for humor. “Is that even a question?”

“I don’t know.” Lorne’s expression goes cold and flat. “Is it?”

I counter with hurt, mostly manufactured because inside I’m empty and dull. “Not to me it isn’t.”

I let my eyes drop to my plate, demure and almost pouty. I don’t like doing it, but some people make you play their stupid fucking games.

Lorne softens as soon as I submit. Now his foot presses into mine under the table, rubbing against my ankle then sliding up my leg. “I know you’re excited.”

Then what the fuck are you grilling me for?

I smile back at him, fluttering my lashes. “I wish it would come sooner. The wedding. All of it.”

The thoughts in my head get angrier the more sweetly I try to behave.

Time away from Atlas was supposed to make it easier to bond with Lorne. But Atlas is like a pressure relief valve. Without him, the anxiousness in my chest only builds. And more time with Lorne makes it worse.

I don’t like the way he looks at me.

Have I made a terrible mistake? All over again…

Lorne checks his phone. I sneak a quick look at Atlas.

The jolt I get when our eyes meet is exactly the kind of thing that makes people blow their entire paychecks at casinos. One look and my blood is buzzing.

I glance back at Lorne. He’s still reading his messages. I steal another fix from Atlas.

Double-breasted suit today, dark as a coffin, black stubble almost grown into a beard. Dressed like an undertaker and extra glowery, or am I just imagining that because I want him to miss me?

“You watched Ivy again?” Lorne says, confirming something he read in his messages.

“Yes.” My eyes snap back to his face before I even register what he said. “All day today.”

Ivy’s been knocking on my door earlier and earlier each morning, but I don’t mind. I like when she joins me for the day. She’s peaceful company and surprisingly easy to understand once you get to know her little sounds and gestures.

I’m starting to think I like her more than Lorne. She’s definitely easier to please.

She comes over when I’m still in my pajamas., so I let her dress me up like her oversized Barbie doll. She’s really into matching outfits, and goddamn if it isn’t filling some unknown hole inside of me.

Dressing up for someone is an invitation into their world—to be who they want you to be. When you play that role, you get to see life the way they see it.

Some of the outfits Ivy puts together are odd, but I wear them anyway because it’s a look inside her head, how she hopes our day will go, who she wants us to be together, adventurers or fairy queens…

Ivy’s world lies on the border of fantasy and reality. Sometimes she’s highly present, making eye contact, pointing things out to me. Sometimes she seems pulled into another world, one that lies right on top of ours like the fourth dimension. She’ll lie on her stomach for an hour examining the frost on the grass and the way that it melts in the heat of her breath, or she’ll spin and spin and spin, staring up at something only she can seem to see.

When I come into her world, she shows me more and more, the sketches of birds and rabbits and toadstools in her notebook, the parts she underlined in Firestarter : “ The brain is a muscle that can move the world…”

Well worth wearing outfits that occasionally make Atlas smile at me in an amused kind of way.

Lorne doesn’t see those outfits. I always change before dinner into what he prefers, which is a posh, conservative sort of look. If I wear anything he considers cheap or trashy , he’s quick to point it out.

Lorne’s world has much stricter rules than Ivy’s. He likes to think of himself as an artist and provocateur, with his gruesome, sexy books. But he’s conservative in real life, highly concerned with how other people behave and what they think.

I get that he’s trying to help me fit in, but I wish he weren’t quite so concerned with public opinion. The last time I brought Ivy to dinner with us, he made her go back upstairs to change just because she dribbled a little soup down the front of her dress. I mean, she’s a kid; nobody’s going to judge her for spilling. Other than her dad, I guess.

“The more you watch Ivy,” Lorne says approvingly, “the faster the work gets done.”

Me minding Ivy frees up Mrs. Cross for full-time nagging. Apparently, she’s so irritating that the electricians have finished in record time. Whether we’ll all burn alive in our beds is a different question.

“Incredible,” I say, smile plastered on my face. “How soon can we move in?”

Lorne’s voice turns almost reverent. “Right after Halloween.”

I have to hold back a shudder.

Grimstone is way too into Halloween. This town practically worships the Grim Reaper. A twenty-foot-tall skeletal monstrosity is already taking shape at the end of Main Street.

I don’t want those to be my wedding decorations.

But Lorne’s going to take it personally if I try to delay.

“That’s…perfect,” I manage.

My intestines roll like snakes. I throw a guilty glance at Atlas though he’s too far away to have heard me.

Why do I feel like I’m cheating on Atlas? I’m not cheating on Atlas. The cheating is when I think about Atlas.

The more you try not to think about someone, the more they haunt your mind.

As if summoned, Atlas appears at my elbow.

Excitement expands in my chest like a hot air balloon. Now I’m staring down at my plate because there’s no way this isn’t leaking out of my face, this sudden, crazy, stupid happiness that came along with Atlas.

And why?

Because he’s standing right there, a foot away from me. So close, I could almost brush his leg with my elbow.

And that’s how I know I’m in very deep trouble.

My skin starts burning from my scalp to my face, down the back of my neck and across my collarbones, all down my arms, from my bare knees to my toes. We’re the closest we’ve been in a week, and my whole body knows it.

“Ninety-six Margaux…” Atlas displays a bottle of wine, small in his massive hands. “Compliments of the house.”

Lorne sounds genuinely impressed. “How generous.”

Atlas brought the good stuff to our table personally…as an olive branch?

His manners to Lorne are polite and reserved. But then he gives me a look with so much heat, I know why he’s really here.

My disloyal heart thrills inside me.

The voice of reason tells me to knock it off.

My heart keeps beating just as hard, just as wildly.

Because the heart wants what it wants…no matter how much trouble it will cause.

Atlas stabs the cork and pops it out of the bottle, as easily as spearing an olive. The flex of his bicep makes a tiny muscle contract in my belly in response.

I very carefully do not look at Lorne. Or anything else. Only my plate. That has to be safe.

The gravity at our table is all wrong, and there’s no way Lorne can’t feel it. Every cell in my body pulls toward Atlas.

I can’t seem to stop it. I can’t stop wanting him.

Atlas pours the wine. No one has ever poured wine more slowly. He’s doing it on purpose. He knows how good he smells, his warm skin mixing with the scent of the wine, crushed grapes and sex and sin…

Lorne doesn’t seem to notice a thing, completely distracted by the long, pretentious process of tasting his wine. He swirls it around. Sniffs it. Makes little slurpy sounds.

I lock eyes with Atlas and take a heady draft. The Bordeaux bursts on my tongue, the taste of temptation.

Atlas lets his eyes drag down my body, admiring my figure in the black velvet dress bought and paid for by him. He raises an eyebrow, pursing his lips slightly until I can almost hear his voice in my head: “ Now, that’s just not fair.”

I’m going to kiss him again, I already know it.

I stare at his lips, imagining how that thick, black stubble will feel scratching against my bare skin…

“Incredible.” Lorne smacks his lips, still laser focused on the liquid in his glass. “It’s got that freshness in the nose, with just a hint of mineral and black fruit.”

I don’t have a clue what he’s talking about.

All I can hear is the blood thudding in my ears as I gaze up at Atlas.

Atlas steals one more look at me in the tight velvet dress. His hungry eyes roam my body like hands until at last they fix on my face.

With a wicked smile, he says, “Well worth the price.”