Chapter 22 A price #2
My heart feels as heavy as my head. It’s an unfamiliar feeling, the idea that someone else could want to care for me. But it’s not unwelcome. The weight of the day has knocked down my usual defenses, and her sweet offering is too much for me to resist.
I pull her into a glamour. It takes a second to work, because I’m weaker than I was last time. But she accepts it eagerly, and the spell takes form behind her eyes.
The sweet, honeyed smell of her blood immediately tempts my fangs to appear. I sit up on the chaise, and take her shoulders in my hands as I pierce her supple flesh with my fangs. Her blood runs quickly, and I drink, her warmth filling me up, body and soul.
It feels different, this time. As her blood fills me, I feel so deeply connected to her, like her own thrumming heart is mine. Like the blood that sustains us both also binds us together. By the time I’m satiated, I’ve almost forgotten where my body ends and her’s begins.
I pull away, and lick her neck to seal the bite.
She makes a sweet sound of pleasure at the touch of my tongue.
Then we both lie down together on the wide leather chaise.
She nestles into me, her face upon my shoulder.
I pull her closer, my hand on her waist. It’s the first time we’ve laid down next to each other.
We lie there for several minutes, in each other’s arms. I could spend the whole day like this.
If I had Lily…if I had her in my arms, perhaps I wouldn’t want to work so much. It’s an odd thought, and it makes me a little uncomfortable.
Lily, as always, senses the shift in my mood and blinks up at me. “Would you…would you like me to go?”
“No,” I whisper to her, pushing a tendril of ash-blond hair behind her ear.
She smiles, a dimple forming in her cheek. “I like being here, with you.”
My stomach aches. “I like being here with you, too.” I reach out to caress her smooth skin with the back of my hand. She closes her eyes, leaning into my touch. She brushes my fingers gently with her lips, a soft kiss.
We both know that we’ve crossed a threshold. This is more than just sex. Lily has an odd expression on her face, like she’s trying to decide whether to say something.
Curiosity gets the better of me. “What is it?”
“I…I wanted to ask you,” she says tentatively, avoiding my gaze. “About what I found that day, in your cabinet.”
My nostrils flare slightly.
“It looked almost like a wooden toy,” she continues. “I wondered…”
“It’s an old thing,” I say, stiffly. “I should get rid of it.”
Her eyes crinkle in concern. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up. I just thought that you didn’t like kids much, from how you reacted to Eli the first time. But then you were so good with him when you put him to bed that night…”
I turn my face away, a spasm in my chest.
Lily sits up sharply. “Renata…Renata, you’re crying…”
I pull a handkerchief from my pocket, and wipe the red tears away.
I was born in Mexico City in New Spain. It was before the revolution. The air crackled with something new approaching, although I never got to see it.
My family was well-respected and we didn’t want for much.
I hardly ever saw my husband, who worked long hours as an artisan in the booming silver industry.
I ran a tight household, ensuring that our accounts were kept in good standing, our attire was appropriately fashionable for our rank, and our social status was cemented in our tight-knit community.
I had some bad luck. Back then, it was common to lose babies.
Three stillborn, so when my fourth lived to his fifth year, I was overjoyed.
He was the sun in my life. The bright beam of happiness that lit my days.
I allowed myself to love him, and I cared for him the best I could.
I even bought him a painted, spinning top to play with.
But fate is cruel. And outbreaks were common in densely populated cities like our’s. When my son first developed a fever, I prayed that it would quickly pass. But it worsened, and he became sicker and sicker. It was agony, watching the light dim from his eyes.
Desperate, I asked everyone I knew if there was some cure, some physician, some remedy I hadn’t investigated.
I tried everything. My rosary was ever-present in my palms, my fingers sore from counting its beads.
My husband said that it was God’s decision, that if our son was not meant for this world, I must accept this and let him go.
But I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t bear to hope for another baby, not after the ones I had lost.
Then the laundry girl told me something. She said that there were strange foreigners who had recently arrived in our city. Her brother had broken his leg badly in an accident, and he had traded information for a cure that healed him as though his leg had never broken in the first place.
She took me to the foreigners. They could only receive visitors after sundown, and when I met them, I realized why. Their drawn, pallid skin and pale eyes seemed like they had never seen light.
I explained that my son was sick, and that I would trade anything for his recovery.
“Anything?” asked one of the foreigners. The one who was clearly in charge. The one with the impossible violet eyes, like a demented spirit. “Would you give yourself?”
I thought he meant my life. I suppose that was what he meant. And I agreed, immediately. I’d asked God so many times to trade my life for my son’s. Perhaps this was another sort of God. At that point, it didn’t matter to me.
They followed us back to our house, where my son was sleeping. He looked so small, in his bed. The foreigner drew a blade from his sheath and sliced his own skin. He fed his blood to my weakened son.
It worked immediately. His fever broke, and his eyes were bright once more.
It was the last time I ever saw him.
I went with the foreigners, that night. Nothing could have prepared me for what came next. I woke in the earth, and I pulled myself up from its depths like a demon crawling up from Hell. I knew I could never return to my son, to my mortal life.
I’d made a deal with the Devil.
I stole my new name from the laundry girl.
Renata. Reborn.
Lily’s face is wet with tears.
“I…I had no idea…” she chokes. “I’m so sorry, Renata.”
“Tudor gave me a great gift,” I respond. There’s relief, but also an empty feeling of vulnerability, in my chest. “And I paid a price. My life, and my dedication to him. It’s a price I’ll pay for as long as I exist.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Lily says. “You’ve more than paid your debt to Tudor. You don’t need to keep sacrificing yourself, over and over again.”
Fresh tears fall down my own cheeks. “I don’t know, Lily…I’m so old, I don’t know if I can do something different…”
She takes my face in her hands, unafraid of the bloody tracks that cross my face. “I know you can. Tudor might have valued you just because of your hard work. But that doesn’t mean everyone else does.”
She exhales. I can’t look away from her shining, earnest face.
“I love you, Renata. You’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever met. You’re enough, just as you are. You don’t have to work yourself into the ground like this. You’ll always be enough, for me.”
She pulls me into a tight embrace. Her heart pounds against me. It gives me the strength to hear her words.
Something inside me breaks open. I hold her close to me, burying my face in her hair.
After several minutes, we pull away from each other.
My voice sounds different now. Something’s changed. “My crypt…it’s behind the hidden door, there.” I point to a corner of the room, beside a leafy plant in a stone vase. “My coffin is lined with silk, and it’s quite large. Will you lie there with me?”
“Yes,” she whispers. “Yes, of course.”