Chapter 27 #2
“Hi,” Aster laughed. No, giggled. Like a schoolgirl with a crush. Giggled like whatever she and Sylvia had was silly and simple, and not ancient and insane. “What on Earth are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
Aster pushed her tongue into her cheek. “Losing your mind?”
Sylvia grumbled, “Close. Dishes.”
“Come here and tell me about it?”
Sylvia swallowed, seeming to consider the offer, then with a dramatic sigh she began to force the apron over shoulders, struggling adorably when she got stuck mid-way.
“Stupid fucking—” She jumped up and down. “Dumb ass piece of—”
Aster nearly got up to help her, but Sylvia eventually managed, tossing it into a corner, hissing at it like a psychopath, and then sliding into bed again. Aster felt her heart stutter when Sylvia drew close, sidling up next to her like they were two friends at a sleepover.
Sylvia sighed audibly against her shoulder, squeezing her eyes closed.
“I needed to do something mindless with my hands,” she whispered. “You’ve been asleep for half a century and it was starting to drive me insane.”
Aster felt her cheeks warm at her closeness. “Didn’t know what to do without me?”
Sylvia opened one eye and still managed to glare at her.
“Something like that,” she grumbled. Then she paused, and her cheeks grew even more pink, like she’d thought something embarrassing.
“Or, more likely, I was thinking of all the ways I could get out of finishing the unwinding process. So you could just forget all this happened so we’d never have to speak about it again.
But then I realized I could, technically, do that.
By Suggesting you. And then I realized I’m a fucking asshole.
And then I found myself doing dishes out of some sort of guilty consciousness. So yes, I’m going insane.”
Aster’s heart broke and swelled at the same time.
“Sylvia Maroven,” Aster said, biting her lip. “Are you actually being honest with me?”
Sylvia looked away. “Sometimes pigs fly.”
Aster gave her a small, knowing smile. “I already told you I’m not going to be upset. Whatever it is. Even if you tried to murder me in my sleep.”
“Right, because you’re some sort of freak of nature that refuses to harbor a grudge. Which would be the normal reaction to all this, by the way — and also to attempted murder.”
“Sylvia,” Aster reached over, and grabbed Sylvia’s face, holding it gently. “Will you just get it over with already, you endearingly insane person?”
Aster was genuinely begging now. Because she couldn’t stand it anymore. It wasn’t about kissing her anymore. It was about knowing her so that she could tell her it was alright and mean it.
Sylvia was momentarily breathless, looking at Aster’s hands surrounding her.
“Okay,” she said after a beat. Then frowned, repeating it with resignation. “Okay.”
And her eyes blazed red.
***
In truth, the thing that Sylvia dreaded the most about unwinding wasn’t revealing the truth to Aster. It was that when she touched Aster’s mind, when she worked her fingers through the lacerations she’d put on her dear girl’s brain, Sylvia had to relive it, too.
***
BUCHAREST. FEbrUARY, 1892.
The wind was blowing fast and the sun hot as an iron as their horse-drawn tram rattled against the metal tracks lining the street.
Aster had her head flung out the window, laughing at something Sylvia had said.
Sylvia was high on Aster’s laugh, high on making her smile, high on a little bit of something else, too, as the two of them watched Bucharest blow by in a flurry of tailcoats and polished boots—their final destination crawling toward them.
“So, you sure he’ll be there?”
Aster was talking of course about King Carol.
The bushy-bearded Romanian monarch they’d been toying about ‘dealing with’ for months now.
They had been eyeing his castle—the Peles Estate—and had made plans to move in during the summer.
It was a fantastic beast of a castle, a Germanic pearl in the heart of Romania, and Sylvia wanted her dirty little hands on it.
“He will,” she confirmed, jolting a bit when the carriage rolled over an uneven cobblestone.
Aster caught her easily, and Sylvia tried her best to conceal the warmth she felt being held by her impossibly strong arms. Even covered under all that dense feminine fabric—Aster’s muscles were like boulders.
Boulders she wished she could bite. “He attends a concert there every Thursday.”
“I’m rather excited about the concert,” Aster said.
And Sylvia snorted, because of course Aster was excited about the concert. The concert where they were planning to murder the King.
Then again, Sylvia was sort of counting on it.
“I knew you would be,” Sylvia said, then shrugging casually, she added, “I think you’ll like tonight’s program especially. The Athenaeum usually plays Beethoven, that bore, but tonight they’re playing Tchaikovsky. Your favorite.”
Aster’s eyes brightened like a baby bear’s. Sylvia couldn’t help but liken her to an animal—her innocence was equal to her ferocity.
“Serenade for Strings?” she asked, her voice small and hopeful.
Sylvia nodded, and Aster clapped eagerly, like a child. When she got over her initial excitement, she leaned down to whisper into Sylvia’s ear.
“You suggested the conductor into it, didn’t you?”
Sylvia’s cheeks heated. “I can’t believe you’d ever accuse me of tampering unethically with the concert program.”
Aster pressed a stupid kiss to the side of Sylvia’s head. One that earned them a few looks from the old women on the opposite sides of the tram. Sylvia was too dizzy to notice.
“You? Tampering?” Aster’s breath hit the side of her cheek, and it was smokey like a hot cigar. It made her feel insane, and she knew then and there that tonight would probably ruin her in ways she’d be unable to predict until she was being stabbed in the chest with them. “Never.”
***
Sylvia nursed a visinata, the cherry aroma matching the shade of Aster’s cheeks as she watched the other woman lean against the wooden railing, absolutely enraptured by the violins playing below them.
They were an hour and a half into the performance, high above the stage with some of the best seats in the house, and they were supposed to be strategizing their next move by now, but Sylvia didn’t have it in her to interrupt.
Not when Aster looked so beautiful under the soft lights, like an angel flung out of heaven. Not when Aster was so obviously enjoying herself.
Sylvia would rather be poor forever than ruin a moment of Aster’s fun.
Stop it.
Her thoughts had been unkind to her all night. And by unkind, she meant they’d been viciously enamored with her friend despite her better instincts.
It was coming up on fifty years since she’d wiped Aster’s mind clean in Riegersburg. It had been such a traumatizing experience that she hadn’t dared to lean too close again. Even when Aster’s eyes were begging her to—looking down at her lips so flagrantly, so obviously.
She’d turn away every time, avoid it despite every instinct that she had to let herself be devoured.
It was simply too terrifying.
Because what Aster wanted was to put her mouth to Sylvia, and what Sylvia wanted was for Aster to consume her entire soul.
How melodramatic.
It was truly embarrassing how Aster turned her into some kind of failed Shakespeare, the way her mind invented new ways to craft sentences about her need for the other woman.
She never thought herself a poetic person, but it turned out that Sylvia had just, previous to Aster, never been a person who held back from things.
And she had come to realize that holding back on things was in fact the mark of a poet—artists were people who had feelings they couldn’t place with their hands, so they did so with their minds and with their silly little pencils.
Sylvia was not meant to be an artist. She was meant to be a messy muse.
But Aster had sequestered her here, in this awkward space. So she would be a poet in silence, and watch Aster enjoy the show. Because ultimately Sylvia was fine living out a fate not meant for her as long as Aster would smile like that, her dimples curling, and kiss Sylvia on the cheek afterwards.
“Are you enjoying it?”
Aster’s soft elbow into her side rocked Sylvia out of her self-pity, and she looked up at the other woman. Aster had turned her body so she was obfuscating the stage, and the light had caught her like a halo, illuminating her from behind.
“Yes,” Sylvia said simply. Aster didn’t need to know exactly what she was enjoying. It was certainly not her business. But to make it clear, Sylvia added, “I’m a huge fan of… music.”
Aster snorted, her nose wrinkling. “You haven’t been paying attention at all, have you?”
Sylvia played it off with a swing of her hair as she let her eyes fall on the seat of the King. He was in the first row, surrounded by guards. “Guilty as charged. Pay a penny for my thoughts, you’ll find murder on my mind, or however that saying goes.”
“I don’t think that’s a saying at all.”
“Well now it is.” Sylvia clicked her tongue. “Write it down, disseminate it to the people.”
Aster chuckled, then circled her hand around Sylvia’s back, pulling her into her side so they were forced into looking at the violinists together.
Which was a very cruel thing to do to Sylvia, who immediately melted into her like butter, but she made sure to huff a very loud breath just to make sure it was clear she wasn’t happy about it.
A few seconds passed where they both genuinely watched the show.
The conductor’s hands were magnetic, and the music was fine, Sylvia supposed.
She didn’t know then that she’d end up purchasing Serenade for Strings in every format under the sun in the aftermath, because Aster would forget she loved it, and Sylvia would play it so she could remember the music, if nothing else.