Chapter 7
SEVEN
LANZ
I was just trying to make a cup of goddamn tea.
I don't even like tea. I thought it would be relaxing, or soothing, or…
energizing or something, I don't know what, but I was halfway down the stairs when the pain started, and by the time I made it to the kitchen I was gasping for air every third breath.
I managed to fill up the tea kettle and get it on the stove as the now familiar, ragged, fiery jolts ripped across the front of my ribcage, and then…
And then I was on the ground, the kettle a few feet away, water everywhere. Wasn't hot enough, thank God. Didn't burn me or anything. The burner's still on, I think, dimly, even though my vision's kind of hazy. Somebody should get that.
My eyes flutter closed.
She touched my face.
That's the part I can't stop thinking about. Not the sex—although God knows I'll never stop thinking about that either, about the way she arched against me, the sound she made when I finally slid inside her. Not even watching her on Cal, watching him with her…
No. It's what happened before.
I don't think you know how desperate I am for you to touch me, Gwenna.
I said it out loud. Like an idiot. Like a coward, like the proverbial atheist in the foxhole with a last-ditch attempt at redemption.
And she did it. Touched me. Because of course she did.
Giving her the roses was dumb. I know that.
Not giving her flowers, exactly, but the idea that I could give her something without having to touch her.
That I could love her from a safe distance, through, I don’t know, eye contact and random gifts and the careful maintenance of six inches of space between our bodies at all times.
What a fucking joke.
Because even a little closeness is painful.
That's where I live now: in the aftershocks of accidental contact. One morning she walked past me to get coffee, her shoulder brushed mine, and I felt it for the next three hours. Then I had to just sit and watch as Kingston had his hand on her lower back at breakfast. Casual. Proprietary. Like he didn’t even realize he was doing it.
Like he gets to just touch her without thinking, because he does.
Well, I can’t. And I can’t stop thinking. I think about touching her the way a man dying of thirst thinks about water. Every minute. Every breath. She's ten feet away and I'm swallowing sand.
My cheek presses into the linoleum, and from down in the basement—the fencing salle, not the Black Table—I hear footsteps. Kingston and Kai, I think. But they're not who gets to me first. It's Callahan.
“Lanz.” His voice sounds strained when he sees me. Coming in from the living room, he rushes, runs over to me, pulls me up under my arms so I'm sitting against the kitchen cabinets.
He smells nice. He always smells nice. And he looks relaxed for once, in a Caliburn hoodie and joggers instead of anything pressed and formal.
“I'm fine,” I mumble. “I just got dizzy making tea.”
It's like Cal isn't even listening. He's just searching my face, sweeping his eyes over every corner like he's looking for signs of injury or signs that I'm lying.
I swallow hard. I don't know which would be worse to find.
It's been getting worse, much worse, since St. Ignaty’s. On that stupid fucking island, when she was taken from us, I felt like a fish out of water, flattened, gasping. And then we found her again, saved her, and I could breathe.
But then the cycle renewed. We flew back, we all tried to get our bearings again, we all pulled apart somewhat, and the pain picked right back up.
Duller, at least, not like the knife stabs of this morning, but still getting steadily more and more intense, to the point where I couldn't sleep, like no position was comfortable.
And then she came in living room and touched me and kissed me and asked me to...
And begged me to...
Only if you want to, she'd said. Like there was any universe where I didn't want to. Like I wasn't burning alive with how much I wanted to.
I couldn't not. I had to. It was everything, she was everything, and I gave in.
I knelt behind her on that Persian rug in the parlor, Cal sprawled on the couch in front of us, and I let myself have her.
Felt her clench around me as she moaned into him.
Watched her come undone between us, because of us, and I thought: this is it.
This is everything. I would die for this.
And the terrible thing is—I think I might. She felt so transcendently perfect I actually thought I might be dying then and there, inside her and wrapped around her.
But I didn't. I felt better. I felt so much better, like I could fight fifty Russians and the prior-at-arms and God himself.
Except I knew it was only temporary, that the rebound was coming. Because I woke up this morning and she was gone. Back to her own room, her own bed, and the absence of her was a physical thing, a black hole where my chest used to be. Every breath hurt. Every heartbeat was a knife.
The relief never lasts. It's like a drug that wears off faster every time, and the withdrawal gets worse, and worse, and worse.
And sure enough, here it is, and I'm not sure I can hide it much longer.
Especially not from Cal.
“What's going on?” Kingston comes up first, with Kai right behind.
“Sounded like an earthquake,” Kai murmurs, and then sees me. “Jesus.”
Callahan doesn't even look at them. Doesn't tear his eyes away from my face.
“I'm fine,” I say quietly. So quiet only he can hear. “I'm good, Callahan.”
Please, I think silently, please just believe me.
I don't know if there's a convenient time to be dying of a broken heart, but if there is, this sure isn't it.
I'm not about to make this everyone else's problem.
There's a lot more existential shit going on.
I haven't killed anyone, for one thing, and no one made an attempt on my life either.
I'm not caught up in whatever scheme Kai is trying to pull with the Consistory, and Callahan…
Cal saw it too. I know he did. He was watching my face when she touched me, the color bleeding back into the world, the vise around my ribs loosening, the gray film lifting from my eyes.
I know because I could tell the exact moment he realized something was wrong—really wrong, not just Lanz is tired wrong. Could see it in his eyes.
Still can.
Fuck. He doesn't deserve this. Any of this.
I will not let him care so much about what's happening to me.
“Can everyone just give me some air?” I try to make it sound like a joke, but my voice is so craggy it's actually a little pathetic. “Jeez, a guy can't even make tea in peace around here.”
“You don't drink tea,” Callahan murmurs.
“Maybe I'm starting.” Another attempt at a joke. He doesn't smile.
"Something's wrong with you, man," Kai says, dropping into a crouch, a little behind Callahan.
Now they're both peering at me, Callahan with steady concern, and Kai with something more like curiosity, but not in an unkind way.
"Nothing's wrong," I croak. Fire and lightning, that's what it feels like. In my chest. I'm going to crack a tooth from tensing so hard not to scream.
"Yeah, I'm calling bullshit," Kai says, but his tone is gentle. "Perfectly healthy, red-blooded, American…French…whatever the fuck you are, boys"—he waves a hand in the air—"don't just hit the deck like that."
"We've all been going through it," Kingston says, a bit pointedly, as though maybe there's more context to what he's saying than I realize. But he is also peering at me, his concern more genuine than Kai's.
King. I swallow what feels like a ball full of needles and push the guilt down my throat. King's been there. King's known me. King knew my dad. The whole reason he and I even met, the whole reason I'm even here. He saw what happened, saw how quickly my dad was gone.
But he doesn't know about the curse, I remind myself. Nobody knows. You've never told anyone, because you can't.
And yet…
“You felt off first," Callahan says. His eyes have not left my face.
"Uh-huh," I say. Another ripple of pain courses through me—mercifully, less brutal than the last one. "I guess."
"No, you did," he said. "At the monastery, you knew. She was missing. You could almost sense it, somehow?" He phrases it like a question.
"Yeah, an instinct or something," I snap. "Was I wrong?"
No one says anything.
"We're just worried about you, Lanz," Kingston says. Always there to speak for the room.
I close my eyes and lean my head back against the cabinet.
I wish she wouldn't. I wish I had never given in.
I wish I had never touched her, even though I know she wanted me to, and even though my body was screaming for it, and still is, and will be forever, will be until I draw my last breath, however soon or distant that day may be.
Because I knew the relief was temporary, and the pain would come back threefold, just like it has.
I suck in a breath. If I'm going to suffer, and I am going to suffer, I'm going to do it in silence. Let it be sudden for them, at least.
"What's going on?" Lighter footsteps. A familiar voice.
God, even the sound of her voice stirs something up in me, that little stab of pleasure-pain.
I wince, my eyes still closed, as Gwenna joins the party in the kitchen.
"Why are you all standing—oh my god." She cuts herself off, almost gasping. "Lanz, are you okay?"
"Peachy," I manage. I can get my eyes open at least, but I can't get away, and that's a disaster because she's right at my side now, clutching at my hand. I pull away, but it's too late. The little burst of relief from her fingers is instant, heavenly, cool and calming and soothing.
And just like that, I'm reeled back in.
Fuck it, I think. I'm going to die anyway. Why not make it faster? Why not touch her and kiss her and hold her and be with her as much as I possibly can before I go? Even if it gives me less time, it'll be time well spent, perfectly spent.
But when I look up at her, feel her fingers on my cheek—oh God, not on my cheek, please—I see someone else.
Cal.
And the steadiness is gone from his expression.
It's just…anguish, like he hates what he's seeing, like he feels as much pain as I do, maybe more.
And the realization burns through my body like acid.
The more I have her, the sooner I'll hurt him.
But the less I have her, the more it'll hurt me, and that hurts him too, and her, and me, and…
"Let me go," I say and brush out of her grasp. "Just leave me alone."
"Lanz!" Cal and Gwenna say it at the same time, but I ignore them.
Somehow bolstered with that one brush of her skin, I get to my feet. To the door, the stairs, my room.
“What’s going on with him?” Kai asks.
“No idea.”
Cal.
I know what's happening. I've known since I was sixteen, since my father gasped his last breath in a hospital bed in Lyon and the doctors couldn't explain why a healthy forty-three-year-old man's heart just…stopped.
Dell'Acqua men love too much, he’d told me once. It's in our blood. A blessing and a curse.
I close the door behind me and half wish I could just never open it again.