Chapter Twenty-Three #2
“Nothing. First because I literally couldn’t even think straight—didn’t care.
” Bitterness taints his words, his body stiffens as he recounts, “Once I realized what had happened, woke from the fog, so to speak, I wanted to die, in that moment. I was bereft, but at the same time, I was filled with enough rage to keep me alive, and to keep me from doing anything stupid. I knew I couldn’t do anything.
I knew even then how turning on her would go.
On my first night I saw someone try. Elisavet obliterated him.
I won’t describe it to you, that’s how gruesome it was.
And, perhaps selfishly, I wanted to survive.
I shouldn’t have cared, after what she had done to Glisa.
But I did, in a way, and the rage never left me. Still, I learned to hide it.”
“And the slippers?” I gaze over at them, placed on the velvet stool of my dressing table. Blood-red. Powerful. Beautiful and horrid all at once. Like Elisavet. “I take it they were Glisa’s?”
“They were, barely worn. She’d been too ill to even dance the last year of her life.
Elisavet gave them to me to taunt me, mock me—and Glisa’s memory.
I could never bear to part with such a petty gift, but I also couldn’t—though she never stated so, I presume Elisavet enchanted them as a symbol of our trade.
When you took them, it pulled at me. It hurt, like the rest of my soul was being ripped out.
I think, given enough time, I would have died without them near me.
I was dying. Each minute they were away from me.
But I was still curious enough about you—and angry enough—to wait it out. ”
“To fuck with me,” I say, before I can help it, thinking of the bird woman and everything else he did to torment me.
He smiles, a little abashedly. “Yes, perhaps. Although I did like watching you, even then. Even in another form.” When I narrow my eyes, suspicious, he adds, “I can change forms, briefly. I’m fond of crows, in case you didn’t notice.”
“Oh.” I’m momentarily speechless, recalling the bird perched outside the dress shop.
“I do apologize, though, for scaring you.” Leaning across the small table, his lips brush mine.
“I am sorry for so much. Sometimes it’s too overwhelming, thinking of the things I’ve done since I traded my soul.
How much humanity left me, and how for so long, I became a beast. And I liked it.
Not because I did like it, but because the alternative—the truth—was far too painful, if that makes sense.
Even when I tried to run from Elisavet, to be normal, she chased me down.
It made wanting anything different, or anything good, hurt. That included you.”
“I rather wish I hadn’t hated you so much,” I say, a touch bashfully.
“I never hated you.”
I scoff. “Liar.”
“I didn’t. When I discovered the shoes were gone, I was too perplexed—then stunned—to be irate.
I was incredulous that they were stolen from beneath my bed!
” He laughs lightly. Then grows serious, thoughtful.
“When I discovered you—dancing in them, that fevered look on your face, I was consumed, fascinated. That’s why I watched you.
Why I followed you. A slip of a woman, audacious enough to steal from me, brazen enough to dance her way down the streets, beautiful enough to shock my senses.
I hated that I felt that way. But, despite all appearances to the contrary, I never hated you.
You drove me absolutely fucking crazy—that wet chemise, that face.
” He swallows, desire darkening his eyes even more intensely.
“I hated that I wanted you. I never hated you, even if I was an ‘unfathomable bastard’ most of the time.”
“Thank you for telling me that.” I kiss him in return this time, then sit back, thinking. After a moment of reflection, I change the topic. “So, what do you think she offered Aven? Do you think it’s another trick, like what she did to you?”
“What would Aven want? Power? Wealth?” As I shake my head, he pauses. “Tell me about her?”
He asks with so much gentleness, I explain, briefly, about what happened to her. “Her husband died at sea—though he was never recovered. He was a sailor, his whole ship went down. Everyone dead.”
Orrin winces but gives me space and quiet to go on.
I continue, “She was due to give birth within less than two months when we heard the news. She suffered a stillbirth instead, just days after Darius died.” I blink the tears away. I can’t recount it without emotion. It still hurts me too much. What must it have been like for her?
“Sometimes people trade the pain away. To forget,” he says, taking the white napkin and dabbing away the tears from my cheek, bringing my small hand into his large one, the rose on the back as black as his eyes. He pulls my palm to his lips, kissing it gently. Tenderly.
I don’t ask if Aven has a token of her trade like he has the slippers. I’m not sure I want to know any more. I’m not sure I have the strength. Understanding this, Orrin rises from his seat and tugs me into his arms.
Beholding my face, he smooths my hair at my temples.
Kisses me there, on my nose, on each cheek, trailing his lips up and down my neck.
He does not disturb the sheet around my body.
This is not a seduction but a comforting.
“Corliss, I did not expect this. I did not plan it nor ever think it would happen—much as I may have secretly craved the feel of you. But I don’t want to lose myself again.
I have to do this—beat Elisavet or stay in her grasp for the rest of my days—and I have no doubt she would be responsible for the end of me, eventually.
I know it now—the realization I’ve been putting off for years.
I have to kill her. It is the only thing that will free me, one way or another.
And you must understand—it is the only way to free your sister.
I am confident she’ll be unscathed. As for me?
I’m willing to accept the consequence—my very life—if it goes wrong. ”
No amount of arguing will change his mind. Much as I don’t want to move forward, he’s right. Elisavet must die.
Sighing into his arms, I accept this truth and push aside the apprehension.
One way or another. His soul is freed…or he dies?
Yet I accept this is how it has to be. We have no other ideas.
I pray this is the right thing to do. “You’ll kill her, and we’ll win.
” I tip my chin up and search his face. “Won’t we? ”
Orrin nods. “At the next party, I’ll sink my knife into her heart. I don’t know how, but I’ll make it happen. You have my word.”
His eyes are darker than dark. I think they are darker than ever before. But I imagine rage there. Fear. Doubt. Mirroring my own. When he leans down to kiss me once more, I think perhaps there’s something else there, but he turns away before I can decipher it.
Each morning I rise, resigned to just how dangerous Orrin’s plan is.
To kill Elisavet in front of a crowd of people.
To get away with it, not just Orrin’s life, but the remainder of his soul, and Aven’s too.
And each night, I fall into bed, sick with worry.
Besides, what if a knife to the heart doesn’t kill Elisavet?
What if she’s too powerful? He was shot in the stomach and survived.
What if she can survive an attack to her heart?
Even one that would end any other creature?
I stop myself from talking him out of it. I don’t stop the doubts I have. The urge I have to do something to help.
“I hate this.” I pick at the bedsheets with a grumpy sigh as I recline on him, in the crook of his arm, his face so shadowed in the dark of night I can hardly make him out, even with my gift.
“I just wish I could see Aven, to speak with her. Perhaps, somehow, if I spark some sort of recognition within her, it’ll help.
I wonder if I could change her on my own. ”
“I don’t know.” I imagine him frowning. “But we can’t do anything about it now.”
“I know.” I sigh, leaning into him, feeling helpless.
In answer, he kisses me. Somehow, like the red slippers, his magic on me renders my worries null and void. Everything melts away. There is only him and me. Tonight, in his room instead of my own—we’ve been alternating. Making love every evening, often each morning.
Only now, just when things are getting interesting, a knock on his door. I push up.
“Mr. Brown,” I whisper to Orrin.
He rises and goes to the door. “Yes?”
“A message for you. A messenger, I mean. From her. For you both.”
I get out of the bed, glad I’m still dressed. “What should I do?”
“Come on,” Orrin says, and slips his hand into mine. “Let’s see what the message is.”
We go down the grand staircase and into the main sitting room, where the messenger waits in the dimly lit room, just one candle flickering.
She’s standing, back to us. A deep red gown the color of garnets, braiding all along the sleeves and hem.
Thick, dark hair falling down to the small of her back.
She turns, and my breath catches. Sapphire eyes turned obsidian, whites gone black as the night outside.
Aven.