Chapter 25 #2
I felt cornered again. Less clever. Less everything. With the illusion of dignity, I turned to my plate and tried to resume eating.
“Do you miss it?” he asked.
“Miss what?”
“Your former life.”
I stopped chewing and looked up at him.
He was elegant and remote, and so too was his home.
Even now, it felt cold and lonely, far more than the rest of the chateau.
I felt sorry for him, sleeping every night in this chill.
“Never,” I answered truthfully. I wanted to own my body, my life, my death.
I had only ever offered any of the three in desperation.
“The other night …” he began, then cleared his throat.
Instantly, my pulse flared, and heat shot up my spine. I waited, breathing oh so carefully as I picked up my glass and took another drink.
“You left an impression. Your willingness to go as far as needed.” He picked up his wine glass. “Further even.”
In my mind, I could see the shadows of gods in other worlds, moving beyond the stars.
Even though Perchta said that place was closed to me, I had been there.
I knew. “It does not feel like I am going further than needed. It feels like I am finally free to stretch and run for a horizon that has stopped constraining me. In your home I have seen things and done things I would never have imagined. You are not just Death. You are Renaud. You are the oarsman of the abyss. You are my master. My tutor. My”—I looked him in the eye—“consort.”
It was a breathtaking pause before he answered, without looking at me. “You know I cannot connect in the usual way.”
I had assumed as much. I was careful to keep a neutral, steady expression. It explained his hesitancy, but the admission only deepened my desire to be whatever it was he needed me to be.
His long white fingers lifted his glass. “I would ask you to do things, maybe, that you might not be comfortable with.”
I snorted. “I have—” But he interrupted before I could finish.
“Yes,” he nodded. “That is precisely what I mean.”
I didn’t think he meant to chastise me. It didn’t feel like the nuns and their punishments, or sitting under the condemnation of the village priest. But his words stung all the same.
I wanted to prove my love. I wanted to prove my loyalty.
I wanted to prove my worth, my power, my ability to ascend to the level of his side.
My gratefulness, even. I wanted, most of all, to prove to myself I wasn’t making a mistake.
That I hadn’t already gone too far and sacrificed too much.
I drained my cup and set it on the table with a gentle clink. “I am your pupil. Teach me.”
Part of me thought he’d rebuff me again. But after a moment he looked at me and the heat and the night simmered all around us. Finally, he stood, holding out his hand. “Come then, we will begin.”
I took his gloved hand, letting him lift me to standing. The tips of my fingers trailed across the fine embroidery and beading of the dress, and I felt the heat of the wine flush through my chest and face as I waited.
“Remove your dress,” he said.
I would rather have him strip me down, hold my wrists, show me some passion. But he did not. He waited. I took a breath and began to unlace the dress.
There were men I’d known who needed control more than they needed air to breathe.
Men like Maxime, who would kill you for laughing.
But the control I saw in Renaud seemed different.
It seemed not that he needed control, but that he was control.
Not a veneer, after all, but the very core of him.
And I might suffocate under the weight of it.
But he was Death. To serve humanity and the gods both that way, suspended always between mortal and immortal, the world before me and the otherworld—utter control was necessary. Without it one would be torn apart. I slid off the dress and stood naked before him.
I wanted to rend him to pieces with my body so that when he was put back together, it was with me.
I stayed quiet, with my chin raised, my hair falling in waves down my back.
My skin so hot, I felt like Schneid, on fire but never burning.
There was so much tension, so much unsaid, my thoughts blurred.
No matter what, he was now humbled to play my patron. I knew this role.
“Lie down.” He nodded toward the bed.
I walked past him and slid onto the bed.
Immediately it was different from before. He began to undress. First removing his boots. Then his gloves. Then his tunic. He shrugged off the linen and tossed it carelessly to the chair where I had just been sitting. Then, finally, pulled off his hose.
I did not know quite how to feel, lying naked and still as I watched.
Underneath his clothes he was not shadow and churning stardust, but a man, formed by the gods maybe, but with the long planes of his body similar to any man, and the staff that had been freed stood as any man’s would.
He had scars and hair and muscles and bone and flesh, and he caught his balance stepping out of his clothes.
He took his staff in his hand and gave it a quick, suggesting stroke like so many I had seen.
I was almost embarrassed for him. To be exposed as so human, caught in the form of something wretched and decaying.
My stomach twisted, from both excitement and strangeness that after all this, he was finally revealed to me.
He climbed up onto the bed over me and met my gaze, his eyes darkened with lust, unable to stop his gaze from straying to my body. “Will you surrender to me?”
My heart beat in my chest, my throat, in my very fingertips like the wings of a frantic bird.
For as men went, he was a beautiful man—or god in flesh, or something in between I had no name for.
But at his question, I thought of the white scarred glyphs on my thighs and truly hesitated.
He hovered over me, patiently waiting, and the weak mortal in me spasmed and wanted, suddenly, to escape.
I couldn’t help but think of the first time he’d asked me to surrender—in his chambers the first day he began training me when he kissed me.
I wanted that again. But I was terrified of it.
Torn between the two, it was all I could do to whisper, “Yes.”
He didn’t say anything. His eyelashes lowered, and he looked over me. With one long finger, light as a feather, he carved me in half from the hollow in my throat to the slit between my legs. I thought I might die from the pleasure of it.
“You are not surrendered, ma petite chou,” he whispered. “You are eager. You have all the corruption of your past in your memories, urging you on. Those were not actions of love, were they?”
“Well. No,” I managed to get out. Was this? Did he love me? The thought made it impossible to breathe.
“And yet you act the same, here, now, as with all those others.”
“I …” I started to speak before I thought, then shut my mouth and looked up at him. “I’m here now. Nowhere else. I am surrendered.”
“I don’t see surrender. I see …” He looked me over again and I couldn’t read his expression. Desire. I felt sure that desire was there—if only evidenced by the erect staff pushing into my thigh. But what else? My mind felt muddled, resisting any thought.
“I see something unbridled. Forceful. You’ve never done it my way. You only know how vile mortal men can be.” He trembled, leaning closer to whisper. “I am viler than they, and yet I will show you what it is to be a queen.”
I nodded, trying not to seem too eager, not to bury my face into his neck. “You are not vile,” I whispered softly. I searched for his gaze and found it—so empty, so sad. The eyes that had for so long given up searching.
“I find it hard to remember with you,” he said, his voice thick with emotion.
“You are not vile,” I repeated with everything I had in me, speaking directly to that emptiness, that sadness. “I want to surrender to you. I want to.”
He nodded tightly. “Then you can’t chase your pleasure. That is a selfish act. Surrender it to me. I’ll tell you when you can have your release.”
I nodded.
He smoothed back my hair, and I leaned my face into his naked hands. They felt so cool against my feverish forehead. He kissed me, mouth hard against mine, and I didn’t know whether I should respond, so I laid there and took his mouth and felt the press of his hands on my breasts.
In that moment, I was frustrated with myself—though of course, looking back, I understood why I felt the way I did.
I could not understand it then. It felt so wretchedly human, and my mind could not escape the humanity of it.
The flesh on flesh. The push of his staff into my thighs.
I parted my legs for him, and as much as I relished the press of him, the way he came undone, I also felt nauseated and panicky and like I just wanted to close my eyes and be far away.
This was all I wanted. I wanted Death’s sweat on my skin.
I wanted his hold on my body. I wanted everything that happened, so why couldn’t I feel it?
He entered me and sank deep into my body with a sigh and I relished it, relished the grip I could hold on to him—and also felt empty.
I had expected the abyss, for him to smell the lightning on my skin finally, for us to enter that place together, that dizzying starscape.
But it was just … human. He told me not to come, told me to feel miserable, to hate him, and I whimpered out agreement, sweating and dizzy and feeling sicker by the moment. I was grateful it seemed pleasing to him.
When it was over, I stood up and retched onto the floor.
He wrung a rag out in a washbasin and began to gently, tenderly clean my skin, my hair, my entire body. I had the sense of a corpse being washed for burial. But the water was cool against my feverish head, and then, I knew no more.