Chapter 24 Pleasure and Punishment
Pleasure and Punishment
Lucian
I
awaken with a head on my shoulder and my hand wrapped in soft hair.
As my eyes slowly blink open, I see Desdemona sleeping beside me.
I freeze, terrified she’ll vanish if I move, that she’ll slip right out of my arms forever.
I want to hold her closer. Instead, I lift my fingers, brushing the hair from her face.
My hands betray me, tracing her cheek, the line of her jaw, the curve of her mouth.
Perhaps it is the ghost of who we were, curling its fingers around my ribs, reaching toward my heart, and threatening to tug it out, placing it in her chest. Perhaps there is something about our past that goads me to look at this girl and believe one thing with certainty: hers is the kind of beauty that leads a man to his downfall.
This is the kind of beauty fathers warn about. This is the kind of girl—creature—you stay away from at all costs.
She is a siren’s song.
Truthfully, this is a beauty unlike any other. By its very nature, it is a compulsion.
It’s a deadly and delicate form of divinity.
I only realize what I’m doing when I reach the end.
Thirty-three.
She has thirty-three freckles, scattered like the falling snow.
Last night returns to me in fragments. She came to heal me. She was the one who harmed me, yet I wouldn’t have blamed her if she had left me to bleed.
Desdemona groans, turning toward me. Her hair falls across her forehead, veiling her eyes, and I brush it aside.
I fear I might be smiling. I fear I might not mind.
She’s more than beautiful. She’s a word I’ve never known—and one I’d never want.
Nothing I could say, nothing I could think, would ever be enough. No language could hold her.
“What are you looking at?” she grumbles.
“The wall behind you,” I say. “It’s a lovely shade of beige.”
Desdemona smiles, and the gesture is groggy. I doubt she realizes who she’s smiling at. I ache to trace the curve of it—pure insanity. I shake my head, looking away before she pulls me in further.
Then she presses her body to me.
Every inch of me buzzes, my skin humming where hers meets mine. I wish she would touch more of me.
It isn’t right. Yet I can’t stop.
I can’t stop wanting her.
“Althenia,” I whisper, my breath shaking because I don’t want to say what I am. “I think we should get up.”
This time when her eyes open, they’re alert. She does not smile. “Althenia?”
I get the strangest feeling that I once called her something else. I close my eyes, not meaning to, as an image flashes in my mind. A faceless girl is in front of me—a faceless girl with orange hair, shorter than Desdemona’s is now, perhaps because of the time that has passed.
Cold steel presses into my neck. The other name is on the tip of my tongue—what I used to call her. Who she used to be.
When my eyes open, Desdemona is still looking at me, her eyebrows scrunched.
“That’s your name, is it not?” I ask, though I know better. There’s another name, and I want to find it for her, showing that something in my mind is begging me to recall her.
But Desdemona glances around the room, shaking her head as she stands.
“Wait,” I whisper.
She leaves my room before I take another breath.
?
The air feels wrong, thick with the stench of death, perhaps even my own guilt and dread.
Yet it doesn’t matter how wrong this feels.
Edward—or rather, his lifeless body—is thrown on the couch like a blanket.
He healed me after my brawl with Bodie. It’s a shame he’s dead.
It will be an even bigger shame if Wendy can’t bring him back to life and he’s left stuck in limbo.
That’s not why I’m here today, although we do have to figure out how to bring his mind and soul back, not just the body. That’s where Desdemona is supposed to come in, though I’m unsure where we stand now—not after waking with my hands tangled in her hair like a prayer.
I know where I want us to stand. Gods, I do. But it’s not up to me. If it were, I’d be as deep inside her as she is me. Instead, I have to hate her. It’s the only way I know how to survive her.
Wendy sits with Edward, as she likely has for hours. I watch her work, desperately trying to summon him back to life. I stay silent, refusing to break her focus.
Edward sits up, his spine unnaturally straight as Wendy breathes unevenly. She moves her head to the side, and Edward mimics the movement until Wendy falls. A moment later, Edward drops as well, like a ricochet.
“I can’t,” she says, lying on the floor.
“It’ll take time.” My words feel hollow, more stagnant than the dead air. “You have the animals.”
Her lips part, then close again. When she finally speaks, her voice trembles. “They’re like Edward. I can make them move, but I can’t make them live.”
“You will,” I say—I promise.
“No.” Wendy’s voice cracks. “Desdemona will. Desdemona did.” Her eyes widen, hands clenching and unclenching at her sides as she continues, “I see you together. If she helps us, it will be because of you.”
Needing Desdemona is nearly as bad as wanting her. I run a hand over my open mouth, trying to hide my sigh.
“Yes, well, with or without her, there is a vital piece missing.” I try to sound reassuring as I sit next to Wendy, though being so close to the rotting boy is difficult. My nostrils sting. “How far have you progressed with your translations?”
Wendy reaches for the book, its leather seams ripped. “You should give it to someone else. Someone with a higher education would do better.”
She hands it to me. I don’t like the idea of giving it to another. Perhaps I could offer it to Desdemona, who could then ask Fleur. She’ll surely be more receptive to her roommate than me. There’s only one problem.
“They’ll know what we seek,” I say.
Wendy lowers her voice. “A spilled secret is worth his life.”
As the words slip past her lips, an image slices through my mind: twin thrones ahead, each shattered down the middle, cracks spiderwebbing outward.
It’s the throne room of Ilyria. As my body turns in the vision, I spot a hand, thin trails of blood dripping from each finger as they splay wide, reaching for me.
From across the room, I step forward, unable to stop myself, desperate to touch the hand. But the fractures don’t stop at the thrones; they spread, splintering up the pillars, racing across the ceiling, tearing through the structure of the kingdom as everything crashes around me.
The vision dissipates, leaving my breath shaking as I glance at Wendy. Her eyebrows wrinkle.
“Are you…” Wendy trails off.
I shake my head. This is something I’ll have to come back to when I’m not in front of Wendy.
I push words past my closed throat, my voice strained as I change the subject. “We should bury the body,” I say, nodding toward Edward’s corpse.
“Not yet.” Wendy shakes her head, turning toward him. “Get the Soul Ruby first. We need to make sure we won’t harm Azaire.”
“I’ll work on the book.” I tip my head down, heading toward the door.
I walk quickly through the halls and knock on the suite Desdemona shares with my sister. I brace for Lilac to answer, relieved when it’s Fleur who swings open the door.
“What?” she asks.
“Your roommate.”
Without meeting my eyes, Fleur opens the door wider. I step inside, already certain I shouldn’t. When I reach Desdemona’s room, she jerks upright—too fast. I start to speak, “How are you—”
“What do you need?” she asks at the same time. Her eyes flick to the common room, where Fleur lingers. “Close the door,” Desdemona whispers.
“Sure.” I shut it behind me. Silence stretches between us like a stalemate, and I’m the first to break it. “You slept in my bed last night.”
She nods. “I did.”
“Why?”
A shrug. “I was tired.”
But she holds my gaze, daring me to look away.
“Then you wouldn’t mind if I came to your room the next time I was… tired?” I smile slightly.
“I don’t think you’d be able to handle my eyes for a whole night.” Her eyebrows rise, like a wolf about to bite.
“I can handle many things for a night. Even two.”
“You hate me.” She narrows her eyes. “Maybe you should tame your flirtations.”
“I should tame many things,” I say. “Among them being what I truly feel for you.”
Desdemona leans back. “Go on.”
“I don’t find myself hating you often.” I gulp in her presence, staring into red eyes I should hate—red eyes I’ve spent my life hating. “It might be the worst thing I’ve ever done to myself.”
I’m unsure if I mean to push her away or pull her closer.
“Wow,” Desdemona says with a short chuckle. “I was wrong. There is no need to tame your flirtations.”
“At least I’m honest.”
“Should I be, too?” she asks.
“If you wish.”
Desdemona leans in until her chest almost touches mine. Her lips hover near my ear, not quite touching, yet making me wish they would.
“I like that I’m horrific to you.” Her breath touches my skin.
I stay close, waiting, wanting more. She moves away.
“But you can tell me the rest of my lovely attributes another day.” Her head tilts toward the door, offering me an out—or perhaps a punishment.
Nodding, I reach into my coat and pull out the book, opening to the page with the image of the Soul Ruby.
“You should be able to find what you need about the Soul Ruby if you can translate this.” Desdemona cradles the book, tracing the lines. “Fleur is a fine linguist.”