Chapter Twenty-Three #3
He did step forward, then. He put a trembling hand out, clearly trying to ask her to be gentle. She had to look away, over the lake, just to keep going. She had to keep going. “God knows I want to. But I can’t. I can’t. Because the idea is burned right into me. It’s there like a brand
on my heart—the reason you kept silent, even when you could have said. I see it more clearly than I can my own self: You just
knew I would forgive you, if you did. You knew I would want to be by your side. That I would love you again. Instead of doing
the final thing you were sure had to be done. Just one more thing to keep me safe, after all the others put in place. That
knife at your throat, that I can still see whenever I close my eyes,” she said, trying her best not to cry as she did.
And doubly so when he reacted.
His hand went up as if to take hold of her face. As if to draw her to him, hold her in his arms. But then he forced it to
close, before he could. He made a fist and crushed it against his mouth.
She almost felt the agonized sound he made into it.
Before he made himself be calm. He took some soothing breaths, paced, put his hands in his hair. The same way he probably
had every time she had turned her back, after he said or did something cruel. She even saw his face settle into something
like that scathing stoicism, once the job was done. “It’s what I deserved. You have to know it is. You saw what I did to you,
all those years ago,” he said, flat and cold. Face turned toward the lake, so he couldn’t be moved.
It was all right, though. She knew how to undo that, too.
“Yes, I did. I saw. But the thing is, seeing isn’t the only way to understand something,” she said, and he scoffed. He shook
his head.
“What else could there be?” he said.
Though she saw the way he went still. How he folded his arms across his chest. He did that so frequently to protect his act, her mind whispered.
Like with the cigarettes, too. And it strengthened her resolve.
“I heard my own voice in my head. I felt my own feelings. And I know one thing now for sure.
If you speak to the murdered dead, they can say something that no one else is ever able to truly know in quite the same way:
precisely what happened, when they died.”
“Yes. I savaged you.”
“So you remember doing it, then.”
“When in that feral state, I am conscious of nothing.”
“You were conscious enough in the library to lay me somewhere soft to sleep,” she said, tone neutral but the meaning so clear
it made him let out a shaky breath. And she could see his gaze turning inward. Considering what that meant, and what she might
be suggesting by it.
Even though he tried his best to discard it.
“You don’t know I did that.”
“I didn’t then—I thought I just managed to escape. But now it’s obvious.”
“Even so, it’s not evidence of anything. I was younger then, I was less in control—when things happened, I just couldn’t steady
myself. You had to run from me all the time. Always the countdown. Always the hunt.”
He made a sound of horror, thinking of his own terrible mistakes.
But all she could do was marvel over the sudden rush of memories.
And every one of them so different in feeling to that time after the ball.
God, the thrill of them by comparison. The joy of them.
How could he imagine she didn’t know about the joy?
“Even though they never actually ended badly, at all,” she said, stunned and full of wonder.
“You never hurt me. It truly was just a game.
I ran through the long grass, through the trees, through the maze. And you would just
catch me. In my nightdress, waiting in the middle, swooning for you on the very stone table you pretended to torment me on.”
“I shouldn’t have let that happen.”
“But it says everything you need to know now, love. You sank those teeth in while between my legs, my whole self offered up
so willingly you could have taken everything I had. And instead you did nothing but give me joy. Give me gentleness. Give
me exactly what you knew I loved.”
“That doesn’t mean I didn’t do this.”
“Maybe not. But the fact that I recall being killed by magic certainly does.”
Now he looked. Half broken and convinced already, quite clearly. But still trying to resist, until she delivered that kicker.
Then after that, all he had left was one faint protest. “Why would you let me argue all of this if you knew it wasn’t true,” he said, as she closed the only ever so slight gap that still existed between them.
“Because I want you to feel it, darling. I want you to know it so deeply there is no way out of it. You did not just somehow
hurt me by accident. You did not hurt me at all. You could never have, never ever, and do you know why? Because you are the kindest, gentlest, most loving soul I have ever
known. And I am so sorry that I left you here, all alone,” she said, then on the last word, she touched his hand. Just a little,
most of her half expecting him to flinch.
But instead, he glanced down at that one small piece of comfort.
He saw it, and felt it, and let himself look back up at her earnest face.
And then he made a sound like someone finding sustenance, after a long starvation, and hauled her into the most desperate
embrace.