Chapter 46 #2
But Elodie was not finished. “I know he was cruel. I was there for his rituals. I danced with the others while people were bled dry above us. Sometimes he hung me there with them, just to see how long I could survive. How long I could remain strong.” Her entire body was trembling now.
“He hung me from chains beneath the ceiling, cut open my veins like a lamb at slaughter, and then fed me blood. I can still see myself kneeling naked on the blood-soaked floor, vomiting up all the blood I needed to survive. He beat me for it. In front of his damned circle of friends.” Tears ran down her cheeks, her eyes glassy with memory. “He ate my niece!”
Will reached her before her knees gave way and caught her in his arms. Sobbing so hard that her entire body shook, she struggled around the words that kept spilling from her lips. “My sister’s child. He ate it. Like an animal. Oh, gods!”
Again, the images came: a younger Elodie, gangly, small, and so fragile, her milky skin covered in blood.
No, he did not want—could not—see that. He forced the image away, nausea rising in his throat, and found his own shocked expression reflected in Eric’s.
A moment later, Eric reached for the wine decanter, and sniffed its spout.
“That bastard,” he hissed. “The wine is drugged. He must have laced it with a truth serum.”
Slowly, Elodie emerged from her shock and wiped the tears from her cheeks. Will offered her a handkerchief, unable to do anything more.
“He thought he would be here with us… He wanted to interrogate us. He still does not trust me.” She shook her head and swallowed the last of her tears with one final sniff.
Slowly, they sank back onto their places, far enough apart that none of them touched, as though that alone might coax another secret from them. The dogs settled back down as well. One curled up beside Eric, whose hand disappeared into its black fur.
“How long does it last?” Will asked at last, but both of them only shrugged. “Perhaps it would be better if we remained quiet for a while.”
Eric nodded, but Elodie shook her head. “No. We need this. I know my secrets, and I am not ashamed of them. But I would be very interested to know what other foolish thoughts Mr. Arcos carries around inside that pretty head of his.”
Eric folded his arms. “If you would listen to me, you would understand why becoming the Red Hand is suicide.”
“And you are willing to sacrifice yourself for Elodie?” Will joined in now, tired of watching the two of them talk past each other, tired of seeing every word and every act born from love turn into another wound.
They had forgotten how to speak to each other any other way, exchanging nothing but barbed lashes and striking the most sensitive parts because they knew one another too well.
“Yes. I wanted to warn you, but I could not say it—not until the truth serum became stronger than the curse. Elodie, the Red Hand is the king’s puppet.”
Elodie swallowed, but her brows drew together. “My father and my uncle tried, in their perverse way, to prepare me for that—perhaps because they hoped I might become the first Red Hand with a will of her own.”
“Then why does he not appoint you as his successor?” Will asked.
“Because I disappointed him.” Elodie slipped off her slippers, drew her legs onto the sofa, and wrapped her arms around them.
One of the dogs came to her and rested its muzzle upon the cushions.
With a tired smile, she scratched behind its ears.
“He wanted something from me that I refused to give him. He wanted me to—”
“You do not have to say it,” Will interrupted, and she smiled at him gratefully. Her fingers trembled faintly as she tucked a strand behind her ear.
“Until I agree to do it, he will never make me the Red Hand. By now, I think I could fall to my knees before him and scream yes, and he would still give Wilkinson the office simply to punish me for making him wait.”
Eric clicked his tongue. “As though he had any real chance.”
“You have seen how he treats the Red Hand and what he gets away with. My uncle would never have agreed to let him marry me if Wilkinson did not have an ace up his sleeve. He is far too jealous. Wilkinson must have some way to reach the king—he is our only other true rival.”
Eric reached for the cookies and hummed with satisfaction. “These taste like home.”
“Why do you never talk about your parents?” Elodie asked Will, then clapped a hand over her mouth. “I am so sorry!”
But it was too late. The answer was already forming on Will’s tongue, and after what she had revealed, he would have told them anyway.
“My parents are good people. My mother loves me, but my father despises that I love men, that I can use magic, and that my hair is silver. That I am different. He cannot deal with it. He doesn’t know how to talk to me.
It broke something in our family.” Slowly, he let out his breath, feeling the freedom the words brought.
He understood why Elodie did not want to remain silent.
“I avoid going home, and at the same time, I miss them terribly.”
“I miss my sisters,” Elodie admitted with a smile. “But I know they are in a better place now.” Her fingers brushed over the little braids in Will’s hair. “We always braided each other’s hair.”
“You are the youngest?”
“Yes. And then Eric came into our lives and turned everything upside down.” They both smiled.
“I still do not quite understand that story,” Will pushed, at the risk of touching another wound.
“My parents came from a village in the mountains, beyond the border. Two winters that lasted too long and two summers that were too wet brought us close to starvation, until we had no choice but to try to reach Bloodgrove.” The words came easily from Eric’s lips; this was not a secret the wine had coaxed from him.
Only then did he hesitate. “My magic got us across the border, and Duke Ormonde generously took us in because he saw potential in me.”
“How old were you?” Will understood enough about this city to know that crossing the border on foot was no easy thing.
“Nine.”
Will stopped the how from spilling past his lips. A nine-year-old had paid the blood toll for himself and his parents? No wonder a madman like the old Duke Ormonde had taken him in.
“Are there no pleasant secrets in this place?” Will laughed, a little desperately.
Eric bit his lip. “I love men too—and women. It was a confusing process, until I understood that, but Will, you were right. Sometimes I met Saint and his friends and watched…” He stopped, and an endearing blush crept all the way to his ears.
“But I never joined them, because I know I will sacrifice my life to become the Red Hand.”
“Oh, you foolish man,” Elodie sighed.
Eric leaned toward her, his face soft as he looked up at her.
“Only you or this office. That thought gives me strength for all the atrocities I have to commit for the Crown. You are my selfish wish. And if I held the office, I could save not only you but my family as well, and the only price would be me.”
Will retreated into his corner of the sofa and opened the fairytale book.
He could not see the words. The letters danced like tiny fairies across the page, and even the illustration regarded him with a knowing look.
It wasn’t even jealousy raging inside him anymore, but painful resignation—he had achieved what he wanted for the two of them and had forgotten that he had dreams of his own.
That his heart would suffer when he gave them up.
“What is it about your hair?” Elodie asked.
It fell silver-white over his shoulders to his hips, the small braids crowning him like garlands, just as he had seen in old paintings.
The more his father had wanted him to cut it, the more Will had loved and cared for it.
He enjoyed the way it flowed like silk through his fingers and the way people turned to look at him in the street.