Chapter 46 Ares
ARES
Istand at the edge of her bed, barely breathing in the darkness.
My angel lies curled on her side, her face turned toward the window, and her profile bathed in a whisper of silver moonlight.
Strands of her hair, not quite red but not quite blonde either, thread across her cheeks as she breathes softly.
Her mouth is parted as if she's on the edge of whispering, but she looks at peace.
She should be.
The girl is untouched by the shadows I carry like a second skin.
I don't know how long I've been standing here or how long I'll stay. Maybe tonight, I will find refuge at the foot of my angel's bed until the stars curve around the celestial sphere and disappear from view. Or maybe, I'll leave quickly and scurry back to my hole, condemned to remain in the dark.
I watch her and wonder all the questions that plague my nightmares. Could it have been different? Would she have found herself in my arms instead of Xade's if I weren't the thing that I am?
What if I hadn't been condemned to the dark? If I hadn't become the thing nuns are too afraid to speak of? Would she have looked at me now the same way she looks at Jonathan's brother? Would she have loved me instead?
Her body stirs beneath the blankets, a soft sound escaping her lips.
She murmurs something in her dreams, but the words are quiet.
I can't make them out. One foot kicks free of her blanket, exposing the length of her leg and the flank of her ribcage.
Her skin is bare and delicate, save for a thin slip tangled around her middle and lace panties Reverend Mother certainly wouldn't approve of.
I can't help myself. My hand moves before I think better of it. My index and middle fingers find the silky flesh just above her ankle, and everything stops.
My breath. My heartbeat. Reality.
I always look and never touch. Not once. Not ever.
Gasoline incinerates my veins and sets me aflame from the inside out.
Her flesh is warm velvet beneath my fingertips.
I'm careful not to disturb her, my touch slow and reverent.
I step forward, following the side of her bed as my fingers travel up the smooth line of her calf toward her knee.
I trace a single line of contact, never straying from my path.
I'm barely touching my angel, but it's enough to keep the ground tethered beneath me.
I can't unravel, not when I'm tied to the earth by her.
Even now, I feel the memories lurking, waiting to take me. They always come when I least want them to, but her warmth drags me back to the present and keeps me in the here and now.
She whimpers in her sleep, a slight, feminine sound, and my fingertips go still at the crook of her bent knee. Her face softens as her dreams claim her once more, but I linger, not moving, not even breathing. I refuse to fracture this moment.
Instead, I breathe her in. The room smells like her, sweet and floral. Underneath it, there's the warm scent of clean skin and freshly laundered clothes, so unlike the crypt I've called home for far too long. I crave more.
My fingers inch forward, stopping on a splattering of freckles on her outer thigh and climbing upward.
My heart clunks against my ribs like a dying engine as my breath quickens.
I burn from the inside out, and at the back of my brain, a voice warns me to stop.
I can't. I never realized how badly I missed the warmth of another until I basked beneath hers.
Still, those nagging questions remain, asking all the things I can never have answers to.
What would I be now if I hadn't been erased from existence years ago? If I still had a life above ground? If someone had looked at me with anything other than fear or guilt?
At three years old, I became a ward of the state, sent to live at the devil's playground, the Saint Jerome Emiliani Home for Orphaned and Abandoned Children. Nine years later, I died in the fire that burned the east wing to the ground. Or that's what the death toll shows, at least.
Not that I had a choice. It was either live and suffer or die and finally be free.
That sickly floating feeling expands inside my chest and climbs until I almost …
Don't think about it, Ares. Find the ground. Don't. Float.
Feel. See. Smell. Hear. Taste.
I focus on my fingers, at the point where I touch my angel, and the goosebumps that sprinkle her flesh. The balloon inside me pops, and I plummet down to earth.
I zero in on the point of contact and let my fingers inch higher.
The girl and I are both strange in our own ways. She hides behind diffidence, scuttling like a mouse in the shadows at the back of the room. My strangeness is like iron welded to the bone.
For fourteen years, I have been confined to this damned island. In the beginning, the solitude was easy. Anything was better than the home, after all, but a restlessness has been growing inside of me, and the arrival of my angel obliterated the last of my patience.
I'm twenty-six years old, or that's what Georgina thinks, at least. My birthdate was lost to history years ago.
I want more than this shadowed existence, though I know my situation is precarious.
I am living, breathing proof of our sins against the Church and those who use God's word for their own benefit.
I was chattel, not a child, and day by day, I find myself not caring what happens to the others. I want to be normal. I want it to be over.
I've never had a friend. Not really. Ezra and Georgina don't count. Xade and I barely tolerate each other most days. I don't know what companionship is supposed to feel like, but I think, maybe, it feels like this, of warmth, peace, and the ground beneath my feet.
My angel whimpers, her breath caught by a dream.
The embedded instinct rises, sharp and expected, to speak a prayer and cast away the things that haunt her.
Aramaic, Arabic, and Hebrew words all come to my tongue like second nature.
I hate that I know them. I hate that she made me learn them, the one who shaped my ruin with unholy hands.
Still, the words hover on my tongue. I swallow them down.
Tonight, I won't pray for my angel. Her sleep shouldn't be tainted by that.
I won't let memories of the home and Abbess take this moment from me.
I just want to be here, breathing in the warm air of a room that isn't haunted and feel something human for a little while.
Even if it means standing in silence, and all I'm allowed is the quiet rhythm of her breath in her dreams.
I wish I could remain here forever. Her room is warm in a way that settles into my bones.
It isn't the stale, heavy warmth of the crypt in the summer months on the island.
This warmth is gentle, like it belongs to the living and not the dead.
Her blanket is kicked free of her, half-draped off the side of the bed, but she looks so sweet and pure as I step forward and let my fingers continue higher, up her thigh.
She shifts again and throws a hand across my own. Her fingers wrap around mine and pull closer in her sleep. She presses my palm into her thigh.
I freeze.
It's too much.
My flesh stings where she touches me, and I clamp my free hand into a fist, stilling a tremor in my fingers. I stop breathing before, finally, she sighs. Her face relaxes in sleep once more, and I tear myself away.
Eight steps toward the window, and I'm gone, out of her room and into the night. The air bites, but I'm not cold.
I am on fire, still burning for my angel.