Chapter 5
Five
Death thrives within the midnight hours, taking souls longed for release in the dead of night on wings swift as a raven.
It was on this night, the evening before my wedding, that Death tried to pry my soul from my frail body.
My chest heaved, blood gargling from the depths of my lungs onto the soft cotton.
Under the dim candlelight, a crime scene splattered across the sheets—a precursor to my own death.
I groped my nightstand, trying to find the medication to suppress the advancing cough riddling my lungs. Every shuddering breath racked my body as each cough left me more breathless and weaker. Blood—so much blood—spilled upon fresh white sheets.
Breathe in. Cough.
Blood surged out of my chest and past my lips, dripping onto the sheets. My chest aflame, each breath harder to take than the last. It’d be easier to swallow needles. Sour metallic coated my tongue, spilling out of my being, where I was to leave my last dying breath.
Breathe out. Cough—
The pain reprieved for a moment.
My bedroom door flew open, and through watery eyes, I glimpsed the shuffle of frantic people fluttering in trying to get the coughing to quiet.
“Quick, someone get Dr. Blachard,” Mama called out.
I curled the sheets around in my fist, and with forehead to the warm fabric, I begged the gods to take me right then and there. To take me from this pain—anything but this pain. As they strapped my body to the bed, I hardly felt anything other than a cool, damp cloth on my head.
“It’s going to be alright, Valeria,” Mama cried. “This will pass, my dear. Shhh.”
Hands cooler than water on a summer’s day tickled my burning body.
I don’t recall how long this went on for, Mama cooing in my ear and hands scraping my body as the prickling of needles in my lungs lessen. Was it minutes, hours, or an eternity? Slowly, the pain became bearable, and the scene came into sharp focus.
Dr. Blanchard was holding a syringe covered in blood, his balding head looming over.
“We’ve done as best as we can to relieve the pressure from her lungs, but as you can see, the only fluid we are drawing out is blood.
This episode may be the first of many to come, I fear.
There may come a time where she will not live past a night of coughing such as this.
” He dumped the syringe off to one of the maids who scurried out the door, out of sight.
Dr. Blanchard’s cold hands pressed down on my chest, and the unsettling pressure nearly forced another bout of coughing. “She appears to be stable, but we should let her rest.”
“There is no time to rest,” Mama snapped, leading the doctor away from the bedside and out of the room.
I dropped my head to the corner of the mattress, gaze drawn to the cracked-open door from where her shrill voice came.
“She is to be married this evening. There is no way we can cancel an event such as this—gods, what would society have to think if this was the case? No, what she needs is drugs and plenty of it—good ones. Not the herb and nettles you are forcing upon my daughter. I employed to cure her not to guess at what is ailing her.”
“Ma’am, I’ve done all I can with what I know and what I have been taught. Long ago, I suspected that this was the work of consumption, but it has progressed far beyond that—even my best techniques are no match for it.”
My exhausted limbs and aching body drifted as I fell into the eerie depth of the darkness. I floated beyond this realm and the next—existing and then not.
Light refracted off the dark curtains of the bedroom, creating shapes and shadows. One took on the shape of a man, tall and cloaked, wisps licking at his heel. Burning gold peered out from inky black, watching to ensure I didn’t drift completely into Hades’s arms.
For a curious second, I thought of the strange man’s words.
There is more to life than this.
When I closed my eyes, iridescent gold smiled back at me, a warming calm to my fraying mind. I sent up a quick prayer to any old ones still listening for one last request, wanting to see the beautiful stranger one last time before the dark came for me.
My tired body relented to the inky void, which surrounded me hungrily. It had all but consumed me when I heard the doctor’s last words to Mama.
“It’d be mercy to let her die. Instead, you let her suffer.”
I’ve dreamed the same dream for many nights since I became sick.
I’d first hear the boy with dark raven hair crying in my dream—muttering prayers fervently to the moon.
The scene would shift to him, covered in blood and standing in a field of tulips.
The petals were sometimes white, other times red.
Always, they’d transform into scarlet spider lilies as the scene became washed in blood.
Words floated up from the wind muffled against my ears as his sorrow-filled, desperate pleas whisper to me night after night.
Someone help me.
I awoke in a pool of sweat, the vision of the boy fading and the blooming dawn taking his place.
Groaning, I threw a pillow over my head to block out the sunlight cresting into windows.
Mama, upon hearing I was alive and moving, came in with a steaming cup of herbal tea, the same concoction I’d been drinking for over a year.
Not a hint of despair rested on her lined face.
“Drink,” she commanded.
Muscles crying out, I forced myself to stretch and sit upright to take the cup. I cradled it, letting the warmth seep into my chilled palms, resisting the urge to look at the bloodstained sheets.
In the commotion of the night, I would not have been surprised if the maids had missed it or if it was intentionally left by Mama as a reminder.
I sipped from my cup. Its familiar taste coated my throat before I quickly finished it, the bitterness lingering.
I kicked the sheets off, draping my legs over the bed and bartering with my own body to cooperate—to yield to me. Using a nightstand as a support, I took tentative steps toward the bustling maids fluttering about.
Mama directed them from the doorway, stepping aside, as a couple of the women brought in a package adorned with a red bow.
“Mama,” I croaked, “what is this all about?”
“It’s your wedding day!” she beamed. “William sent over a gift and the dress we’d commissioned finally came in.”
I weakly nodded, attempting to voice my confusion.
“Hush now, everything will be splendid again, and Miriam will be able to go on to marry as well. Pretty thing that she is, I haven’t been able to keep suitors away from her,” she mused.
She ushered the two maids around the room, swiftly drawing up a bath, smoothing out the wedding dress, and placing it on the hanger.
William gifted me with stacks of books on how to please one’s husband and fine jewels I imagined as shackles rather than beautiful sapphires.
My heart sank further as they dressed me in silence, adorning the gown with sapphires and putting on finer details until the placid dark circles were all but gone.
Blush dotted my sunken cheeks until I resembled more of a clown than a blushing bride.
In the pink dress, sad emeralds gazed back, miserable and dollish.
With the touch of rouge placed upon my lips, I was ready to walk to my death.
Saint Luke Cathedral stood as the heart of the city, guarding it from its enemies and being a sanctuary for the lost and weary.
Large bays of stained glass greeted the fading afternoon light, washing the steps leading up to large oak doors in blues and reds.
Gothic spires stood high and proud against the setting sun as the procession brought me closer to the beast.
Once, when I was a girl, I’d come to listen to the sermons of Priest Dedalus and hide among the pews. I remembered the smell of musty, dusty summer mornings as I hid up in the storage spaces reading stories, listening to the singing of the choir and bells, pretending I was someone else.
What I would give to be someone else.
“Smile, dear,” Mama said.
My lungs burned, and underneath the soft, thin smile, exhaustion wavered with each step I took in the public’s eye. Through the door, wedding bells rang ominously as the aisle loomed closer.
The large main chapel space was illuminated by stained glass windows in the same hues as outside, with the largest bay window capturing the last bit of dying light. Time did not exist in this space as guests rose from their seats in the same pews I once sat and sang in as a girl.
Mama took hold of my arm with a death grip and strapped me to her side. “They are all waiting for you, my dear. Just this little bit and you can go peacefully.”
“I’m better off dead. This is just cruelty, Mama, and you know it. They’ll know eventually you sold me to my death,” I said, shaking her arm off me while standing in front of the large doors. I took a shuddering breath as all eyes shifted toward me.
I gripped the flowers, crushing the stems with gloved hands.
William stood at the altar with a smug grin in a rumpled suit. Everything in me demanded I run, but with Mama firmly planted against my side, I began my descent down the aisle to his deepening grin forming into an otherworldly smile, which sent chills through my ill body.
Panic set in.
I focused on taking one step at a time to try and get it over with. Running meant I’d be caught and brought back to where my family is confirmed to be destitute with far-reaching implications. Hiding meant I’d condemn us all to the streets, but I’d be free from William and Mama.
Sweat dripped down my neck and into the bodice of my dress. I was not even halfway down the aisle as the crescendo heightened into the march and the stares of the people began to crack.
I stopped short, my legs refusing to go any farther.
“What’s wrong, child?” the priest asked, his wise gaze casting down into my soul, reading it as if I was the scripture in which he knew of.
William grunted, his toe tapping the soft, velvet carpet.
Mama and Miriam covered the exits for me, seated on opposite sides of the aisle.
I shuddered a breath, shuffling my feet along the path and making it up the steps onto the altar.
The priest motioned for the crowd to sit, their faceless stares beaming at the happy couple in front of them.
William grabbed my wrist, nearly sending me into him.
“We are gathered here today to witness the union of Valeria Thorne McCallister and William Duke Sharpe on this happy day. In holy matrimony, do they share their pledge of devotion with one another under the gaze of the mighty gods above us who watches and protects us from all harm.”
Blood drummed in my ear, the ringing becoming louder the longer the priest talked, eclipsing and absolute. As the world spun, the church and the faces blurred.
I glanced toward the pews, finding my own shadow watching, awestruck by the events transpiring before me.
The expressionless shadow’s gaze spoke all that there was to convey, eyes glazed over, sunken deep into her skull.
Her body was badly emaciated to the point her clothes were nothing more than a bag on a frail frame.
From the crowd, she mouthed, Vita et mors.
Life and death.
With my chest constricted against my corset, my own ragged gasps climbed to my ear. I nearly did not catch the words. The anxious gaze of the priest, William’s, and the rest of the congregation’s pinned me into place.
“I’m sorry, what?” I whispered, shame burning my cheek.
“Do you take William Duke Sharpe to be your lawfully wedded husband, to have to hold until death do you part?” He motioned to a disinterested William.
The words caught in my throat as I tried—no, could not bring myself to say those two little words.
William turned toward the crowd, his words echoing off the walls of the church in a ghastly manner. “She is overcome with such emotion and love for me she cannot speak.” He gave the crowd a convincing chuckle, leaning into the small space between us, and whispered, “Say the damn words.”
I gritted through my teeth, forcing the words to come. “I-I . . .”
The doors to the church slammed open, and a loud crack of wood against stone boomed into the quiet space. All eyes trailed to the man who stepped forth out of darkness into the dying light of the church’s warm embrace.
The figure, cloaked in shadows, approached the altar with ease and arrogance. “I don’t have a head for dates, but it appears that I arrived just in time.”
His sweet, silvery words turned whispers into silence.
“Who the hell are you?” William said, digging his nails into my wrist, shoving me behind him.
The mysterious man—my stranger—laughed darkly, grinning. “I am the man who has come to take Valeria McCallister as my wife, sir.”