Chapter 24
elaine
The knife clattered on the floor.
I gasped, my eyes flying open again. Vera, breathing hard, sat broken next to me, her head in her hands, a vacant look in her eyes. The cut along my chest stung, but suddenly I couldn’t feel it anymore.
“Vera?” I sat up with her, a hand on her shoulder, and she choked out a sob.
“What the hell did you do?” she said, crying openly into her hands. “What the hell did you do to me, Elaine?”
“I… I don’t know what you…”
“I can’t get to her. I can’t get to that… that part of me… that comes out to kill someone. The part of me that ends lives. I can’t find her.” Her chest heaved as she spoke. “Why can’t I kill you?”
“Vera…” My heart pounded so hard I was dizzy. I put my hand on her back, and she collapsed into me, clutching at the back of my dress and crying into my shoulder, and I stroked her hair back.
“I wish you’d screamed and fought me. I wish you’d kicked and clawed and bit me, and I could have just driven that knife into your chest and made it look like the Whitecliffs did it. It should have been that easy.”
“I don’t want to fight you,” I whispered.
“Do you know who I am?” She pulled away, her eyes wild and desperate as she clasped her hands on my face. “Do you know what I am!?”
“Yes.” I put my hands on her face to match. “You’re Vera Farkas. My wife.”
“Dammit.”
She kissed me. It wasn’t like the kiss at the wedding—this one was passionate and powerful and vulnerable, kissing me desperately, pressing herself into me and kissing, and I held her tightly, kissing her back, my heart slamming against my ribcage.
She crushed her lips into mine, her tears hot and wet on my cheeks, and she only pulled back finally to wipe her face.
“I should have killed you earlier,” she said. “I should have coerced you into naming me the inheritor and then put a bullet between your eyes.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I’m not human, Elaine. I’m a monster. I’m a killer.”
I smiled softly, wiping her cheeks again. “If you were, then you would have killed me.”
She kissed me again, fiercely, before she stood up with a hollow look in her eyes, picking the knife up from the floor.
“Maybe,” she said, and my throat tightened.
“Vera…”
She lowered the knife to my sternum, and I heard my breathing quicken as she wiped the knife along the cut there, one flat side of it, and then the other. She held the knife up to the faint light from outside, and she wiped my blood down along each side of it.
“I have to go,” she said shakily. “Petra will look after you.”
“Vera?” I jumped up with her, but I was so lightheaded—the fear, the acceptance, the emotional whirlwind, and then watching her paint the knife with my blood, all left me faint. I stumbled against the corner of the bed. “Where are you… going…?”
“I have a job to do. I can’t… betray… the family.” But she staggered from the room with no more explanation, and I collapsed against the bed, too weak to stand up, as rain drove down, thunder rolling and drowning me out as I shouted her name.