Chapter 47
elaine
Over the coming days, Vera settled down, slowly allowed herself to relax. Jenna and I were constantly at her side, looking after her as she recovered, and the raw, bleeding wounds of it—not just the bullet wound, but the one Quayle had left in her heart—slowly began to heal.
She smiled again in places, the light coming back into her eyes.
When we were all gathered together for a meal and Petra was reporting the results of a scouting excursion while she was shoveling food off the plate into her mouth, throwing it over herself in the process, and Caitlyn had to shove her and remind her Elaine set out utensils for a reason, Vera laughed again, and my heart softened hearing the sound.
Yulia would make her wry, sarcastic remarks, and Vera would return them just the same way, but it was clear things had changed between them—even with the loaded tension, there was an undercurrent of intense respect.
They even played together at points. There were a few string instruments in the music room, and Yulia played the violin while Vera was on the piano.
And even though the two of them were different in so many ways, in those moments, when Caitlyn and I sat in the music room together listening, it felt like they were two halves of a greater whole.
We made sure to get out of the manor, too, just to keep alert of our surroundings, but also to keep us feeling fresh.
We would squeeze in a little outing together while we went as well.
One time we went shopping, which mainly involved Vera dressing me up in the most beautiful dresses I never could have imagined seeing myself in, but I was spoiled to realize I couldn’t protest because… well, it made Vera happy.
Yulia made fun of her for it—taking time out of mission tasks to go play dress-up with her wife—but all that meant was that Petra was able to make fun of Yulia when she caught her sneakily trying to sample some different perfumes.
Another time we went to the concert hall, where the elevator was out and Petra shocked and horrified the attendants by carrying Caitlyn and her chair up the stairs while chiding them about accessibility.
The show was beautiful, Dvorak’s 9th Symphony, but the finer details of it were lost on me compared to Vera, who heaved heavy breaths in the final movement, deeply moved by the swelling brass.
And when we got back to the manor at the end of each outing, it felt like getting home. With a family.
With a wife who I was terrified that I was falling in love with.
We’d avoided the subject of serious feelings since that day she’d told me about Quayle, but even without words, it was clear she was just as scared of her feelings.
We would spend hours in the night together just talking, small things about ourselves, about our lives, after everyone else had gone to bed, and we would sit in bed together by the moonlight.
And we would kiss, but it didn’t lead to sex.
We didn’t have sex one time since then, and I would catch her sometimes looking at my body in that way that made it clear what she wanted, and I’d been learning to anticipate her needs, so I would try to subtly offer myself for her, but she closed off just as quickly when I did.
It made me feel pitiful, when I wanted her more than she wanted me, even though we’d signed the contract for her. I didn’t like what it said about me.
But on some level, I knew it wasn’t about not wanting me.
It was a cool and brisk Saturday afternoon when the others were out—Vera and Petra having gone for a small-scale excursion to investigate a lead downtown, finally cleared by Jenna to start easing themselves back into action—when Yulia found me thinking about it.
I was sitting in the library with a book open in front of me, not really taking any of it in, and I didn’t even notice Clara batting me for attention until she knocked my half-full teacup off the table.
I lunged for it with a gasp, and I almost bumped into Yulia. She just about appeared out of nowhere, catching the cup and saucer both without a drop spilled, and carefully, she set them back on the table. “It doesn’t do to ignore a kitten,” she said. “They’re very persistent.”
“Th-thank you.” I helped Clara up onto my lap, stroking her behind the head. She wasn’t normally so clingy with me, normally reserving it for Vera.
“I’ve been watching you,” she said carefully.
“What do you mean?”
“You and the Wolf.” She turned to the window, tall glass where the rain started to plink down in between shafts of golden daylight from streaky clouds. “You’re in love with her.”
I looked down, my face hot. I couldn’t say anything.
“You’ve seen the worst of her. She’s threatened to kill you. She’s pulled you into this world. And yet even so, you love her?”
“I’ve seen the worst of her,” I whispered. “And I’ve seen the best of her. The things nobody else sees. She’s a rich, full, and beautiful person, Yulia. She’s just been waiting to be seen.”
She scoffed, turning back to the glass.
“The same is true of you, I know,” I whispered. “You try to stay closed off, distant, guarded… and anyone who would come close to you, you hurt them, so that they stay away. But I know that underneath that exterior, there’s a woman in there who’s… hurting. Terribly.”
She closed her eyes. “You would do well not to pry open dark places and look inside, Elaine.”
“Just because you’re in a dark place doesn’t say anything about you, Yulia. The brightest lights exist in the darkest places. There’s light in your heart, the same as mine, the same as Vera’s. It’s just waiting to come out.”
She smirked, but it was just a ghost, not looking at me. Looking at something else, off in the distance. “You can only exist in this world by being useful,” she whispered. “What use is light in your heart?”
“You can exist for so much more than just to be useful. You exist to love. To be loved. To make people happy. And to be happy.”
She closed her eyes. “It’s remarkable that the most critical person in this entire operation is such a hopeless idealist.”
“On the contrary,” I laughed. “I’m a very hopeful idealist.”
She laughed too, low and quiet, and she stopped, her attention sharpening. I stood up.
“Yulia? What’s wrong?”
“Something’s stirring. Not the others.”
My chest tightened. “Somebody’s here?”
She clenched her fist on the glass. “Blackbirds.”
“What? But… Vera’s not here. What do they want?”
“They want what they always want, Elaine,” she said, shooting me a look. “They want you. At all costs.”
“But—”
The crack of a bullet rang through the air, and the glass buckled, thin lines running out along it. I gasped, and Yulia pushed me backwards.
“Get to the shelter! I’ll grab Caitlyn!”
My heart raced as I scooped Clara up from the floor and took off, the manor swirling with sounds of people.
Vera.
They’d been waiting for her to leave. Waiting for her to leave me here.
Vera.
Suddenly all the nervous energy from the last week was gone—no more questions about who felt what, just total certainty.
Right now, my heart reached out only for one person.
Vera.