Chapter 34 - Scarlett #3
He angled his chin. “The club is the mouse, the spade belongs to the rose, the diamond is the daffodil’s, and the heart is yours.
If you press the symbols, they will have a recording of their voice.
I spliced together some of the things they’ve said so you can hear them, decide how you feel about them through their tones and words, just as you do with everyone else. The heart doesn’t have anything yet.”
I lowered the bunny and took it in, studying each paw before I set it on the table, leaning it back against the box, and finally pressed the club.
“The stars are bright, their words like songs among the broken hearts of the souls living beneath them,” the soft, melodic voice said and paused.
“You are…everything to me. All of it. Every beat of my thrumming heart, every thought, every spark that has coursed through my blood.” Another pause.
“We are meant to burn like them, you know.” Another short pause. “Kill them all.”
I looked over to Azrael.
“It was easier to find clips of her,” he explained.
“It’s how she speaks. Like she was bred from Poe and Dickenson.
” He thought about it a moment. “Poets this world would die for. She doesn’t want to be a part of the violence of my world, but neither did her husband.
In fact, the cub was minutes away from putting down roots before he met her.
She became a publisher of books, he chose to plant those roots anyway, although he does still go on far more assignments than we originally thought. ”
My brows furrowed. Assignments?
He angled his chin. “Homework, but with guns.”
They hunted people? Is that why he was here?
He didn’t ever have a true affiliation with this church, he chose to come here, to destroy it from the inside out.
Everything made a little more sense knowing that.
His anger towards their laws, his rebellion with them, his messing with the cameras and taunting Thomas.
It was all because he was on an assignment.
Which meant I was a part of that assignment too, right? If he was using me for information.
I straightened, remembering how he had mentioned something about purpose. I was helping him take this church down to protect his Wonderland, and in the end, he was still mine. He still couldn’t take his eyes off me. So it didn’t matter the reason he was here, he was still mine.
I turned back to the rabbit and reached for the spade, pressing the button.
“Sometimes it burns so fucking hot that I can’t feel anything else.
” A pause. “I just feel this…this thing growing inside of me, burning, scratching, clawing to get out, and despite your feelings of him, you allowed me to explore that and become this. You all…hate him. I can see it in your eyes, but you have never hated me. You love me, despite what they uncovered when they hurt me, and I will never be able to repay you for that.”
My brows furrowed and I turned back to Azrael for answers to a question I didn’t have the words for.
Her voice was a little higher than Emily’s. Friendly but fierce. I bet she had a beautiful laugh. A sing-songy one. I bet she could sing well too.
Maybe, if I ever found my voice again, we could sing together.
“Love, I’ve heard, can be a powerful emotion if utilized correctly,” he explained.
“I don’t believe it, still to this day, but I’ve seen what the delusion can do to them.
” He lifted his chin. “Those men in that compound widened a crack she had already had, shifting her into something more. Some have said she has a little me living within her, but I have yet to truly see it.”
But I could see it in his eyes. He had seen it, pieces of it. He saw the truth of what they had done to her, and he hated it.
I hated it too.
I turned back to the rabbit and pressed the diamond, feeling the anger hardening my features. I wanted Alascer to pay for what he had done to Olivia. I wanted all of them to pay for what they had done to Azrael’s family.
“That assignment was a difficult one,” Rae said, her voice clearly tired.
There was a pause and then she started laughing.
“Yes, I could keep going. She must have been a professional though, who even knows karate anymore?” Another pause.
“We’re more than just people in masks, Jack, I think it’d do everyone good to remember that.
” Another pause. “Fuck that, I need a new dress and some new shoes, let’s go shopping! ”
I gaped, shock running through me, my eyes finding Azrael’s. She had cursed, and now that I think about it, Olivia had too! Why would they do that? It was a horrible sin.
But Azrael only smiled, this one soft. “In our world, cursing is a part of the job description. Not my usual preference, but a few of them talk like sailors.”
My face must have twisted because he then said, “someone who rides aboard a ship. A pirate, if you’d like, but it’s a common saying. Cursing like a sailor.”
Cursing like a sailor. I turned back to the rabbit. I had only ever heard the men in the church curse, and only when they were putting their cock into my mouth.
I had never heard Azrael curse before though. I wondered what it would sound like coming from his mouth.
I studied the rabbit, so happy that I had a friend to live with me now, but a few seconds later, realization hit. I glanced up towards the camera in the kitchen and back down to the rabbit, worry filling me. They would make me get rid of it.
“You’re allowed to keep it,” Azrael explained easily. “The rules state you aren’t allowed any gifts except for one. A wedding gift from your betrothed.”
My brows furrowed and I immediately took a step away from the table. No. No, I thought this was from him. I thought this was from him. I didn’t want it if it was from Thomas. I didn’t want the perfume or the smelly soaps. I didn’t want anything that would make Thomas want me more. No, no, no.
My breathing started coming in short, shallow breathes, my heart racing. It had a camera in it too, didn’t it? The rabbit was a camera, something else for him to spy on me with. He was trying to trick me, trying to get into the closet with me. No, no, no, no—
The antlers wrapped around my jaw, forcing my chin up, my eyes closing out of habit.
“Look at me,” Azrael ordered.
I squeezed my eyes shut tightly before opening them to find his, seeing a chilling anger there, my hands flexing at my sides, my spine stiff.
“I’m disappointed in you, little sinner,” he hummed. “Assuming that I would allow the man you dream of killing to marry you is blasphemous in my world. Everything has a price, even false sacred laws written in a book bound in leather.”
I slowed, my mind spinning in confusion.
He angled his head, his eyes falling to my lips and flicking right back up to mine. “We are to be married in two weeks, Scarlett. The Sunday after next.”
I froze, my heart froze, my lungs froze. I couldn’t do anything but stare into his eyes for several seconds before it became too much and my eyes dropped to his lips. I was…I was betrothed to Azrael now? I was to be his wife? Not…not Thomas’?
I closed my eyes, my hands wrapping around the cane of their own accord. I’d been betrothed to Thomas my entire life. A lifetime of pleasing him, of lashings and punishments, of praises when I did good. I had come to terms with being shared among the Leaders, I had…
I had never wanted to be married. Ever. It was just expected of me. Marry, have his children, follow his rules for the rest of my life. The idea had always made my stomach twist and turn, made me want to retch, but I had come to terms with the sentence I was given.
I didn’t want to marry anyone, not even Azrael, but, I suppose, if I had to choose, I would always choose to carry out the sentence with Azrael.
I was to be Azrael’s wife.
Azrael’s wife.
“Services will be the same this week, as I cannot stop them,” he went on, something chilling in his voice.
“You will go see the Leaders as you normally would, but during the service, you will sit beside me. That is why I had to tell you. Things will be different on Sunday. The following Sunday, after the service, we are to be married. After that, you will not return to this…hovel. You will come to our house.”
Our house.
“For now, we focus on what will happen on Sunday, and then we’ll carry on with my plan,” Azrael continued.
“You have to understand that this has made them angry. Me walking you into that church will make them angry because now they know that as soon as you sign that certificate, you are mine. They don’t get to touch you after that. ”
“You are mine.” Every other word floated away after that. I was his. I belonged to Azrael. Not the church, not Thomas or the Leaders. I was his.
“Are you listening to me?” he asked, his voice a quiet hum of a threatening storm.
I tapped my finger on the cane.
“Sunday is going to be painful,” he began again. “They will take out their aggression on you, their anger, their loss.”
It wasn’t something I was unfamiliar with.
“They will punish you because they cannot punish me, and I will not be able to stop them,” he said, something shifting in his voice.
That lilt became more unhinged, more chaotic.
“I will not be able to punish them for what they do to you, but what I will do, what I expect you to do, is harness the anger you feel because you will need it again. When we flood this world with blood, it won’t be only me wielding that blade, do you understand me?
Whoever you want to kill, however you want to take their life, you may do that, but it cannot be now. ”
Part of me wondered if he was talking to himself as much as he was talking to me, but another part of me didn’t care.
Before my first session with Azrael, I had accepted that this would be my life.
Being shared, being penetrated by everyone at the church, being stuffed with Thomas’ children only to have to give them up to him. But now?
Now I had a rabbit with my friend’s voices. Now I had the power to look Azrael in the eyes. Now I craved blood.
All I wanted was for Sunday to be over, because once it was over, my new life could start.
I swallowed and slowly opened my eyes, finding his instantly.
His pupils were slightly larger again, his gaze holding the wait of a rage I could fully comprehend.
The rage of a life lost. A life stolen. A life we never got to live.
Rage at everyone and everything who had taken it from us.
I could feel it burning deep within my soul.
A fire I had never felt before, forced myself not to feel.
A black fire burning so hot, it turned my insides to stone and filled me with the magic of our Hysteric Wonderland.
A slow smile crawled across his beautiful face. “Let’s get started.”