by Lara Hayes
What a strange time for her to find me again, with my own child barely clinging to life. I was a fledgling myself, the last time I saw her. The Lady’s beauty rushes back to me with such force I can almost sense her eyes upon me, watching the whole sordid affair come to a close as fate will have it. I shake myself free from her memory, finding it in poor taste to dwell on her magnificence, given the circumstances.
“Her Ladyship’s eldest daughter is called Antonia,” I supply. “She lives.” I have made Antonia’s acquaintance more than once. But how did Antonia survive? I cannot ask aloud. Darius’s growing timidity suggests that the Lady herself was responsible. Certain that Fane can hear us, I leave the matter. To draw a comparison between him and her Ladyship would be my end.
“He calls to her. She need only reach for the sound of his voice.” Darius pauses, closing his eyes. “You can sense him in the air.” His blackened fingers drift across the page in front of him, blending the edges of his sketch, casting Elizabeth’s face in shadow.
My throat constricts on nothing and I close my eyes if only to erase the image of Darius’s fingers darkening her lovely features. The low hum of Fane’s penetrating presence grows resonant and rich, but distant, like a voice from the bottom of a gorge. The words lack shape, but their urgency is obvious. I follow Fane’s silent call, drawn down, deeper into the darkness at the edge of world than I have ever dared to venture. He repeats a single word into the emptiness.
Rise.
My skin crawls with an electric charge, a pulsating power that rattles my marrow. My fingers twitch at my sides. This energy—though foreign—settles inside me with an inexplicable ease and familiarity. It pours from me like sweat. There is light in the darkness, faint at first, but undeniable. Fane’s voice disappears, but the word remains, oozing out of me and into the abyss. The light grows stronger, more defined.
Rise.
The light curls around my ankles, ebbing, flowing, climbing my calves in warm waves. The blissful embrace, something between drifting and being carried away. There are hands reaching for me, arms stretching from the blackness of the pit. They brush the edges of my body with such tender reverence that I find myself reaching back.
An unwelcome foreboding steals my tranquility, shattering the bliss. Something precious and misplaced. A delicate wrist caught in my hand, and then a forearm. And I am no longer grasping or pulling, but being held in a fierce embrace. Hands I know, that tangle in my hair. Lips I remember, brushing my cheeks.
Elizabeth, my love. Rise.
The brilliance surrounding us culminates in a nearly unbearable crescendo. A dazzling chorus of a thousand matches struck in unison, the light invading every inch of me.
When my eyes open, hers are the first I see. Not the eyes she had in life, casually inviting and autumn brown. Eyes as black and obliterating as mine, burrowing to the core of me without hesitation, beckoning me closer as the room erupts with applause and Fane stands up to receive his congratulations.
Elizabeth is everywhere, a current in my blood, a maelstrom of need. Her desperation as naked as the rest of her, and twice as intoxicating. I take a step and her answering smile is blindingly right.
Bård hoists me back, clamping his hand over my eyes. My mind reels from the loss of her, though Elizabeth still courses through my veins. My brother’s gentle teasing, his ridiculous laugh in my ear. I want her eyes on me. I would happily drown in her if he would only release me, but Bård has always been stronger. He tightens his arm around my chest, pinning me in place. “Stela, I could mistake you for a newborn yourself,” he taunts, the strain evident in his voice. He forces me to face him, a crooked, knowing smile on his lips, smacking me firmly on the back.
Reluctantly, I huff at my own blunder, refusing to join his joyous laughter. Bård nods his head, releasing his hold once he is convinced I have control of myself. Elizabeth’s voice is fragmented, clambering around my mind, unintelligible and breathless. I face her, but I do not linger on her eyes again. Her disappointment is a physical thing, an unquenchable urge—rooted in her marrow—and unable to temper her power or her strength, every new surge of emotion spills into me. My head swims with her half-realized thoughts. I delight in the strength that courses through her once frail body. A vitality and exuberance of which neither Elizabeth nor I knew she was capable. Her uninhibited joy is enough to bring me to my knees, but everything moves too quickly. Her wants, her delights, her anxiety all mixed up together and indecipherable.
“Stela, my dove.” Fane pries himself from Lydia’s worshipping embrace, and extends his hand to me. “Come.” He leads me to the bed with a doting smile on his face, and he releases me to Elizabeth.
Her immediate reaction to my nearness is so abrupt it is alarming. Elizabeth grabs me by the neck, the shoulders, willing me closer with unchecked strength until she has all but concealed her body behind my back. Her palpable, enticing enthusiasm to have me in her arms is second to her fear and her budding embarrassment, neither of which are easy to distinguish in the melee of her rapid thoughts. I had forgotten that she was exposed.
“Lydia…”
Lydia, needing no further instruction, dismisses herself from our happy company and disappears into my washroom. She returns with my black silk robe. Elizabeth is not pleased by her approach. A growl escapes Elizabeth’s lips, which surprises only herself.
I take the dressing gown from Lydia, and every member of my family except Fane takes a respectful step back. Elizabeth’s body is rigid, coiled for a fight even under the welcome attention of my hands. The pressure of her fixed gaze grinds my resolve to nothing, until she returns her attention to the unfamiliar faces assembled around us.
In the congested murk of our joined minds her thoughts begin to clear. Solid words find a foothold, and I can nearly understand her meaning. The whole aching mess of her unfurls inside me like stars in a clear sky. I hear the whirling contradictions, her happiness, her mortal pains, her countless disappointments, her few victories, every quiet moment we shared upstairs in her bed, the loaded silences when I knew she wanted to say so much more, but stopped herself. We need no words any longer. Her thoughts are tangible, tethers binding us together.
Now covered by my robe, Elizabeth settles, curled against me, borrowing my comfort around these beings and recognizing her place among us.
Fane moves closer, slowly at first, not wishing to startle her. But his purpose is clear, and my heart rises to my throat. The love I felt for the woman she was pales in comparison to that I feel for what she has become: as much a part of me as an arm or a hand, she is my blood. Keeping his distance, but determined to meet my eye, Bård steps up behind Fane. How could he stand it? How could he have felt Lydia swimming inside him like this, and relinquish this heaven to Fane?
Fane gives Elizabeth time enough to sit up and tighten the sash tied at her waist, and then he takes her face in his hands. His pale blue eyes plunge to her dark depths, and she reaches out for me in a panic, unable to free herself. She searches blindly for my hand, crushing it to her chest, pleading in a voice that—for now—only I can hear, cursing me and begging me to push him away.
“Stela.” Bård calls. He shakes his head gravely, as if he can read my mind as clearly as I can read Elizabeth’s.
Fane has made his way into Elizabeth’s mind, finding form as a solid partition that separates our bond, which has only just begun to flourish. The integrity of each self intact, but severed from a greater whole.
My hand slips through her fingers, and the swoon hits her. Both our minds are muted by his intrusion. He pushes her head back and lifts her top lip with his thumbs. New fangs, little more than pearls, nestle in her gums, but they will grow deadly sharp within a night or so.
His hands spur a surge of reserved strength and she finds my hand again, shattering my thumb and index finger in her mute protest. Her voice in me is the sound of angry fists pounding on a door. I look to Bård for support and find nothing but warning in his eyes.
Fan
e settles back on the balls of his feet, appraising her, and not entirely pleased. He takes her pulse, though her heart can be heard as clearly as any in the room. As slow as mine, and just as loud.
“My Lord, your verdict?” Darius’s voice is rife with humiliation at the prospect of distracting Fane from his sacred task. He has his pen back in his hand, poised to record Fane’s response.
When Fane’s hands leave her body, Elizabeth shudders violently. My own sympathetic shudder follows shortly after, as her thoughts once more spill unchecked into mine. Elizabeth wraps her arms around my shoulders, dragging me to her as though a last moment in my embrace will make the rest of this bearable.
She knows now what will follow, and a part of her hates me for failing to capture it with words. But what should I have said? I had no idea what we would become. What we would be forced to surrender. I swear. I did not know. Elizabeth’s face contorts with sorrow, and I run my thumb over her cheek as she grapples with another loss—she can no longer cry. The strength of her words redoubles, until I can see them as clearly as I see her, as though they were burned into the back of my eyes.
Stay with me.
Fane claps his hands together sharply, turning to Darius. “One of us,” he proudly proclaims. The room erupts in thunderous applause. Fane lifts his arms in triumph, prepared to take a bow.
Elizabeth rests her forehead against mine, squeezing her eyes shut, willing the tears she still needs to roll down her cheeks. She runs her hands over my shoulders, my neck. Her skin is warm under my hands, firm but smooth and far more appealing than I dared hope.
Bård steps forward and embraces Fane, offering his quiet congratulations. “What will you call her, my Lord?”
I could kill him for asking the question. Not that Fane would forget to bind Elizabeth to him, but coming from Bård of all people, the question carries the sting of betrayal. I stare into Elizabeth’s face, unfocused, protecting her from my own pain as much as I can manage. What I would give for a moment longer. One night to hold her without an audience, or a few minutes in private before she belongs to him. But Fane’s patient hand clamps down on my shoulder, urging me back without forcing me away. For all his failings, he knows that I ache.
“What do you know of her history, Stela?” Fane’s voice is deliberately gentle. I kiss her clenched fists and stand beside him, Elizabeth’s wordless screams ringing in my ears as she reaches for me. Wrestling free from her grip, I nearly collide with Lydia, who places a steadying hand on my waist. Lydia drapes a clean shirt over my shoulders, our shared animosity shelved for now. Elizabeth moves to stand, to pull me back to her, but with one look from Fane she stops, sitting perfectly straight, hands folded neatly in her lap.
“The mother was a homemaker. The father was an attorney of some kind. Irish and French descent, I believe?”
Fane clenches his jaw, considering Elizabeth. He reaches out and cups her chin in his hand, tilting her face this way and that.
“The trouble with humans these days is that they have no heritage. The bloodlines have all been crossed, twisted.” He shakes his head. “Unclean.”
A jolt jostles Elizabeth’s head, a violent but futile attempt to pull away from him. Fane traces the planes of her face. “Greek, further back,” he surmises. He lets her go, tilting his head as though straining to hear her.
Stay.
I start at the sound of her voice, Fane’s eyes still upon her. Elizabeth’s chest heaving though no breath passes through her lungs, as though the price of that one word was all the strength inside of her. My fists clench when Fane looms over her. He holds her firmly in his giant hands and the heaving stops. Elizabeth dangles limply in his grasp, her eyes blown wide and fixed on his.
“She is quiet,” he remarks, curiously. “A mind more placid than her body.”
My surprise is difficult to conceal. I would never use the word placid to describe her, and rarely have I encountered a more beleaguered mind.
Fane smiles, obviously pleased with himself. He releases his hold and steps back, placing a hand on her shoulder.
“Welcome, Irina.”
The name is a knife to my heart, cutting Elizabeth out of me. She leaves silently, so much more gently than she arrived, and for all my strength, my supposed power, I cannot stop my broken outcry—a desperate wail that sounds as though Fane has cleaved my soul in two. Crogher and Bård are beside me, arms stretched out like ready nets. My brothers engulf me in their arms—holding me in place—and Crogher has the decency to apologize when he covers my mouth, lest I spoil this auspicious occasion for Fane.
When the last remnants of Elizabeth float away from me I fall to my knees. My brothers leave me to sink to the floor in despair, unable to aid me any further. Every thread of understanding, the love we shared made physical—a beating pulse—everything severed and spoiling, as helpless as autumn leaves in the first frost. My body is cold in a way that no hunt will ever cure, empty in a way I never imagined. I touch my chest, surprised to find myself physically unharmed, but certain I will never be as whole as I was for the brief moment that Elizabeth was mine. I plant my hands on the floor and push myself up, finding my family as engulfed in celebration as they were before, utterly enamored of themselves and their newest member.
Elizabeth, however, has not lost herself in their merriment. She sits where I left her, utterly, eerily calm, and staring straight at me. Completely unaffected.
Smiles are exchanged, embraces are shared. My siblings welcome me back to the fold with hands on my back, my shoulders, encouraging little shakes. Darius snaps the volume in his hands shut before the ink of Elizabeth’s—Irina’s— journey has dried. The sound of it as final as the slamming of a door. I edge closer to the bed, my whole body weak and numb, filled with hostility for the happy, uplifted voices of my family. When will they leave me to hold her and apologize as I should?
Each sibling extends their hand cautiously to Irina, bidding her a quiet welcome, calling her by her new name and introducing themselves. Her eyes never leave my face, she barely regards the person standing in front of her, angling around them with a polite smile, tracking my approach. Against my better judgment, I do not resist her. I open myself to any intrusion she can mount, staring intently into her obsidian eyes.
Stay with me, Elizabeth.
But she sends me no reply, if she can hear me at all. Did I expect anything else? Her senses brand new and her mind racing with Fane?
Irina’s attention turns to an exuberant Lydia, just as Bård’s woeful face drifts into my line of sight. He wraps his arms around me in a tight embrace, one I return with a fervor that surprises us both. He knows. He lives with this heartache every day, and so will I.
There, encased securely against the brick of my brother’s chest, a pervasive warmth spreads through me. A meek flicker at first, and then a budding bright flame. The warmth becomes heat, seeping into my blood, crawling up my spine. A sluggish inferno that envelopes everything it touches, filling instead of consuming, spreading out to reclaim every inch she abandoned as though she never left.
Elizabeth.
Her want, her need, almost her voice. Almost a word.
My grip tightens on Bård as I fight the all-consuming urge to cry out in ecstasy, and he steps away from my embrace, regarding me strangely. Elizabeth gasps as though drowned. Her cheeks flushed, head thrown back, and smiling as brightly as I have ever seen. The entire room turns to her, watching closely.
“Sorry,” she manages, shaking her head. “It’s all a bit much.” She stares evenly at their attentive faces. She turns back to me, flicking the hair out of her face with a carefree hand.
Where else would I be?
Elizabeth’s voice is as clear in my mind as though she spoke the words for the whole room to hear.
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