Only last week, we wondered if Adelina Markham had consented to her own death, and now I must wonder the same thing about my father. Had he come to the chapel meaning for it to be him?
Had he consented?
The fog is thick, thick enough that the trees and roses disappear into it after only a few feet, and the clearing comes almost like a shock, like the rest of the world has fallen away, and it’s only me and the roses and the fog left.
The roses have started climbing up the altar again—only along the sides—and when I walk around it, I see that some of the blooms have fallen totally away to reveal berries the same dark color as the flowers themselves.
Hips. The fruit of the rose plant.
I pull myself up on the altar and pluck one. It seems the same as any other rose hip, shiny and round and tendriled with green sepals at the bottom. Rose hips are usually edible, but I don’t know what would happen if someone ate these. If they took the fruit inside themselves. Poe said a knight in one of her stories ate rose hips to stay with his fairy queen . . . I wonder if these would work in the same way. Bind you somehow to the door forever or to the world beyond it.
And if that were true, would it apply to all parts of the rose? The petals, the thorns? Maybe I’ve been marked for this ever since I pricked my thumb on Midwinter’s Day. Like Aurora in the fairy tale, except read in reverse—I was pricked and then I was cursed.
I draw a knee up and drape my arm over it, still holding the small hip in my hand. I roll it between my fingers as I study the door, watching the clearing on the other side. There’s no one and nothing. No strange flowers, no dying birds. No shadowed figures moving through the fog.
And here in the chapel, there is nothing either. There’s no herd of deer, no Estamond, no vision of my father wearing a torc. No signs.
Maybe that’s because I don’t need them.
I thought I did, I was hoping for them when I walked out to the chapel. I hoped for some small whisper of magic either so terrible or so wonderful that my choice would be made incontestably clear. I thought it was a decision that could only be made after hours of agony, a decision that had to be yoked with omens and doom.
But I realize now, sitting on the altar and watching the fog drift and curl on the other side of the door, that I didn’t come here to decide.
I came here to grieve.
Sometimes choices are like that—lightning instead of thunder, a windfall instead of a harvest.
A puncture instead of a slice.
I thought I would need hours and hours, days and days, and here I am, mind made up with almost no work at all. I’ve thought longer and harder about where to place a fake tree on an architectural model; I’ve spent significantly more brainpower on choosing new wrist cuffs for Proserpina while shopping online. But for this, the answer is there like the door is there, like my love for St. Sebastian and Proserpina is there. Eminent and manifest.
I just . . . know.
Setting the rose hip aside, I pull my legs up onto the altar so they’re comfortably crossed, and I push my fingers through my hair as I let the knowing overwhelm me. The choice was fast, maybe, but the knowing still isn’t easy. It isn’t easy at all—it feels like the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And it will be the hardest thing I’ve ever done, right until the moment I have to do the last thing I’ll ever do—and that . . .
That will be the hardest.
I’m scared and I’m lonely and I don’t want to do this, no matter how much of a blessing it might be, no matter that people before me have done it too. No matter that Estamond did it and my father tried to. I bury my face in my hands, feeling the tears on my palms before I even realize I’m crying.
I don’t want to leave Proserpina and Saint. I don’t want to be apart from them. Without them. Even if the gate to death leads to absolutely nothing and everything I am dissolves into everything else, I will somehow still know that I am without my two people, and I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it.
This the price, though. The price of love. The price of care.
The price of holding people inside your heart.
A true king pays the price. He pays himself.
The afternoon has begun its long stretch into dusk, that October dusk which lasts for hours and hours, and I finally straighten up, my face swollen with crying, my throat hurting like some Druid’s already twisting a thrice-knotted cord around my neck. I am dizzy and hollowed out and filled back up with a purpose that feels as alien as it does familiar.
I’ve known that success must be earned, praise must be earned.
Love and trust and submission must be earned.
And so the necessity of this is a truth I think I’ve always known, deep in my bones, starting from that wedding in this very chapel when the thorns of possession and love grew through my heart for the very first time.
Yes, this is the truth I’ve always known, given to me not only by the pagans, but by the Church and my tragic, thorn-crowned god on his cross. The very same truth that Thornchapel was built around.
Life must be earned too.
And there is now so much for me to do before Samhain.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Proserpina
“I think it’s a good plan,” Becket says quietly.
We’re all in the library, save for Auden, who went to London for an urgent Harcourt + Trask project and still hasn’t returned. How funny to think that life goes on, that buildings must be built, and meetings must be had. How funny to think that there is a world where life and death don’t dangle from the lintel of a door in the woods.
“I agree,” Delphine says. She’s clutching a mug of elderflower tea—we read somewhere that it might help with fevers—and when she lifts it to take a drink, I can see the small cuts all over her hands and wrists and forearms, like she fell into a rose bush.
The room smells of roses. We’ve become a human garden.
“What will we need again?” Rebecca asks, looking over at the blackboard. “Do we have everything already?”
“Lanterns, firewood, fire supplies, the torc, a knife—” I read off the board. “Do you think any knife works? Are there special ones in the cases?”
St. Sebastian pushes out of his chair to go look. His eyes are bright with fever, glittering in the dark. “There are some knives here, pale and old looking—maybe made of bone?”
“At least we wouldn’t need to worry about tetanus,” remarks Rebecca dryly.
“Do they look sharp enough to cut?” I ask. “They’ll need to be sharp enough to cut into the effigy. Which reminds me—we need an effigy.”
“I can do it,” St. Sebastian says. “Tomorrow. I’ll take what I can from the walled garden.”
We’d decided that the effigy should be made of Thornchapel—a stick each from ash, beech, birch, elder, oak, rowan, and yew, whatever plants and herbs we could find in the walled garden. We would sprinkle it with someone’s blood—Auden’s probably—and then it would be crowned with the torc and killed like a king.
“Effigies crop up so often in the sources we’ve found,” Becket says. “This has to work. This has to be the way.”
He sounds like he’s trying to convince himself. I know the feeling, although I’ve only half committed to our plan. The doubt burns in me hotter than any fever, and if it doesn’t work—
If killing the king-effigy doesn’t work, then we need to have an alternative. An alternative that isn’t everyone in this room and in the village—and maybe the valley—dying. And while I want to hope that science and medicine will find a cure, they haven’t yet, and Samhain is tomorrow. Our chance is tomorrow.
What will a cure matter if it comes too late?
“Do you think the other side of the door is like heaven?” Delphine asks. “Poe said that Estamond saw someone on the other side. Do you think it can be like some kind of afterlife? But then how would that work with the fairy stories of people moving back and forth?”
“I’ve wondered the same thing,” I
say, sitting in a chair and wishing I could slip under the surface of consciousness. I’ve just taken some medicine, and when the medicine pushes the pain away, all I want to do is sleep.
I gesture to the far table, where Becket, Saint, and I have organized all the fairy tales into stacks of subcategories. At the very end of the table, there is a stack that only contains one book. “In almost every story where people go to fairyland and are able to leave again, they are alive when they go through the door. Some are sick, some are dying, but they are still alive. And many of them come back. But in that one”—I nod to the book, Tale of the Two Sisters and Other Such Stories—“there’s a story where two sisters are quarreling about who will wear a certain necklace to a fairy ball as they’re approaching the gate to fairyland. In a rage, one sister kills the other, but immediately regrets what she’s done. Hoping a fairy healer can bring her sister back, she carries her sister through the gate and into the fairy realm, where her sister starts breathing once more. The fairy prince rides out from the revel and warns the resurrected sister that she can never go back now, she can never leave fairyland again. But he offers her his hand in marriage, and so the murdering sister is doubly punished—not only will she lose her sister forever if she chooses to return to the mortal world, but then as a princess, her sister is draped in jewels and finery far better than the necklace they’d originally fought over.”
“So in that story, the door is more like a one-way ticket?” St. Sebastian asks.
“But she died first,” Becket explains. “So in the logic of the story, it’s only one way if death is involved.”
It needs death.
It needs sacrifice. They’re different.
“Which is why I’ve put it in its own category,” I say, and then I rub at my forehead. Each blink threatens to send me under, and I can feel the narcolepsy holding me like a Dominant by the back of the neck. “Is there anything else to do tonight? If not, I suggest we rest for tomorrow. It will be a long day.” And a hard one, if I have to do what I think I’ll have to do, but I don’t say that. I don’t want to scare them—and I also can’t let them know what I’m thinking.
They’ll try to stop me.
The others agree, and there is some shuffling around, some grabbing of mugs, dousing of the fire. Everyone filters from the room, except for St. Sebastian. He’s tiredly pulling on his boots, as if he’s about to leave for his house in the village. He’s stayed over a few nights when he absolutely felt too sick to leave, but otherwise he’s been refusing to sleep here.
I stand in front of him, catching his chin with my fingers.
He blinks up at me. Even with his fevered gaze and the smudges under his eyes, he is beautiful. Those angular cheeks, that sharp jaw. So much silky hair feathering darkly over his forehead.
“Stay,” I say. “It’s not good for you to walk home in the cold. I worry.”
“I shouldn’t . . . ”
“Tomorrow is Samhain.” And I might have to do something terrible and terrifying and I’m scared and I don’t want to be alone. “Please, Saint. I want you here.”
He stares up at me a moment longer, chewing on his lip. “I guess Auden isn’t here . . . ”
“He might come back,” I say as Saint stands up. “He said he’d be back in time for Samhain.”
“So I did,” says Auden from the library doors. We both turn and look at him, and even though he’s not sick like the rest of us, there’s a strange look to him, something sharp and gorgeous and cold and burning all at once. Like he’s one of the fairy princes from beyond the door. “And here I am now. And yes, St. Sebastian, you’re staying tonight.”
There is no question in whose bed St. Sebastian will be sleeping.
When we reach the bedroom, Auden strips off his jumper and shirt, revealing a tightly etched body. St. Sebastian says, in a hoarse, heated voice, “Auden.”
Auden looks at him, patient and impatient all at once.
“I’ll promise you anything you want,” Saint whispers.
Auden shakes his head, his fingers already on his trouser buttons. “Not tonight, St. Sebastian. Tonight is—” A look of powerful sadness passes over his face. “Tonight isn’t about that. It’s not about the past or the future. It’s about the three of us. Right now. Just us.”
I look down so he can’t see the tears gathering in my eyes. He doesn’t know how true those words are, because tomorrow—
No. I’m not going to think about it right now. I have my hopes. I have my fears.
I have my choices.
Let that be enough.
“Okay,” Saint whispers. “Just us.”
“Are you two well enough . . . ?”
“Yes,” St. Sebastian and I rush to say at the same time.
“I can’t do big pain right now,” I say. “Maybe just small pain. Some bruises. But I can—and want—to fuck.”
Auden breathes out slowly. “I don’t need your pain, either of you. I only need you. I’m glad you’re well enough, because I—” He stops, looking very sad again. Us being sick has taken such a terrible toll on him. I know he’s scared and worried and if we died and left him here . . .
He won’t be alone though. I’ll make sure of it.
“I know,” I say, stepping forward. “We need you too.”
Auden is naked now, and wonderful, his strong thighs and his narrow hips framing a silky swirl of hair and his already stiffened organ. He swallows, looking between Saint and me.
“Twelve years,” he says. “That’s how long ago we were bound together. I can’t believe I ever wasted a single second of it.”
And then he’s over to me, kissing me so hard it steals the breath right from my lungs. He presses his thumbs to the corners of my lips to open my mouth more for him, searching out my tongue and then stroking desperately and hungrily against it. “Clothes off,” he says urgently against my lips. “Please.”
But I move too slowly, the fever makes me too hazy and languid for him, and I’m swept off my feet to the bed, where Auden undresses me with an eagerness that sets me on fire all over again. Saint has gotten undressed too and is now breathing hard—from the fever or lust or both, I don’t know—and then we are all naked in bed together, there is nothing but skin and hands and kisses, and for the first time since Beltane, there is nothing between us. No walls, no ultimatums. No shadows. It is just us and Auden’s hunger, just us and the knowledge that Samhain is coming.
Just this, and what I’ll do tomorrow.
But that only stirs me more and more, knowing that this is the last time, the last joining, the last time our hearts will beat together as we kiss and seek and fuck.
“Can you take us both?” Auden asks, tearing away from a kiss to stare down at me. His eyes are completely changed now, that unearthly black-red, and his lips are swollen with kissing. He is all fairy prince again, or maybe vampire, or maybe it’s just Thorn King, and I’m nodding yes, because I want it so badly and also because saying yes to him when he’s like this is a pleasure on its own, a gift.
“Yes,” I say, and he’s reaching behind him for something in the end table; he hands it to Saint.
“On your side, hold on to me,” Auden instructs. I roll and wrap my arms around him, and then I bury my face in his strong throat while Saint opens the lube bottle behind me.
I sigh as Saint begins anointing me with lube, making me ready for him, and then there is the hot press of him, the wide, flared head pushing against me.
“Breathe,” Auden murmurs, and with my lips against his throat, I feel his command reverberating through my very skin. I nod, and then I breathe.
Saint goes slowly but the stretch of him is so wide, so much, and my body reacts with quivers, goose bumps, small noises that I can’t control. He groans behind me as he goes in, and then rolls his forehead against the nape of my neck. “I never want to stop doing this,” he mumbles, giving me a small thrust that has us both gasping. “Never.”
Auden laughs a little, and his laugh tickl
es my mouth. “Me either,” he says. “Me either.”
His fingers find my cleft, wet from me and from the trickling lube, and then he carefully moves my thigh to his hip.
He pulls back, red-black eyes glinting. “Yes?”
“Yes, Sir.”
He grunts; he likes hearing that, as always. And then he has his penis at my inner folds, and with an inexorable push, he wedges his way inside.
I am so full, I am filled, and it’s almost too much to bear, but that’s how I like it, how I’ve always liked it. Pleasure and pain mingling together like water dropped into scotch, mixing and swirling and opening the senses to more and more and more. And to be joined with them like this, tonight, for the last time . . .
Saint is behind me, kissing the nape of my neck and my hair and my shoulder like I’m a goddess he is servicing, like I am the object of his humble worship. Auden is in front of me, dark-eyed and wild, his fingers leaving bruises on my hips and tits and jaw. Our breathing is ragged, huge, joined—breathing together, moving together, our gasps and sighs and pulses all in one beautiful symphony.
There is more than one way to sacrifice a life.
That’s what my mother said, and she was right. Because to walk away from this—to leave it behind—it would be my entire life. Giving them up will bleed me dry.
A blessing, though. It will be a blessing to them.
Auden bends to kiss me, his kisses wicked and snarling and he’s feral tonight, like he was on Beltane but even more so, like he’s not the one hunting but the one being chased and then he moves to bite my neck, and that’s it, that’s all the pain and pleasure I can hold without dying, and I come.
Sharp, primal pleasure detonates everywhere in my core—not just behind my clit, but in my cunt, in my womb, in all the low places in my belly. My thighs tense, my toes curl, and my hands are scratching everywhere, everywhere, because I can’t handle it, this climax is bigger than me, bigger than my body can hold, and it’s the last one—
I’m twisting and whimpering, speared in place by two cocks, and Saint follows me first, crying out against my neck as his organ gives a thick, heavy jolt inside my body and begins to spend.
Door of Bruises (Thornchapel Book 4) Page 33