Auden yanks him into a kiss above my head, and they clash together like not even God himself can keep them apart, and then Auden’s coming too, with sharp, filthy grunts as he fucks his orgasm deep into my belly.
He breaks away from his kiss with Saint and then kisses me, and then we’re all kissing each other, and there’s more then, more of everything. More lube, more positions, more gropes and little bruises and bites and cries into the night. Through it all, Auden pours everything into us, his lust and his focus and his strength, and Saint and I receive it gladly. Though we are fevered, sick, and afraid, with our king, we are only whole. With our king, we are three.
And for tonight, we have joy.
Chapter Thirty
In The Hour of My Death Call Me
St. Sebastian
The letter in his back pocket might as well be an ingot of molten iron burning through his clothes.
It was waiting for him on the mat when he walked into his house this morning, and he nearly pounced on it when he saw it, he nearly tore into it with his teeth, that’s how much he needed what was inside. But then when he picked it up to open it, he found that his fingers would not cooperate. They wouldn’t tear at the corner, they wouldn’t slide under the flap. They wouldn’t rip the side from top to bottom to retrieve the letter inside.
At first he thought it was because he wanted to savor the anticipation, that it was a sort of paternity Christmas morning, and he needed to enjoy that subtle, electric space between almost-having and having. He was justified in waiting until the exact right moment to open this and encounter the knowledge inside.
But then he finished at the house, and he still hadn’t opened it. He tore at the roses twining around the semi’s front door before he left, and he still hadn’t opened it. He went back to Thornchapel, and he still hadn’t opened it.
He’d pulled it out; he’d held it up to the light to see if he could read what was inside; he stared at the envelope so long that he practically had the laboratory’s address memorized by now . . .
But he hadn’t opened it. He hadn’t even tried.
And so, while he gathered the mums and pansies and grass and dying lavender and baby’s breath with the envelope tucked into his back pocket, he called himself all sorts of things. Cowardly, craven, weak.
Fickle and inconstant. A disappointment to himself.
It’s only as he’s finishing the effigy now, hours later, that he recognizes the feeling beneath the relief, beneath the fear. It’s a quiet feeling, a steady one, nothing loud or brash like the others, but it’s trickling right from the heart of him, cool and clear like water from a spring.
It’s certainty.
Not about the letter’s contents, but about what they won’t change.
He sets the effigy in the courtyard, and then he goes to tuck the letter into the bag of clothes he brought, because he doesn’t need to open it to know he’s ready to promise Auden anything. Everything.
Forever no matter what.
Rebecca
She wakes as she always does these days. With restlessness, with aching, with the chirps and trills of a wren that doesn’t exist. But today she also wakes up with her kitten tucked next to her, and for a moment, before she can talk herself out of it, she thinks maybe it’s almost worth it. The fever, the pain, the possibility of death—just to have this. To have Delphine’s round bottom tucked sweetly against her hips, to have her entire world be warm skin and tousled hair and the smell of berries and violets.
Sickness has a way of clarifying things, of distilling them down, and last night, Rebecca saw clearly for the first time in months. Here at the very edge of everything they’ve ever known to be true, Rebecca was tired of pretending her choices were simple or stark. She was tired of ignoring what she wanted in favor of what she should want. She was tired of loving Delphine and lying to herself about it.
Her father had been right—love was quantum. Love was multi-dimensional, alchemical, complex, and the alternative was void, the frozen absolute zero of the deepest space. Nothingness.
If vulnerability, if trust and intimacy, brought the risk of pain with it—well. Wasn’t that better than a life at zero degrees Kelvin, feeling nothing, loving nothing, unharmed maybe, but unknown and unseen to anyone? Wasn’t it better to be known? Better to be seen?
And if Delphine were to get sicker, were to die, Rebecca couldn’t bear it if she didn’t know. If she didn’t know that Rebecca loved her so much that all her nerve endings were seared with it.
They had been loosely sharing a bedroom these past two weeks—at first so Delphine could nurse Rebecca, and then later after Delphine fell ill too, so Rebecca could have her nearby, could more easily assuage the anxious terror that filled her whenever she thought of Delphine slipping into the long sleep of the ancient villagers.
So last night as they readied themselves for bed, Rebecca found Delphine’s hands and pulled her close, and then kissed her. Kissed her until their mouths were both plump and wet with it. Kissed her until Delphine sank dazed onto the edge of the bed.
“I’m sorry,” Rebecca whispered. “What you said in my office—you were right to. I want more than just to fuck, I want more than friendship. I want us together.”
Delphine blinked up at her. “You do? But can you ever forgive—”
“Yes,” Rebecca said simply. “I can.” She paused. “I have.”
And maybe she’d forgiven Delphine a long time ago and was only able to admit to herself now. Or maybe the forgiveness had come right then, spilled into existence like quarks spilling from a smashed atom, waiting only for her to set the forgiveness in motion. Maybe, like love, forgiveness was quantum. Several things at once, visible and invisible, messy and leaving broken rules in its wake.
“Oh, Rebecca,” Delphine murmured, eyes shining with tears. “Mistress.”
It didn’t matter that they were sick—Rebecca was certain even on her deathbed hearing Delphine utter that word would get her wet—and so she’d dragged her pet to bed. And despite the fever, they found several long, quivering releases in the dark. This morning Rebecca can still smell their sex in the air, heady and lingering.
They will have to go to the chapel tonight. They will have to pray their effigy idea works. If it doesn’t, then Rebecca isn’t sure what they’ll do—throw themselves at the baffled mercy of the doctors who still don’t understand their disease, she supposes.
But it’s not time to walk to the chapel yet. Rebecca pulls Delphine’s backside more tightly against her pelvis and then reaches between Delphine’s legs to stroke her awake. Her girlfriend, her sub.
The love of her life and more her destiny than any door ever could be.
Proserpina
Persephone, her sort-of namesake, ate pomegranate seeds, but Proserpina is making do with a tea today. She’s sitting on the floor in the Long Gallery, cutting rose hips in half and scooping the seeds into a small bowl. The inner flesh of the hips is redder than the outside, and when she’s done, her hands are stained scarlet. She hopes no one notices.
Maybe she can wear gloves.
There is no electricity in the gallery, so she goes downstairs to one of the newly renovated bedrooms to plug in the kettle. While she waits for the water to be ready, she watches the world outside the window. Roses are everywhere, petals kicked up by a melancholy breeze. Fog clings to the forest still, eddying between the trunks and draping the moors with its silvery veil. It feels like Halloween. It feels like a day for graveyards and ghosts.
It feels like a day to step between worlds.
The kettle clicks off, and she starts steeping the hips, cleaning up after herself as she waits. This is really a kitchen activity, but she can’t be seen, no one can know until it’s too late.
Unfortunately for her, the too late part is the only hitch in her plan. There’s no manual for this, there’s no entry in the Physician’s Desk Reference for rose hips from another world. She has no idea how potent the tea will be, how fast it will act. S
o she needs to wait until she’s in the chapel in case it acts quickly. She wonders if the knight in the fairy tale had any second thoughts before he ate the hips. She wonders if he had the second thoughts after he ate the hips, when it was too late.
Convivificat is a blessing, she reminds herself. Saving her friends is a blessing. Going to another world is a blessing.
If only she didn’t love Saint and Auden so fucking much.
She pours her tea into a flask and then brings everything downstairs, relieved to see the kitchen is empty. She checks her email one last time to make sure the long letter she’s written her father is still scheduled to send tomorrow morning.
She tries washing her hands, but it’s no use. The skin of her fingers and palms stays as red as the inside of the rose hips. They stay dyed a bright, lurid crimson.
Under the running water, they look like they’re covered in blood.
Delphine
Rebecca is determined to answer one last email before they start readying things to take to the chapel, and so Delphine wanders down to the hall, both tired and fevered and also happy, happy, happy. Rebecca loves her, has forgiven her. She can taste her mistress on her lips still, and on her breast is a single bite mark that sings to her every time she moves.
Even though they are all sick, even though this Samhain is dangerous, fraught, and grim, Delphine finds it impossible to be sad. Not when she can still taste Rebecca and feel her teeth on her tit.
Even though she’s on a social media hiatus—for personal reasons, according to the statement she wrote on her Notes app, screenshotted and then posted everywhere—and even though she’s sick, she’s found comfort in the rituals of hair and makeup and clothes, so she’s already dressed to go outside in jeans and a slouchy jumper. She steps into a pair of Hunters she keeps here at Thornchapel and goes out to the south terrace, which overlooks a lawn covered in rose bushes. Even the graves have been overtaken by them, and the house—the house is now completely veiled. She turns around to face it, taking a few steps backward so she can see all the way to the end of the Jacobean extension.
Diamond-paned windows glitter from among green thorns and dark blooms. Whenever the breeze moves through the valley, the blossoms wave and tremble and then drip petals into the air, until they fall to the ground like a strange, silky rain.
Delphine lifts her phone and takes a picture, even though she won’t post it. She doesn’t ever want to forget this. How lovely it is, and how frightening too.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” a quiet voice says from behind her, and it’s Auden, he’s come from around the other side of the house with Sir James in tow, who is now prancing in circles around Delphine and butting her hand for pets.
“So beautiful,” she agrees, stroking Sir James and looking back up at the house. “But in a way that makes me think of ghost stories. It’s quite goth.”
Auden’s mouth quirks. “It is.”
“Are you ready for tonight?” she asks him. He looks very handsome today in his crimson jumper and jeans and peacoat, but then again, he’s always handsome.
“I am desperate to get it over with,” he replies, offering her his arm so they can walk back in together. “I wish I could spur time on like a horse. The waiting is agony.”
She knows he’s been heavy with worry for all them. She pats his arm as they go inside and Sir James trots off to find someone still abed to snuggle. “The effigy will work. I’m positively certain of it. After all, it’s still killing a king, and that’s what the door seems to want.”
“Yes,” he says distantly.
“Auden, I—” She’s not sure how to say this, so she just blurts it out. “I want you to know that I’m sorry.”
His eyebrows raise—not in sarcasm or disbelief but in genuine surprise. “What on earth for, Delly?”
“For, well, everything, really, but mostly for not ending our engagement sooner, and ending it as abruptly as I did. I love you, you know, and I loved you then, only it was a different sort of love than I first thought. Like it was so natural to love you and then to get engaged that I never stopped to ask myself if it was the right thing to do, and then when I realized it wasn’t—when I understood what it was I felt for someone else—it felt like the only remedy was ending things as quickly as I could, setting us both free as soon as possible. Am I making any sense? I’m not, am I?”
“You’re making all the sense in the world. I wasn’t honest with myself either, you know.” He takes her hands, kisses the knuckles on them both. “All is forgiven. All is well. I would have been proud to be your husband, but I’m even prouder to be your friend. To see my two oldest and best friends in love with each other—” When he lifts his head from her knuckles, she can see the smile pulling at his lips. “Remember when you couldn’t even be in the same room without fighting?”
“Maybe that should have been my first clue,” Delphine says. “Can I kiss you now?”
“Yes,” he murmurs. “I would like that.”
They’ve kissed since the engagement ended, of course, mostly at Beltane, but once on the equinox too, but Delphine has forgotten. How firm his lips are, and how warm. How good his mouth tastes, faintly peppery and clean. And when he kisses, he kisses with his fingers in her hair and his thumbs rubbing along her cheeks.
They pull apart after a moment, and Auden’s expression is warm when they do.
“I’m glad you are happy,” he tells her sincerely. “And knowing I helped in any small way is an honor.”
“You’re too noble,” she replies. “Perhaps that’s why you’re the king of our little clan.”
Something unreadable flits over his face, and he ducks his head. “Perhaps. Have you seen Becket, by any chance?”
“I think he’s in the library.”
Auden gives her another kiss—a soft touch of their lips—an ex-fiancé’s kiss—and then leaves for the library, taking off his coat as he does.
Becket
The zeal greets him when he wakes up and when he starts his day. It follows him like a storm, like a wind, like a pillar of flame scorching the earth behind him.
He welcomes it.
He used to think that the zeal was an insular gift. One of those blessings that blesses the life of its recipient, but whose ripples are only felt indirectly by everyone else.
But he knows better now.
The zeal will help him today, and therefore it will help everyone.
“Becket,” Auden says from the doorway to the library. Becket looks up from the verse he’s reading—John 15:13, greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends—to see his friend and Thorn King walking into the room. Auden’s eyes are all dark now, all a near-black crimson, and Becket knows his own eyes have changed too. A bright blue like the heart of a flame. The zeal has taken him, just as Thornchapel has taken Auden.
“I was wondering if I could make a confession,” says the lord of the manor, sitting in a chair across from Becket. “Before we go out to the chapel tonight.”
Suspicion curls through Becket’s mind. “In the eyes of the Church, I am no longer allowed to hear confessions, unless someone is at the threshold of death.”
Auden blinks. Once. And then he deploys a smile so arrogant and pretty that even underneath the zeal, Becket’s body stirs with sweaty, firelit memories. “But you’re in the Church of Thornchapel now. Besides, you said all that brilliant stuff about being stamped ontologically or whatever. Surely a little bit of you still feels compelled to pastor me.”
“All of me does,” admits Becket. Today is a day for confessions, a day for coming clean and for making a pyre of the past. He should be the one begging for confession, really, he should be the one finally, painfully, admitting what he’s hidden out of the fear that if the time came—which it has—he wouldn’t be allowed near the chapel to atone.
Above all, he must be allowed to atone.
And then he makes his decision. “Yes, I’ll hear your confession, Auden. So long as yo
u promise that this request isn’t motivated by any future foolishness on your part.”
“No, Father Hess,” Auden says. “Nothing foolish at all.”
Auden
Confessing is hard work. He must drag out all these sins—so many of them—and hurl them into the air. He must pray over them, pray over himself, he must feel remorse. He does for most things. For other things—mostly involving St. Sebastian—the remorse is mixed with too many other feelings to be picked apart and held aloft as evidence of virtue.
But Becket seems to understand.
After they finish, Auden stands to go to his office. His trip to London was busy, but fruitful, and the last of the revised documents has arrived in his email, ready for him to digitally sign and send back. And then it will all be arranged. His townhouse, his money, his Thornchapel—it will all go to them. As it should.
“I’ll see you tonight,” he tells his priest. “In the chapel.”
“Of course,” says Becket, but he sounds preoccupied when he says it. His flame-blue eyes are fixed on something Auden can’t see.
Auden pats his shoulder and goes upstairs.
It’s still morning, and so the trees are still wreathed in fog, and Auden spends a few minutes looking at them from his office window before he opens his laptop and gets to work finalizing all the arrangements. And then Auden pulls out a book he hasn’t looked at in a long time—the heavy book of medicinal plants and herbs he’d shoved the rose in all those years ago.
He opens the book and looks at the rose—now dried and mostly flattened—and thinks of Estamond as he cries soft, wet petals down his cheeks.
If it’s not done by dusk, it may be too late.
She had told him what would happen, she’d warned him more thoroughly than he ever could have understood then.
Door of Bruises (Thornchapel Book 4) Page 34