I say a prayer with each lantern, a short prayer. I should have hunted for a good one, a special one, an invocation that matched the moment, but all I can remember are the prayers of my childhood, of the Rosary and the Chaplet and the Mass. The Anima Christi, which hung on the wall of my boyhood room.
Anima Christi, sanctifica me.
Corpus Christi, salva me.
Sanguis Christi, inebria me.
Soul of Christ, sanctify me. Body of Christ, save me. Blood of Christ, inebriate me.
Et jube me venire ad te,
Ut cum Sanctis tuis laudem te,
In saecula saeculorum.
Bid me come unto Thee, that with Thy saints, I may Praise Thee forever and ever.
It reminds me, oddly but powerfully, of being a boy again, of being that small Auden Guest. Walking the house, dousing flames and stirring ashes.
Making sure no fires were left burning.
And even though I’m striking matches and cupping nascent candle flames instead of killing my mother’s forgotten fires, it’s the same thing in the end, it’s the same thing.
It keeps everyone safe.
The lanterns arranged and lit, I find there’s little else to do. There is no priest here to guide me, there is no priestess to anoint me. I am alone, alone, alone.
I don’t even have my dog.
And so with dread, and with something almost like relief, I walk to the door.
I’ve not given this part much thought—I worried the more thought I gave it, the weaker my resolve would become—and so it takes me a minute to decide how I want to do this. I find I’m very particular about how I want to die, and I almost smile thinking of what St. Sebastian would say about the rich boy who’s worried about which way his hair will flop when he shuffles off this mortal coil.
But truly, if I have to do this, I would like to be found with romantic hair at least. I have to think God would allow me that.
I ultimately decide Estamond had the right idea, and I move onto the altar, sitting with my legs hanging from the edge while I work the torc under the collar of my peacoat and onto my neck. It is cool and heavy and difficult to bend, and when I settle it around my neck, the terminals at the ends press against my throat. I can feel the deeply etched spirals on them—the same spiral from the Kernstow farmhouse and the carved chamber near the cists.
There. I am a king.
I pull out the knife I took from the artifact case and look at it a moment, although it’s hard to judge its edge in this light. I find my glasses in my other pocket and slide them on, squinting down at the weapon and testing its tip against the pad of my finger. It pricks, but only after a good push.
I’ll have to be fast and hard with it then. It will be unpleasant.
My eyes burn, and my throat hurts, and my chest is hollow and crushed flat all at once. I think of Proserpina and St. Sebastian. I think of my best friend, my ex-priest, my ex-betrothed. I think of Gemma Dawes and Saint’s neighbor and all the people in the village sick with something they didn’t ask for and no one else can cure.
What would be more frightening, more horrifying? Me on the altar?
Or me off of it, leaving everyone else to suffer and perish?
What would a humble heart choose?
I already know the answer to that, of course I do. I think I’ve always known what a good king would do.
Anima Christi, sanctifica me.
I settle onto my back, arranging my peacoat so that it won’t wrinkle underneath me.
Corpus Christi, salva me.
I imagine St. Sebastian and Proserpina, smiling, happy, healthy. Alive. I lift my wrist.
Sanguis Christi, inebria me.
And I lift the knife.
Hard and fast. I tighten my jaw and close my eyes, braced for pain, which I get. But not on my wrist.
My entire body.
Something big, angry, and beautiful slams into me, rolling me right off the altar and onto the—thankfully—thorn-free ground below. The breath is knocked straight from my lungs—once from the collision and then once again when I hit the ground—and I barely register the soft noise the knife makes as it hits the damp petals below. My glasses tumble off too.
I look up to see St. Sebastian, seething, panicked, eyes wide and breathing hard. “What the fuck?” he’s yelling at me, his voice carrying over the drums and the thunder. “What the fuck?”
I can’t breathe to speak and I hold up a hand.
“You unmitigated asshole, you absolute wanker, you fucking liar—”
“I get the idea, St. Sebastian,” I say hoarsely.
“I don’t think you do. You told all of us to be here at seven with an effigy, and then this whole time you were sneaking out here early to kill yourself. I could murder you right now.”
“It might save me some effort,” I half joke, and St. Sebastian gives something like a roar, like he really is about to throttle me.
“This is the goddamn graveyard all over again,” he hisses as I get to one knee, still trying to suck in air. The knife is by his boot.
He hasn’t noticed it yet.
I stagger to my feet, wincing a little as my ribs remind me that an angry librarian just tackled me off a stone altar before I could ritualistically sacrifice myself on it.
My year really did take a turn at some point.
“St. Sebastian,” I say softly, stepping closer. “You understand why I have to, right? Why it has to be me?”
His eyes glitter from the torchlight spilling from the door. “No.”
“We all know the effigy won’t work. And if I don’t do this, you could die. Proserpina could die. It could spread and spread until we have no choice but to do this anyway, but only after we’ve lost people we love. It needs to happen now.”
“No,” he says stubbornly, and fuck, he’s so gorgeous like this, restless and angry and framed by lightning and roses. I can’t help it—I know I’ve said my goodbyes, made my peace, all that rubbish, but I need a kiss. Just one more.
I slide my hands up his arms until I can fist my hands in the worn cotton of his T-shirt and yank him close. And then he’s grabbing too, seizing the lapels of my coat and pulling, and I’m pulling, and our lips meet in a sear of desperation and heat. I find the back of his head, the taut curve of his backside, needing the pressure, the warm, hard reality of him.
I taste blood, and then it’s my turn to growl. I could lick the blood from his kiss for the rest of my life.
Which is admittedly a very short span of time now.
“I’m sorry,” I breathe against his mouth.
He blinks at me, totally dazed. “What?”
“I never said it and I should have. I’m so sorry for hiding the letter from you, St. Sebastian. For lying.”
His eyes close. “Oh.”
“All my life, I’ve been consumed with the idea of earning. I wanted to earn my career and my friends. I wanted to earn Proserpina and you. But I cheated, you see. I found the thing I wanted more than earning, and that was you. I was willing to cozen you out of your love, I lied for it, I swindled you. And all for the cheap reason that I was terrified you’d leave me once you found out.”
“Christ, Auden,” St. Sebastian says, leaning his forehead against mine. “It wasn’t a cheap reason at all. I wish you hadn’t lied, and I am grateful for the apology, but . . . well, it was a very you thing to do. It’s understandable.”
“I don’t want it to be a ‘me thing to do,’” I explain, bumping my nose against his. “I’d like to think I’ve learned some things since then.”
Like humility.
“Is that what this is?” he asks, pulling back a little. “Please tell me it’s not. That you’re not trying to punish yourself or prove that you’ve overcome your arrogance or—”
I buss my mouth over his. “I will never overcome my arrogance,” I inform him ruefully. “But I have learned how to add other qualities to it at least.”
He submits to my kisses, his hands flexing on the lapels
of my coat. He’s holding on too tight for me to move, and with some regret, I realize I’ll have to cheat again.
I only hope he can forgive me for it one day.
I unfist his shirt and run my hand down his chest and over the bunched point of his nipple, and then down his firm stomach to his jeans, where a burgeoning erection is pushing against the zipper. I give it a rough stroke—rough enough to make him shudder with pleasure and make me shudder with want—but no, focus, Auden, focus—
His hands fall from my coat as he mindlessly shoves his hips against my touch, and then I drop to my knees, lunging for the knife by his boot. My fingers close around the hilt, and an odd sense of victory fills me, but the victory comes too soon. Saint apprehends my purpose immediately, and suddenly I’m shoved to the ground, nearly losing my grip on the knife. Fuck.
I roll to the side, trying to get far enough away that I can just do this—I mean, honestly, how is it fair that I have to struggle in order to do something that’s already so ghastly anyway—but Saint won’t let me, and even though I’m a bit taller, just that little bit more muscled, he is filled with a panic that gives him the strength of three men. Somehow the knife fumbles out of my hand again, and we both dive for it at the same time, grappling along the way, wrestling, hands reaching and scrabbling, and I’m so close, so very close, and my God, if I weren’t about to human sacrifice myself to close this bloody door, I would belt St. Sebastian’s arse for all the trouble he’s causing—
A brown lace-up boot comes to rest on the hilt. Leather. Gleaming. Ralph Lauren.
I look up to see Becket crouching down to take the knife. St. Sebastian slumps, rolling flat on his back with his arm flung out, panting up at the stormy sky.
“Thank fuck,” he gasps. “Becket, you have incredible timing.”
“It seems I do,” Becket says. “Otherwise, the wrong person would have died tonight.”
I meet his eyes. They are still that unnatural blue.
“No,” I tell him.
“Yes,” Becket says gravely. “I’m sorry, Auden, but it won’t be the king who dies. It’s been meant to be me all along.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Proserpina
“It should be me, if it’s fucking anyone,” St. Sebastian says as Rebecca, Delphine, and I reach the chapel entrance. “I’m the one named after a martyr after all.”
Auden and Becket turn back to each other as if Saint hasn’t spoken. “You know it’s supposed to me,” Auden says. The heavy torc glints around his neck, and sweat sheens along the lines and curves of his naked torso. He is breathing hard. “The king, Becket. The king walks to the door. The lord of the manor, the wild god. The Guest walks to the door.”
“It’s going to be me,” Becket says calmly. “I’ve decided long ago.”
“No one is deciding!” St. Sebastian bursts out. “If it’s just us deciding, then I decide it’s me. There, now how does that feel?”
Auden turns to him, a gentle pity warming his eyes, softening his mouth. “It’s no use, St. Sebastian,” he says. “It must be me.”
“No, it mustn’t,” Saint says, his voice thick. “I refuse. I refuse and I won’t let this fucked-up scene go on a single moment longer. Do you need to hear my safe word to believe me? May I. May I, may I, may I.”
Auden looks exasperated. “This is bigger than kink.”
“Everything with you is kink. Are you trying to tell me this isn’t the ultimate power exchange?”
“How did you even know I was here anyway?” Auden says, dodging Saint’s question. He looks at Becket and then at all of us. “I thought I had time.”
“Freddie stopped by the house today,” Saint says tightly. “He said some things about Ralph that made me suspicious. He also mentioned that Ralph had wanted to close the door at dusk, when the veil was thinnest, but before any more of the door’s world could leach into ours. I guessed you were following in dear old Dad’s footsteps.”
Auden pushes a hand into his hair, frustrated, and he looks so very Auden in this moment, even bare-chested with a torc around his neck. “It’s more . . . complicated than that.”
“How can it be? Jesus, Auden, I’m not letting you do this, and you have to know that. I’ll do it myself, if that’s what it takes.”
“Nobody is dying today,” Rebecca says sternly as we join them near the altar. “We have a plan. We’re following the plan. That’s it.”
“They have their own plans,” Delphine points out softly, her eyes going from boy to boy to boy. She doesn’t look at me. But I shove my hands in my coat pockets anyway, so no one can see the stains on my fingers and palms. So no one can ask how I got them.
“There is no own plan—this is the plan we all made together, this is what we agreed to do as a group—”
“Well, I lied when I said I agreed,” Auden says at the same time Saint seethes, “He was obviously lying this whole time!”
This is just like my dream, I think, just like that dream I had the night before I returned to Thornchapel. All of us here in the chapel, all of us yelling. All of us very, very aware of the encroaching gloom of dusk.
But in my dream, I was afraid, and I’m not afraid now. I know what’s going to happen—until a certain point at least—and I know Auden and Saint and Becket won’t have the chance to hurt themselves. I know the others will be safe.
We are in a sort of circle now, in front of the altar. Rebecca is nearly in the middle of it, trying to talk sense into the men. They’re arguing with her and with themselves, and Delphine is lambasting all three boys with curse words I’ve never even heard of, and Auden is eyeing the knife in Becket’s hand like he’s about to go for it at any moment, and so no one notices me step sideways out of the circle. From there it’s only a few steps to the altar, and then to the door.
The flickering glow of torches or fires comes from the other side, and there, like here, there is a dark ceiling of clouds, their bellies flickering with lightning. Wind tosses the trees on the other side and I can hear it, I can hear that world’s thunder along with my world’s thunder, and there are drums too, and I forget all my doubts for a moment. There is only this beautiful, terrifying evening. There is only the gorgeous danger of the unknown.
I want to take it with both hands, I want to bite into it. For years, I’ve chased my curiosity through codices and palimpsests and folios, indulging my appetite for the little secrets and stories history has forgotten. And now here I am, with a forgotten story so big it could swallow entire lives—and already has.
Here I am, with my mother’s last and final secret.
Of course this moment is meant for me. It was meant for me all along.
I dig the flask out of my coat and unscrew the lid. I’m not sure what it will taste like or how long it will take. I’m also not sure it will work at all—but I’m not admitting entrance to any doubt right now.
It has to work.
I put it to my lips, already smelling its heady, floral scent. Like mortal roses, but earthier, spicier.
“Poe?” Becket asks, interrupting the bickering and turning toward me. “Poe, what are you doing?” For the first time today, he sounds afraid. “Step away from the door.”
Auden looks away from Sant, and he goes pale. “Proserpina,” he says. “Come here.”
The altar is between me and the others. A barrier. A buffer. It would give me the time I need to do what needs to be done.
“No one has to die,” I tell them. “That’s what my mother figured out. That’s what the Kernstows figured out years ago. No one has to die. They only have to be sacrificed—or sacrifice themselves.”
“Whatever etymological differences exist between die and sacrifice are flattened here,” Auden says impatiently. “At Thornchapel, a sacrifice is a death.”
“It has been for a long time,” I agree. “But it doesn’t have to be that way. The stories—”
“Are just fairy tales,” Auden cuts in, and then his face gentles. “Please come away from the
door, Proserpina. We’ll talk about this, I promise, just—let’s talk about this away from the door.”
“Freddie couldn’t go through because he didn’t want to go through,” I continue, taking a small step backward. Saint notices, his eyes flaring, but Becket is the one who steps forward first. I hold up a hand to stop him. “Please. I promise I’m not going to hurt myself. I’m just trying to explain. Freddie couldn’t go through because he wanted to stay here, he wanted to protect his life here. But what if someone was willing to leave their life behind? What if someone was willing to pay their life, not by dying but by crossing over and staying? Not a suicide or a murder, but more like . . . like a one-way trip to Mars.”
I scan their faces fervently, desperately. “This is what we’ve been missing. We’ve assumed this whole time that a life paid has to be paid with destruction, but what if it can be paid with consecration instead, with transference, with movement?”
“We can’t use fairy tales for this,” Becket says. “They’re not reliable enough sources—”
“And our other sources are? My dreams? A collection of cists we’ve only just found?”
“—and,” Becket continues over me, “the people in the fairy tales seem like they were planning on coming back, not staying over there forever. The peddler. The sisters.”
“We don’t know if they closed the door by crossing over as—I don’t know, tourists—but we do know the door did close for the people who thought they could never return. The abducted woman had to wait for it to reopen. The knight who pledged his life to the fairy queen knew that the gate was closing behind him and chose to stay with his queen forever anyway.”
“Estamond didn’t know,” Auden says.
“It had thirteen hundred years to be forgotten,” Rebecca says after a minute. She is looking at me appraisingly. “Knowledge this esoteric has been lost in a far shorter time.”
Door of Bruises (Thornchapel Book 4) Page 36