My breath was as quick and shallow as Alexi’s now, my pulse roaring in my ears. He must have sensed that I had struck upon something, because he pushed in tighter to me.
“What is it?”
My fingers trailed down the page, committing every word to memory.
“Freedom,” I said.
Alexi never got the chance to ask me what I meant, because somewhere distantly in the house, a door opened and slammed shut. I heard the lilt of Magdalena speaking, her words indistinguishable, and then, unmistakably, the baritone of your voice.
I slammed the book shut and shoved it back in its place. Alexi was already scrambling back for the stairs, hauling me behind him with a tight grip on my wrist.
“We’re dead,” he huffed, more to himself than me. “If he finds us down here…”
“He won’t,” I whispered, feigning surety. “Hurry, little Alexi.”
We doused the lamp and hustled up the stairs as quietly as we could, pausing for only a moment at the landing to catch our breath.
Magdalena had detained you in the foyer and was chattering on prettily about something that was just barely holding your interest. You threw your eyes around the room, shrugging off your coat.
“Where are your siblings?” you asked.
“Here we are,” I said, keeping my voice even, my expression pleasant.
I realized how it must have looked, Alexi and I both emerging shamefaced and out of breath, lingering close to one another. Sometimes you were jealous when you had to share us with one another and sometimes you weren’t; it was impossible to predict. But you had taken Alexi finding refuge in my arms particularly badly, your dark mood clouding our household for weeks after you found me in the alcove. Probably because you knew it was you he was seeking refuge from.
“Did you bring me something to eat?” Alexi asked, in a breezy affect that didn’t quite fit the situation. He hadn’t sized you up quickly enough to realize that you had gotten home irritated and that your mood was only worsening.
“I wasn’t able to,” you said, voice clipped as you threw your gloves onto a nearby ottoman.
“What do you mean?”
“I was seen,” you said, your brows drawn tight together in consternation. “I had to abandon the hunt before it was finished.”
“Seen?” Magdalena echoed, crossing her arms over her chest. She raised a disapproving eyebrow at you, and you bristled dangerously.
“Yes, need I repeat myself?”
“The villagers are going to come looking for you, then. They’ll bring guns. Weapons even you can’t outrun.”
You dismissed her fears with a wave of your hand.
“They won’t. They’re too scared.”
Magdalena let out a short, cruel laugh, and I could see the flash of rage beneath. She had been able to hold back her contempt for you and your secrets while distracting you, but now the mask was slipping.
“They’re going to topple your little regime,” she went on. “All because you were spied nibbling on some stable hand in an alley, is that it?”
Your temper snapped. You took a threatening step forward, and I threw myself between your bodies before I had the chance to think it through.
“Don’t touch her,” I hissed, with more force that I would have thought possible just days before. But, like Eve, I had taken a bite of forbidden fruit and been rewarded with all the knowledge I had hitherto been denied. I knew just as much as you, and I knew you were just as mortal as any human man, under the right circumstances. You could kill us, yes. But that meant you could also be killed.
You staggered back as though I had spat at you, confusion flashing across your face. Then your eyes darkened and before I had the chance to run, you seized me by the throat.
I let out a horrible, ugly gasp, and I saw Alexi move in a blur at my side intending to strike you, but Magdalena held him back.
“I’m getting tired of you constantly undermining me,” you said through grit teeth.
I writhed under your punishing grip, tears springing to my eyes. You squeezed so hard I saw stars.
“I won’t tolerate sedition,” you said, bringing your face close to mine. “I made you and I can unmake you. You belong to me, Constanta. Blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh. Say it.”
“Blood of your blood,” I wheezed, barely able to form the words.
You tossed me aside and I let out a cry like a kicked dog when I hit the floor.
You had a few choice words for Magdalena and Alexi, but I didn’t hear them. I was crumpled on the ground, massaging my throbbing neck as sobs wracked my body. I was shaking like a leaf in the wind, more terrified of you than I had ever been.
As soon as you had stalked down the halfway, Alexi and Magdalena were at my side, cooing gently and petting my hair.
I brought shaking fingers away from my bruising throat, and Magdalena dropped the lightest of healing kisses on the wounded spot.
“Did you find anything?” she whispered into my hair.
I nodded and swallowed hard. I had found something else too, buried deep underneath habit and fear and years of loyalty to you. Anger, white-hot and blinding. Bright enough to illuminate even the darkest night.
“Yes. I found what I was looking for.”
Magdalena cast a wary glance over to Alexi and then back to me.
“We three are in agreement, then. We will stand against him?”
Alexi squared his shoulders and in that moment he looked every inch a prince, ready to lead his troops into war.
“We don’t have any other choice.”
The villagers arrived before we could formulate our plan. It only took them a few days to gather their courage and assemble a small band of men, armed with axes and guns. They crested over the hills shortly after nightfall, marching with lanterns held high and murder in their eyes.
Alexi saw them first, and burst into your room to beg you to do something about it. One or two humans were no problem for creatures such as us, but there were at least two dozen men out there, armed to the teeth. Ready to draw blood after finding you curved over the body of a boy, draining him of life. Provincial life had preserved old superstitions, and I suspect they knew exactly what you were. They had come to root out the preternatural scourge in their midst, who surely must be responsible for the rash of disappearances that had been afflicting the nearby towns.
We had tried to warn you about hunting from so small a pool. It was bound to attract the wrong kind of attention. But keeping us isolated was more important to you than keeping us all safe.
“Let them come,” you said, turning your nose up at Alexi’s terror. “You think I haven’t seen my fair share of mobs before? They won’t get past the front gates. They’ll sooner piss themselves with fear.”
“They’re angry,” Magdalena said, peering out the window with her hand pressed to her chest. “And they’re grieving. Do not underestimate what they’re capable of.”
“Shouldn’t we be running?” Alexi asked, his voice tight. “Or building a barricade?”
“All the doors and windows are locked,” you said, a fact we all knew intimately well. You stood in the window, filling the frame with your glowering presence as you watched them approach the front gate. “The house is a labyrinth, with no electric light. If they’re stupid enough to wander in we’ll pick them off one by one.”
Magdalena made a concerned noise but said nothing.
“I’ll go push some furniture in front of the door,” I said warily, rising from my seat. I cast a surreptitious glance to Alexi and Magdalena, who scurried out behind me. Perhaps, on any other day, you would have detected the hint of a coup in the air. But that day, you were too wrapped up in your own arrogance and you own anger to realize something was amiss inside the house, and that was to be your undoing.
“We should do it now,” I whispered, tugging my two loves down the corridor with me. “We’re running out of time,”
Magdalena’s eyes were clouded over with thought. This wa
s not like her, to strike in the spur of the moment. She favored careful, quiet planning, like a spider who spun a web for days on end to attract the perfect fly.
“We don’t have much of a choice,” I pled. “He’s distracted. We may never get this chance again.”
Alexi looked between the two of us, chewing on his lip. He always did that when he was nervous.
“But Constance… he does love us, in his way. It seems wrong to…” Alexi swallowed hard, shaking his head. “He loves us. I know it.”
This snapped Magdalena out of her reverie. She clasped Alexi by the shoulders and fixed him with a hard, knowing look that I have never forgotten, not even after all these years.
“It would be easier if he hated us,” she said. “But he loves us all terribly. And if we go on letting him love us, that love is going to kill us. That’s what makes him so dangerous.”
Every word felt like a stone pressing down on my chest, heavier and heavier, but I knew she was right. I had known for a very long time, but I had been too willingly led around by the nose like a lamb to do anything about it, and now we were all reaping the consequences.
Alexi nodded, tears gleaming in his eyes. I swept a golden curl away from his forehead and kissed him on the temple.
“I’ll prepare the bedchamber,” I said, anticipation coiling in my stomach like a snake. “Can you two tempt him inside?”
Magdalena chuckled. There was no mirth in her voice.
“That part’s always been easy.”
I don’t know how Alexi and Magdalena enticed you away from your work, but they’d always been very good at commanding your attention. It was a foolish thing, to make love while the townspeople shook their weapons outside our gates, but arrogance and lust made you reckless. I do not think you truly believed harm would come to any of us. You were too convinced of your own imperviousness. I wonder how many mob uprisings you had seen in your day, how many times you had crushed the peasantry underfoot when they dared take issue with your wanton killing.
I waited for you in white, ever your willing bride. It was an old nightgown in the Victorian style, with pale pink ribbon threaded through the cuffs and a high lace collar. The material skimmed the curves of my body and was nearly transparent in the low light of the wall sconces. I draped myself across the bed, my hair undone and falling to my waist in a waterfall of red.
You had Magdalena pressed against you and Alexi nipping at your ear when you opened the door, but you stopped short when you saw me. The breath caught in your chest and your pupils went wide with desire. Even after hundreds of years and countless other lovers, I could still arrest you, in the right lighting and with the right pliant expression on my face.
“My wife,” you said, taking my face between your hands and tipping my chin up just so, into the angle that you so enjoyed. You liked me best when I was like an oil painting; perfectly arranged and silent.
“Yours,” I repeated dutifully, my breath hot on your lips. I wondered if you could feel how fast my heart was beating under my skin, smell the fear coming off me like an animal scenting the hunt. I had never felt so terrified in my life, or so exhilarated.
It took me too long to come to my senses and fight back, but now that I was caught in this moment with you, I intended to make up for lost time.
We pulled you onto the bed, Magdalena mewling prettily while Alexi suckled on your little finger. I kissed you and kissed you, driving you back against the pillows with a force that surprised even me. I kissed you the way you had bitten me all those years ago; mercilessly, until you were panting. I pinned you between my thighs and kissed you like I was trying to get back at you for something, like I would never kiss you again. I fit all the love and hate my soul had endured for so many years into that kiss.
Then I flicked my eyes to Magdalena and Alexi, giving them a signal while you were still murmuring delirious nothings beneath me.
Then they pinned you down by your shoulders, one on each side. You laughed at first, thinking it a game, but then the smile fell from your face. You tried to wrench out of their grip, but Alexi and Magdalena held you down with the full weight of their bodies, already breaking out in a sweat.
There was only one of you and two of them, but you were older and stronger by far. We didn’t have much time.
I reached underneath the bed where I had hidden my contraband and produced an item that felt heavy as treachery in my hands. A rotting rod from a stairwell bannister, wrenched free and filed into a sharp point at one end. It was heavy enough to bludgeon a man to death with. Or run him through.
You blanched when you saw it. Genuine terror passed over your face in a wave. Then the anger rose up, and you bared your teeth at me.
“I told you to stay out of my rooms! What stupid little idea has gotten into your head this time? If I die, you all die with me.”
It was the gambit of a doomed man.
The first stirrings of power thrummed in my chest. So this is what it felt like, to hold a lover’s life in your hand.
“No we won’t,” I said. “I read about that too.”
This melted the edge off some of your rage, and I saw a flicker of vulnerability cross your face.
“Constanta,” you pled, with that same wild raggedness in your voice that rose up when you undressed me, that same desperate sheen in your black eyes I only saw when you called me a treasure. “I love you. Look at me, Constanta, my jewel, my wife . I love you. Don’t do this.”
I saw every soft moment we had shared flicker over your face, and you were so beautiful. Desperate, vulnerable. Fear for your life made you look like a man who could really love and be loved, like you might hand over your heart and all its secrets without my having to crack your ribs open to get to them. Magdalena must have seen it too; she squeezed her eyes shut and wrenched her face away even as she perspired with the effort of restraining you. Alexi only looked scared, a child caught between two warring parents. I was grateful for his innocence, and his strong arms.
“Constanta,” you said again, inclining your mouth up to me as though you were offering a kiss. “Put that down, beloved. I’ll forgive you. Stop this now and I’ll forgive you, and we’ll never speak of it again.”
Every kindness you had ever shown me revolted inside me, rioting up in mutiny against my purpose. Every smile or small gesture was as sharp as a pinprick, inviting me to see the bright spots embroidered through the ugly tapestry of our marriage.
But a few flourishes and embellishments couldn’t change the fact that the very fabric of our life together was tangled and suffocating. I had given you a thousand second chances, made a thousand concessions. And this wasn’t just about me anymore. It was about Magdalena, and Alexi. How long before you tired of your wind-up soldier and your painted doll and smashed them to pieces?
“Is that what you told the others?” I asked hoarsely. Tears, hot as fresh blood, spilled from my eyes. “Before you killed them?”
Your affect swung from light to dark, a tempestuous shadow settling over your face. Your eyes went from deep, inviting waters to sharpened slate, your mouth tightening into a poison snarl. This was the man I had lived most of my life with: arrogant, cruel, and enraged at the slightest whiff of insurrection.
“Put the stake down, Constanta,” you ordered. Harsh, curt. The way you would speak to a dog. “Listen to me. Don’t make me angry.”
I choked back a sob as I raised the stake above your chest, gripping the wood so hard splinters bit into my bloodless fingers.
I took one ragged breath, two, then squeezed my eyes shut tight.
Don’t ask me why I did it.
I was tired of being your Magdalene. I was tired of waiting expectantly at your tomb every night for you to rise and bring light into my world once again. I was tired of groveling on my knees and washing blood off your heels with my hair and tears. I was tired of having the air sucked out of my lungs every time your eyes cut right to the heart of me. I was tired of the circumference of the whole universe living
in your circled arms, of the spark of life hiding in your kiss, of the power of death lying in wait in your teeth. I was tired of carrying around the weight of a love like worship, of the sickly-warm rush of idolatry coloring my whole world.
I was tired of faithfulness.
I made you into my private Christ, supplicated with my own dark devotions. Nothing existed beyond the range of your exacting gaze, not even me. I was simply a non-entity when you weren’t looking at me, an empty vessel waiting to be filled by the sweet water of your attention.
A woman can’t live like that, my lord. No one can. Don’t ask me why I did it.
God, forgive me.
Christ, forgive me.
I brought the stake down as hard as I could manage. It tore through your flesh, ripping open a cavity in your chest.
You roared in anguish and rage, and Magdalena screamed and screamed, but she didn’t let you go. Her steel-sided nature didn’t fail her, even as your blood started to seep into her nightdress. Alexi was too shocked to speak, his mouth hanging open with choked, horrified noises coming out of it. But his resolve didn’t fail him either.
Letting out a wrenching sob, I pressed down with my whole weight. The stake found its mark, piercing your heart like one of the sorrows of Mary and shattering a rib or two in the process.
It was dirty, difficult work, killing you. You writhed and thrashed, pushing all three of us to the outer limits of our strength. I had to squeeze my knees into your sides and press the stake down with both trembling hands.
Eventually, you let out a horrible, bubbling croak and laid still. Blood bled into our sheets, into the knees of my dress, filling the room with its undeniable fragrance. The sweet, metallic tang filled my nose even as hot tears filled my eyes and spilled over like twin rivers. I had thought you would be as beautiful in death as you were in life, but your face was frozen into a rictus of pain and hatred. Looking on you left me feeling cold, like I was looking at a stranger.
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