It didn’t make sense that Aglaé had come, or why she’d said what she had. He’d never come close to killing a woman to break his curse. There’d been times he was tempted, and times he had to work harder against his instincts—one time even with Nicole—but he’d taken the women mostly to scare them, to keep up his pretense. And even then, when he hadn’t been close to taking their lives, he’d been far closer than he ever was to taking Elizabeth’s. If he ever was to break the curse, it would never be through her death. His brain couldn’t even wrap itself around such a thought.
So why come now? Why try to prevent him from doing something he would never—not in a thousand centuries—do?
As he watched Elizabeth sleep, watched her shoulder lift ever so gently with each breath, he tried gathering the pieces of the night, tried determining what was real and what wasn’t. Obviously, there hadn’t been real fire, on him or her or anything else. And, God, how that made him rejoice. But she was with him. Had she really stayed, promising she would never leave? Had she really saved him?
His heart dropped, every piece of reality floating to the surface of his mind. He couldn’t believe he’d been too distracted by her presence to realize she was here in the first place. She was here, in his house, sleeping beside him. Heat swelled through him, emotions he himself couldn’t even decipher: rage, humiliation, exposure, even gratitude.
He peeked beneath the blanket over him, at the stitches on his side and the scratches on his leg. She had saved him. And though it moved him—because it moved him—he grew angrier than he’d been since the moment he’d met her. Stubborn, curious, unafraid Elizabeth.
He sat upright, but an overwhelming bout of dizziness hit him in a wave, making everything go topsy-turvy and momentarily taking his sight. His limbs were weightless, shaky. Elizabeth stirred beside him, opening her eyes, and she sat just as quickly.
“Henry,” she said, and he wished she wouldn’t call him that. When she called him Henry, he felt like Henry. His name in her voice was a beckoning, a call to come home—a home where he wanted desperately to be, but couldn’t believe in.
He tried to stand, again in a hurry, while holding the blanket around his waist, but instead he closed his eyes tightly as the marble felt pulled from beneath him, like the floor of a gyrating plane.
“You might not want to do that,” she warned.
Between nauseating breaths he stood anyway, ignoring her advice. With a croaky throat he managed, “What are you doing here, Ms. Ashton?”
She didn’t answer, rushing to him while keeping her own blanket high, and she steadied him, placing her free hand on his chest. Was the familiarity of her hand just a dreamlike sensation, or had she really done that last night, too—steadied him? And how he loved the way it felt, her touching him. “You need to take it easy,” she said. “Lie down, please. But not on the floor. The couch maybe, or—”
He removed her from him, backing away, and grasped the back of the couch. “Why…why are you here?” The room still spun and he brought his hand to his forehead. He thought maybe he should do as she requested, or at least sit down, but he couldn’t.
“She saved your life,” Arne said, entering the room and looking more tired than Henry had seen him in years. “That’s what she’s doing here.”
“You…” Henry started, the betrayal turning his stomach. “You let her in?”
“Henry, you would have died out there,” Elizabeth said.
His eyes shot to her before he scrunched them closed again, trying desperately to remember. But saving her, fighting Diableron, and getting stabbed was the last thing he remembered with any clarity. “Don’t call me that.”
He felt her question in the air.
“Henry,” he clarified. “Don’t call me that.”
Her face fell and she swallowed deeply, but held her chin high.
“What happened?” He didn’t know what else to say.
“It’s all right,” she said in the soothing voice he hated, because of just how much he wanted to believe her. Because really, he did believe her—that maybe it could be all right.
“What’s all right, Ms. Ashton? That I’m a monster?” He looked to Arne, and heat flushed his face, more than just the warmth of the fever. “How could you betray me like that?”
“She already knew.” Arne looked upset too, since his face appeared darker than usual and he stepped toward him in the passionate way he rarely did. “She came to me last night, came to the gate—desperate to save you. And you’re delusional if you think I would turn her away. If she hadn’t come, you’d be dead.”
Henry ignored Arne’s words, scrunching his eyes. His chest was heavy, and if he let himself, he could have cried. He didn’t know why and it didn’t make sense, but he felt it, building up inside.
She knew who he was.
She knew what he was. It wasn’t just Arne who had betrayed him. “How long have you known?” he asked quietly, keeping his eyes closed, still clutching the blanket around his waist while grasping the edge of the sofa.
Her voice was small, even scared. “Weeks.”
His eyelids shot open. One of her hands kept the blanket over herself, not to keep herself shielded like him, since she was clothed—perhaps she was cold?—and her other tucked her hair behind her ear. She looked tired, too.
“It was hard to miss,” she went on after a swallow. “Really, it was obvious. I’m surprised I didn’t know the first time I met you.”
None of it made sense—mostly, why she would know and continue to meet him every night, continue to walk with him every morning as though he was a normal person, instead of running the other direction; how she could even touch him or kiss him, knowing what he was. Even before this, he had wondered those things, wondered how she could meet his mouth with as much passion as he had met hers, after the way he’d treated her. But now, knowing he was this…
His head spun and again he closed his eyes. “I…You knew…”
“Hen—” She cut herself off, and the sound was an unpleasant one, his name getting caught in her throat. It seemed as painful to her as it was to him. “Mr. Clayton,” she corrected after a light throat clearing, “you need to lie down. You’re coming off both the poison and the mor—”
“The poison?” he asked, his eyes again shooting to her, then to Arne. How much had his only confidant told her? “How did you know about the poison?”
Folding her arms, she threw him an exasperated glare. “What do you take me for? We do have the same book, Mr. Clayton.”
He stood on the deck of a ship, rolling over a choppy, stormy sea. He wondered how long he could fight the desire to throw up. She touched his arm and the sensation made him jerk, since she felt cold against his feverish skin.
“You’re burning up,” she said. She tried making him sit, but he didn’t.
“How can you touch me?” he blurted, his voice bitter and eyes narrow. “How can you even look at me, Ms. Ashton, knowing what I am?”
She recoiled, and her own face darkened a shade. With her free hand on her hip, her eyes smoldered with a damp passion. “You’re not a monster, Henry. And yes, I’m calling you that, because Henry’s your name and I think we’re past the point of formal regards.”
“Are you blind!” he shouted, his eyes bulging. “I am a monster. That’s what I am! You’ve seen what I can do, what instincts I have to fight.”
“But you do fight them.” Her eyes appeared sadder than he’d ever seen, and it was just enough to lower his shoulders, just enough to lower his heart rate ever so slightly. She shook her head, her voice soft. “I wish you could see, for just a second, what I see when I look into your eyes. Yours and his.”
“Yeah?” he asked tiredly. “And what do you see?”
“I see a man who carries the weight of the world on his shoulders, a man who lives every day under the pressure of his past mistakes. I see a man who, for longer than a lifetime, has suffered for something he doesn’t deserve. I see a man, not a monster.” She ne
ared. “I see a beautiful soul. You deserve happiness, Henry.”
He huffed and looked away, even through the heavy heat in his heart—the kind that clashed with the rage he now had to dig inside himself to find. “You couldn’t possibly know…”
“I don’t have to know. But your past doesn’t make you who you are.”
His short laugh of disbelief made another wave of nausea take his breath. “On the contrary. My past has made me exactly what I am.”
“I said it doesn’t make you who you are.”
“Sorry,” he sarcastically retorted. “My past has made me exactly who I am.”
“Then why don’t I see it?”
“Because you’re someone who can find beauty in a dandelion.” Even he heard the offense in his voice, despite the fact that it was one of the very things he loved about her.
“And I see it in you, too. I will always see it, no matter how much you try to hate me.”
“Ms. Ashton,” he said, bringing a hand to his eyes while leaning against the back of the couch. He didn’t know how much longer he could stand. “What do you want from me?”
“I want you to stop hiding from me. Stop viewing me as a threat.” Her voice was so desperate that he opened his eyes. Hers welled with the desire of her words, and he wanted so badly to give her what she wanted. “I want you. The real you—the one I know at nighttime and the one who kissed me. The one who really sees me. Because that side of you isn’t afraid of me. That side of you knows me.” She paused. “Let me love you, Henry.”
He sank to the couch, his legs still trembling, and all he could do was shake his head at the way his heart felt pierced by numerous hooks, then pulled in every direction. It was a pain unlike the rest, and he didn’t understand. How badly he wanted to be the man she spoke of—how badly he ached for it—but he was saving her, and him, from the day when she would finally wake up and realize what he was.
She sounded nervous, even unsure, when she said, “If…if you don’t feel anything for me, then I accept that, and I’ll walk out and never bother you again. But if you do, I—”
“No,” he shook his head. “No.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t deserve it!” Bracing himself, he shot to his feet again, and he couldn’t be formal anymore, didn’t want to. “Dammit, Elizabeth! I don’t deserve your love. No man is worthy of it, as far as I’m concerned, so how could I ever be?”
With tight lips, she fought the tears pooling in the corners of her eyes. “Stop speaking of me as though I’m perfect. You, of all people, know I’m not. You’ve seen my dark side!”
“Dark side?” He nearly laughed. “You mean your human side?”
“I’m no more human than you. You know what I’ve done, what I did before I came—”
“We’ve already been through that. You did the best with what you were given.”
“And so did you,” she said without missing a beat. “Henry, you still accepted me after I almost lost it on Brian, and even after I told you how I got here. It’s time for you to let me accept you.”
He shook his head and glanced at Arne, who appeared to be moved and livid at the same time. “Did Arne tell you the kind of man I was, Elizabeth?”
She hesitated. “No.”
“I think one of his most classic descriptions is ‘A good man who’d just lost his way.’”
“It’s the truth, is it not?” Arne said, speaking for the first time in a long while and meeting Henry’s eyes just as fiercely. “And it was in one thing only you lost your way.”
“That one thing is what I was judged on. The rest doesn’t matter.”
Arne looked to be on the verge of laughter. “Doesn’t matter? Since when does helping the needy—and saving thousands of jobs your father almost cut before you saved the company, mind you—not matter?” He looked to Elizabeth before Henry could respond. “For your information, dear Elizabeth, Henry had a bigger heart than anyone I’d ever known, and still does. It was why I started working for him in the first place, after his father passed away.”
Henry groaned through his teeth, ignoring him. Instead, he closed in on Elizabeth. She kept the blanket over her while folding her arms, staring up at him in the defiant way that was her own. “The women, did he mention them—the ones whose names I don’t even remember?”
“No,” she said again.
He looked her squarely in the eyes, telling himself not to waver as he said: “I slept with too many to count. A new one nearly every night—some who even felt I took it too far. I had no rules, nor did I give thought to the occasional wedding rings some women tried to hide. I hardly batted an eye as I used them and sent them away. Raw, meaningless passion.” She faltered only slightly, but the way she swallowed and blinked said it had been hard for her to hear—just like he’d intended it to be. “You might want to be with me despite the fact that I’m a monster, but can you honestly say you still want me after that? After you know just one of the many reasons I am one?”
“You’ve hidden your whole life,” she said instead of answering. “And you’ve done a damn good job at fooling everyone. Even before your curse. But that person you’re portraying—before and now—isn’t you. You need to forgive yourself, let it go.”
“You don’t know.”
“I know enough. I know you’ve made mistakes. But you do have a heart, like Arne said. I haven’t been fooled, Henry. I’ve seen it, from the very first night I was here and during the fleeting moments you let me in. And it’s infuriating that you can’t see it—that you’re not willing to!”
He sighed, so ready to give in. Closing his eyes, he again brought his fingers to his eyes. “I,” he started tiredly, softly. “Thank you for saving me, Elizabeth. I mean that. But…you shouldn’t have.”
“Henry…” she breathed.
He was about to speak again, but something caught his eye. It wasn’t even the t-shirt she wore, which he just noticed for the first time was one of his own. It was the blanket she kept over herself. She was hiding something. Avoiding questions all together, he pulled it off of her, too quickly for her to take hold of it, and she clutched the air. Her entire forearm was bandaged, from elbow to wrist, the white cloth failing to hide three bloody streaks. Rage boiled inside him, cooking his blood, his heart. As he stared, chest heaving, he said, “I…did this?” He felt sick, and his knees almost buckled.
“It was an accident,” she said cautiously. “When the poison—”
“You tried to hide this from me?”
“Yes, for the same reason I didn’t want to tell you I knew. I was afraid you’d blame yourself. I didn’t want to lose you.”
He brought a hand to his head. Everything spun, even her and the red on her arm.
“Henry, look at me.” He did, or tried to, but his eyes were out of focus. “This wasn’t your fault. It was an accident.”
“An accident?” He lost it, drowned in self-loathing. “These accidents are all I’ve been trying to protect you from, Elizabeth! And Aglaé…” He exhaled, trying to steady the choppy sea in his head.
“I can handle it, Henry.”
“I can’t…What if I can’t save you from her?” His voice was desperate, and he realized he was grasping her by the shoulder. “What if I can’t save you from me?”
Her brows pulled together, and he could tell she didn’t know what to say. His eyes found her arm and he swallowed at the way it sickened him, at how it was from his hand. “You should have stayed away, Elizabeth. From the very beginning.”
“You’re the one who came! I tried to honor our deal, but there you were, waiting outside every night. And it wasn’t until I realized it was actually you that I decided to meet you. You came to me.”
“It was you who wouldn’t leave well enough alone!”
She stared, and he wanted to drown in her eyes, never failing to remind him of his forest. “How could I forget you existed? How could I pretend you weren’t real and that your soul didn’t speak to mine?”
<
br /> Sighing, he placed his free hand on his hip. “Get out.” He said the words before he could think them through.
She recoiled in surprise, perhaps in pain.
“I won’t do this anymore. I will not put your life in danger. I can’t, Elizabeth.” He glanced at her arm one last time before gritting his teeth and turning away.
“Henry…” It was Arne.
“Out!” he shouted, not bothering to turn, and his eyes burned along with his heaving, tight chest. Maybe now she would see him for what he was. Maybe now was the time she would wake to reality.
It took a moment for the bustling behind him to begin, and with a weak voice, she gave Arne instructions for caring for his wound and fever. On the last word, her voice tanked, giving in to emotion. Then, with soft footsteps and an even softer closing of the front door, she was gone. He sank to the couch, burying his face in his hands.
“She saved your life, you hotheaded ass!” Arne shouted.
The image of Arne swam in his vision, his friend veiled by tears. Henry wiped them angrily. “I can’t believe you let her stay.”
“She wouldn’t leave, no matter how hard I tried. And frankly I’m glad she didn’t, because I wouldn’t have known what to do. I’ll say it again, because I don’t think you understand: you would be dead right now if it wasn’t for her. And you really think I could send her away, knowing she could save you, just to protect your secret? Sorry, my friend, but protecting you is more important than protecting your secret, especially from someone who already knows it.”
Again lowering his face into his hands, Henry willed the sickness to leave his body.
“You’re a damn fool. You’re doing everything possible to lose the only woman who’s ever really loved you for who you are—loved you despite the fact that you’re a damn, blind fool!”
“She doesn’t love me, Arne,” he tried denying.
Hemlock Veils Page 30