Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel Book 3)

by Sierra Simone

  Poe’s father looks down at the scotch. “Yes.”

  “The records show the call was short,” Auden says quietly. “Less than ten minutes. If it’s any comfort at all, and I understand that it may not be, I think she couldn’t have known what my father intended. I think she called to check on him, and he begged her to come back, and she did—because she was a good person, and because she loved Thornchapel, and because she wanted to help.”

  David nods, blinking fast, and Poe’s eyes are burning too. She suddenly misses her mother so much that she can’t breathe, that she can’t speak, that her throat and her chest are knotted tight.

  “Thank you for sharing all this with us,” Auden goes on. “I know—I know it’s not worth much. But I am truly sorry for what my father did to your family. I would give anything to undo it.”

  “I don’t hold you accountable for Ralph’s sins,” David says heavily. “I hold Ralph accountable. And that cursed place. If only we’d refused to celebrate Lammas there . . . the door wouldn’t have opened. No one would have needed to die.”

  He gives a tearful, unhappy look to Poe. “And your mother might still be alive.”

  Part III

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Proserpina

  “We can’t go out there again,” Auden says as he paces in front of the fireplace, one hand stabbed into his hair and the other balled at his side.

  Rain lashes against the tall library windows, as if the very sky is mirroring Auden’s mood, and even though it’s almost July, the space is filled with a dim, stormy gloom. Every so often, thunder cracks and rolls over the moors and down to the house, rattling the panes in the windows and sending Sir James Frazer to his feet to bark indignantly at the air.

  “I’m not going to argue with you,” Rebecca says. She’s sitting on a sofa with Delphine’s head in her lap, and she strokes her submissive’s hair while she talks. “But I do think we need to qualify what we mean when we say go.”

  Murmurs of agreement come from around the room. From everyone except me.

  “Do we mean only for Lammas?” Rebecca continues. “Do we mean no rituals at all? Do we mean we shouldn’t go out there at any time, for any reason?”

  Auden drops his hand from his hair. “I don’t know,” he says. “Definitely not for Lammas. As for the rest . . . ”

  He looks over to me, and I look down at my hands, which are currently fussing with the hem of my dress. I know he’s trying to protect me, and I’m grateful.

  I also have no idea what to do.

  It’s been three days since we returned home from Kansas. Three days since my father and Samson told us their story, and three days since we learned what they did in the thorn chapel that summer. I also told the group everything Dr. Davidson told me, and confessed my dreams of Estamond and her death.

  We agreed to talk about it once we met back here at Thornchapel, but now that we’re here, I feel more confused than ever.

  It should be a simple solution. Easy math. Avoid the thorn chapel, and nothing bad will happen to us like it did to my mother and Estamond. The end.

  But then why do I feel so uneasy?

  “Do we actually believe in this, though?” Saint asks after a moment. He’s standing behind the sofa, as still as Auden is in motion. “It’s not that I think your dads were lying,” he says to me and Rebecca, “but it’s hard for me to imagine the door is a real thing. And even harder for me to imagine that—if it is real—that it could possibly matter to us. The only reason it mattered for your mother, Poe, was because of Auden’s father, and we’re not murdering psychopaths like him. No offense, Auden.”

  “None taken,” says Auden mildly. “Although I feel compelled to remind you that he’s your father too.”

  “I’d be sad not to have Lammas in the thorn chapel,” Delphine says from Rebecca’s lap. “It’s not like we’re going to go starkers and decide to kill each other. It’s just a door. So what if it shows up? We’ll just pretend it’s not there.”

  “I don’t think we’ll have to pretend very hard, Delphine,” Saint says.

  “Because you don’t think it’s real,” Becket clarifies.

  “Because even if it is real—which is a very big if—there’s no guarantee it will manifest again. And even if it does, it doesn’t have to be terrible. We get to assign the meanings we want to it and all that. Isn’t that right, Father Hess?”

  “Some meanings are inherent to themselves, Mr. Martinez,” replies Becket.

  “You mean the meanings of magic, invisible doors?”

  “Well, if you’re going to be reductive about it, then—”

  “Look, my father wouldn’t have told us about this if it weren’t true,” interrupts Rebecca. “He doesn’t deal in fantasy or delusion. I had to ask him to stop reading the Harry Potter books aloud to me when I was a girl because he kept pausing to explain that the magic at Hogwarts was logically impossible and also that Dumbledore was criminally negligent in the care of children. The man does not exaggerate and he doesn’t credit anything he hasn’t personally seen or experienced. If he says there is a door, then there is. And if he says it’s dangerous, then it is.”

  “You don’t want to go out there either?” asks Delphine, tilting her head to look at her Mistress.

  Rebecca sighs. “Delph—”

  “Sometimes things are dangerous,” Becket says. “But that doesn’t mean they’re bad. Arguably the best things in life are dangerous, because they have the power to be.”

  “Or—lone voice of dissent here—they’re not dangerous at all,” Saint says, “and we’re letting old ghost stories scare us away from something we enjoy doing.”

  “Since when are you pro-chapel?” Auden asks. “You’ve always been reluctant to go out there before.”

  “Probably since you fucked him there, Auden,” Rebecca says dryly.

  Saint glowers at her from behind the sofa.

  “Maybe it doesn’t matter,” I say. The others turn to look at me; outside, the rain surges against the window, turning the library into a colossal drum made of stone and books and glass.

  “What do you mean?” Rebecca asks.

  I glance over at Auden. Of all of us, he’s the only one who’s truly seen the door in waking life, and he’s the only one who might understand. “I think the door might appear whether we go there on Lammas or not. I don’t think it’s beholden to us or our actions.”

  “That’s excellent news, then,” Saint says. “If it doesn’t give a shit about what we do, then no one has to be human-sacrificed to it anyway.”

  Auden glares at him, his eyes dipping meaningfully to me. “Let’s not make light of this. People have died.”

  “But I still don’t understand what harm a manky old door is,” Delphine protests. She’s held out her arm for Rebecca to caress now, and Rebecca obliges—a wry, amused smile at her lips as she does, like she’s too charmed to stop herself from doing it. “Can’t we just ignore the door, like Saint said?”

  Auden’s hazel eyes meet mine in the storm-infused murk, and I know what he’s thinking. It’s all well and good to feel like the door doesn’t matter when you’re here, but when you’re there—when it’s in front of you . . .

  “We can ignore it because we’re not going out there,” Auden finally says. “Not for Lammas. Not for any other ritual. As far as I’m concerned, we’re done with all of it.”

  Delphine sits up and glares at him. “You don’t get to decide that for us!”

  “Someone has to,” says Auden, his mouth set like a king’s.

  “And that someone should be you?” Delphine pushes, her tone outraged.

  “Yes, for fuck’s sake, yes!” Auden yells as lightning splits the sky outside. For a moment, the world is bright and sharp, and then it’s plunged back into gloom as the answering thunder roars overhead. “Don’t you see?” he asks. “It was my father who killed Poe’s mother, it is my family that owns this land and has been doing horrible things with it for centuries. This is my
responsibility, and I refuse—I mean, absolutely refuse, Delly—to let one other person get hurt. I’m not doing it. And if that makes me draconian, if that makes me unreasonable and a ruiner of fun, then so fucking be it. I’d rather have you all miserable and safe than hedonistic and dead. Am I very understood?”

  For a few seconds, the only sound in the room is that of the rain against the glass and the low roll of thunder over the hills outside.

  I think of our parents—all arguing viciously about what to do—and I wonder if we’re about to erupt in the same kind of a sour tumult. If the next person to speak is going to tell Auden to fuck off, that he’s not the boss of us, that he has no right to choose for us, and then we’ll be fighting for real.

  I wonder if this is the end for our strange little group, our small, kinky kingdom out here in the moors, and dread curdles in my stomach.

  But the moment passes.

  Becket concedes first. “If you think it’s for the best, then of course we agree with you.”

  “And we can be hedonistic here at the house,” Rebecca reminds us all as the rain against the window abates a little. “Without the chapel.”

  Delphine issues a huffy, “Fine.”

  Saint nods, but he doesn’t speak.

  Auden puts a shaking hand to the mantel and leans his forehead against it. He looks like he wants to close his eyes and sleep for a hundred years. “Thank you.”

  “It’s your birthday,” I remember aloud, looking up at him. “Lammas. I’d forgotten.”

  He rolls his head a little on his hand so he can give me a self-deprecating smile. “I promise I can survive not having an outdoor orgy for my birthday.”

  “But we could still do something special. Maybe it would feel less like we were missing out on something if we did.”

  “Yes!” Delphine exclaims, grumpiness instantly gone. “I shall appoint myself the official Auden Guest birthday coordinator then, if there are no objections? No? That’s what I thought.”

  “No objections,” Rebecca says. “You always make everything so easy.”

  Delphine blinks once and then shoves to her feet, like she can’t bear to be sitting still for a minute more. “Where do we think Abby is with supper?” she asks brightly. “I should go check.”

  Rebecca watches her leave, her expression fading into something tight and closed off. Sir James lifts his head to watch her go, but then looks up at Auden and, reassured his master isn’t leaving, stays where he is.

  Becket stands up. “Anyone want a drink?”

  “Me,” Saint says, following Becket over to the antique sideboard that serves as the library’s drinks bar. “Poe, you want anything?”

  “In a minute,” I say. Auden is leaving the room—quietly, like he does when he doesn’t want anyone to notice—and Sir James is now up and at his heels.

  “I’ll take one,” Rebecca says, getting to her feet. “Something stiff. Do not make a joke about that, St. Sebastian.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” says Saint.

  “Uh-huh.”

  Becket turns on some sad-boy indie music just as Delphine returns to tell us Abby will be bringing supper into the library within the hour. She doesn’t go immediately to Rebecca’s side, but instead wanders over to the window. Something that Rebecca observes over the rim of her glass, her face unreadable.

  When Saint and Becket start arguing about the music and when Rebecca answers a call on her phone, I get to my feet and leave. It’s not a choice really, more like a compulsion, an instinct that won’t be denied.

  I go after Auden.

  The storm precludes some of the usual hiding places around the estate, but I think he would have gone to the tower anyway. He seems to seek it out when he’s upset, this place where he used to hide from his father, and this isn’t the first time I’ve come up here to find him standing at the window, looking out over the grounds. The only difference is today those grounds are veiled in rain—even the steep rise up to the moors is utterly shrouded from view—and he’s not standing at all, he’s sitting on the floor and staring at his hands.

  The dim light coming through the windows casts stained glass roses on the floor and across the long sprawl of Auden’s legs. The thorns are the color of pine needles in winter, the petals the color of old blood. The air itself is tarnished silver, nearly bronze.

  Sir James is curled on one side of his master, his head resting on his paws.

  I make to sit on the other side of Auden, just to be near him, but the moment I get close, he grabs me and hauls me into his lap. I’m crushed to his chest, and he buries his face in my hair.

  “Little bride.”

  “You left,” I say, trying to nuzzle him back.

  “I was upset,” he says, his voice muffled by my hair.

  “About the door?”

  He pulls away and shakes his head.

  “No. Or rather, not only about the door.” He finds my wrists with his hands, circling them and pulling them between us.

  His eyes are on where his thumbs and middle fingers meet over my pulse points. He says, in a voice barely audible over the rain, “I’ve been thinking since we left your father’s house. About everything. About what happened to your mother. What happened to Jennifer Martinez and everyone else who got close to him. And what if I’m like that too? What if I’m like him?”

  There’s no question whom he means. “You’re not,” I tell him. “I promise, you’re not.”

  “But look at what I do to you,” he whispers. He tightens his grip on my wrists until the pain flickers up my arms.

  “You know I like it,” I say.

  “I don’t mean the kink, Proserpina.”

  Suddenly I’m on my back with him over me, my wrists pinned to the floor on either side of my head. My skirt has fallen up to expose my sex, and it gives a wet kick at our position. At having my Sir over me and restraining me, at having his tormented eyes on mine and his jaw tight with something we only barely have the words for.

  “I mean this,” he says. “I mean that when I look at you, the first word I think is not your name, it’s ‘mine.’ When I say ‘I love you,’ I mean ‘you’re mine.’ When I hold you down, when I tie you up, when I fuck you, that is what my body is telling yours: mine, mine, mine.”

  I’m arching underneath him—not in distress, but in need. “I am yours,” I whisper back.

  “What if you shouldn’t be?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Auden. When I see you, I need you, when I’m with you, I kneel. When you’re touching me, I’m whole, and I don’t care how fucked up it is, I don’t care if it’s wrong, if it’s twisted, if we’re all kinds of broken, this is what I want. You are what I want.”

  Auden’s eyes move over my squirming form, leaving heat in their wake. He stares at my pussy for a minute. “Open your legs,” he says.

  I obey immediately, because they belong to him, just as my cunt does, just as my entire body does.

  He lets go of a wrist and uses one hand to open his pants. But he doesn’t go inside me, no matter how much I writhe and beg for him too. Instead, he rubs his crown against me, up and down my wet seam, denying us.

  “This is what you want?” he asks.

  “Yes, Sir.”

  He ducks his head to bite the exposed upper curve of my breast, hard enough to make me cry out. “And this?”

  “Yes.”

  He moves up, releases my wrist. I’m flipped to my stomach, and before I can even catch my breath, he’s on top of me again, this time pushing inside with a hard thrust that drives the breath right out of my body.

  “And this?” he asks, shoving all the way in. The fit is so tight like this, snug and a little bit painful and a whole lot wonderful. I press my face into the floor and breathe as pleasure and pain sparkle up from my cunt to light my blood on fire.

  “This too? You truly want to be loved like this?”

  “You know I do,” I whisper into the floor. “Please . . . ”

  “Please what?”
he asks. He pushes my legs together to make it tighter for him, planting his knees on the outside of my own. “You want to come?”

  “Yes, Sir,” I gasp. Each thrust feels like it’s going into my belly, into my chest. I could come just like this, even without direct pressure on my clit, if only he’d keep going—

  He stops.

  “Auden, no,” I beg as he slides out. “Please, don’t—”

  “But you wanted it, hmm?” He leans down to bite the back of my neck, and I shudder underneath him. “You wanted me?”

  “Please . . . ”

  I feel his hand on his erection, shuttling slowly up and down his length. He’s fucking his hand instead of me.

  “Auden!”

  He slaps my bottom so fast and so hard that I squeak in surprise. “No. I say when you come. I say when this perfect little body feels release. Because you are mine, and that’s what you wanted, right?”

  “I know what you’re doing,” I say, turning my face to speak. “It won’t work.”

  “And what am I doing, little bride? Enlighten me.”

  “You know you can’t scare me with pain because I get off on it, and so you think you can scare me with selfishness. But it won’t work, Auden. Your selfishness gets me off too. You get me off—your will, your desires—they are mine now, as well as yours. And I know the secret anyway, which is that you’re not selfish. Not really.”

  “Oh, is that so?” His hand is still working his organ, his knuckles grazing the curve of my bottom as he jacks himself off. “I’m not selfish?”

  “Not like how you’re worried—oh—”

  He slides back in, one hand sliding under my stomach to lift my hips slightly off the ground. I realize what he’s doing—he’s making sure there’s no stimulation against my clit so I can’t come. Mean. He’s so mean.

  “How can you be so wet and agreeable when you know what I’m going to deny you?”