It’s the liquor. It must be the liquor. I just need to think. To stay calm and think.
A deep breath reminds me of the smell of those sheaths we wore during the reaping because that rotting smell, it’s here too.
Rotting earth.
He smelled like it too that night when he woke me. When I was following the little girl down here in my dream.
He’d been here.
But there’s more now. Another scent. That of rotting corpses.
My mind moves to the little girl.
I lie down because all of a sudden, my head is too heavy to bear. But before I can close my eyes, before I can sleep, I have to do one more thing. One more thing to burn away that night. Burn any evidence of it. Destroy the Willow Girl Legacy.
I drop to my knees on the ground, the stones rough because this dress provides no protection. I begin to gather all the sheets of paper because ripping them apart isn’t enough. They need to be destroyed and only fire can truly destroy. Can turn them to ash.
Because I think I’ve done what he warned me not to do.
Because I think I’ve fallen in love with him and I can’t.
Because this…seeing this…it’s not me he wants. It never was.
I never was.
Tears drop fat and heavy all around me and I don’t know how there are so many to cry.
My hands and arms are dirty when I’ve collected most of the scraps and I see my sister’s face in pieces before me. See her eyes.
I think it’s the one where she’s looking out as Sebastian carries her away and she’s staring at me and I stare back and it’s not her fault. I know that. But some part of me, it hates her.
I feel along the floor for the spilled matches. I need them. I knock over a candle in my attempt to grab the box and hot wax splashes on my arm, making me wince. The flame goes out, though, and I take care to pick up the matches and not knock the candles away.
The first strike doesn’t work, neither does the second, but then, the third takes and a flame bursts in my hand and I smell the scent of sulfur and look into the flame.
I look at my sister’s face, at her eyes watching me. And I drop the match into the pile of papers, and I’m surprised at how quickly the fire takes.
Almost like the pages themselves, like they wanted to burn.
To be erased from history.
From memory.
How do you burn them from skin, though?
The heat has me sitting back and an instant of terror grips me when I think what if the fire spreads? What if I can’t get out?
But then there’s a sound, almost like a heavy lock being lifted and the door slams against the wall and Gregory is there, and he looks at me and he looks at the fire and all the candles and I see horror on his face and all I can think is he’s angry that his precious sketches are gone.
That his precious Helena is gone.
And I want to rage.
I want to scream and roar but there’s a loud crashing noise behind me and as my mouth moves to form a scream, his arms are around me and he’s hauling me up and pulling me back and setting me outside of the room, out of danger.
He returns inside and I sit there and hug my knees to myself as he takes the blanket and I watch him put the fire out until all that’s left is black smoke and ash.
Ashes of the past.
Only memories now.
Memories are a curse. To remember is cruel.
And I can’t ever seem to forget.
Gregory smells of smoke when he steps out into the hallway and he looks at me, crouches down to touch my face.
“Are you hurt?”
I just stare back at him. “I was right, wasn’t I?”
“Right?”
He looks confused but I can’t think about that.
I push up on my knees and they’re raw, scratched up by this unforgiving stone. I grip this shirt and I’m tearing at it, ripping it apart, but it doesn’t give, not right away.
But he’s still and he lets me.
He lets me open it, push it off his shoulders, lets it hang halfway down his arms and I touch them, look at my hands on him—so small around powerful muscle, so pale against all that ink.
I get up and I walk around him, and I’m coughing from the smoke and the smell of rot and I look at his back, at the chaos of tattoos there, image upon image carved into his skin.
“Amelia.” His voice is low, quiet and calm.
“No!” Mine is the opposite.
I pound my fist into his shoulder.
“I hate you. I hate you.”
“Stop, Amelia.” But he doesn’t move to stop me and he’s on his knees at my feet and I’m beating my fists into him and he’s letting me. He’s just letting me.
I hit him again and again. Harder. I want to scratch away his skin, rip it away, dig away the past with my fingernails.
I want to make him hurt.
I want to make him bleed.
And that sound, that of a mad woman, it’s me. It’s my screams.
He stands up finally, finally. He turns, takes my wrists and walks me backward, presses me into the wall.
“No!” I yell again, fighting him. Wrestling against him but wanting him. Needing him.
Needing to hate him.
Needing him to want me.
“Stop!”
His eyes are dark, and he looks me over and in the next instant, he’s pressing his mouth to mine and he’s kissing me and the back of my head hurts from the stone, but he won’t let up and so I bite. I bite him hard and I want it to hurt and all I taste is the metallic taste of his blood and the salt of my tears and this is what we’ll have.
This is for us. For him and me.
Blood and tears and pain and hate.
“I’m not her,” I yell when he pulls back a little, his breathing short, ragged, my fight draining, leaving my limbs heavy, seating a brick inside my belly. “I’m not her.”
He watches me, fingers hurting my face when I try to turn away.
“I’m not her.” I’m crying. Sobbing. “I’m not. I won’t ever be her.”
He’s tearing at my dress, ripping it. He’s hurried and his hands are rough, and the stone is shredding the skin of my back.
“I don’t want her,” he says finally. “I don’t want her.”
I dig my nails into his face, and he doesn’t stop me. Just keeps ripping at my clothes.
“I love you, Amelia. You.”
I don’t hear him. I can’t. “I’m not her.” It’s like a mantra. Like a never-ending chant. “I’m not her.”
“You stupid, stupid girl. It’s you. You’re for me.”
Skin collects beneath my nails and he presses his body against mine, trapping me between him and the wall and undoing his jeans, shifting his grip to my hips, lifting me higher only to impale me on his cock, thick and ready and painful, painful enough to make me scream.
He looks at me when I do and thrusts again and I know he won’t stop, and I don’t want him to.
I want him. I want him like this.
And I hate him at the same time. I hate him for having wanted her.
When he kisses me, the blood on his lips smears my mouth, my face and when he fucks me, it’s hard and he’s hurting me, and I’m clinging to him and his eyes, it’s like they see inside me and I think he’s going to split me in two because he can’t get close enough either. He can’t get close enough.
And all I can think is how beautiful he is. Even now. Even like this. How very fucking beautiful like that angel inked into my back.
Breaking.
Broken.
Beautiful.
A broken monster and an angel in one.
23
Gregory
I push the image of what I saw behind the crumbling stone wall from my mind. I’ll deal with that later.
My shirt is hanging from my shoulders, Amelia’s dress is a rag. And we both stink of that room and smoke and fire and I think I never want to go back there again. I
never want to go back underground again.
I pull out of her, set her down.
Her hands fall off my shoulders and when I stand back, I watch her slide to the floor, watch her bring dirty hands to her face, wipe away a tear only to leave a smear of dirt on her temple.
When she looks up at me, her eyes, the look inside them, it breaks me a little.
I thought that night, the night of the branding, I thought that broke me. But I was wrong because this, the way she looks at me now, this is what breaks me.
“Amelia.”
She puts a hand on the ground, tries to push up to stand and when she stumbles, almost falling back down, I catch her and when she shoves at me, I smell whiskey and fire.
“How much did you drink?” I ask when I have her up on her feet. If I let her go, she’ll fall.
She slaps her hands flat on my chest and I see the effort it takes her to straighten.
“I’m not her,” she says again.
When she tries to shove me away, I take hold of her wrists and pull her arms to her sides then behind her to hold them in one of mine as I grip the hair at the back of her head with my other hand and force her head backward.
“Hear me, Amelia,” I say, pulling her closer so my nose is almost touching hers. “I don’t want her.”
“I’m not—”
“I. Don’t. Want. Her.”
The rage in her eyes gives way to hurt and my heart twists to see it and she should never have been down here. Never have seen that room.
I should have destroyed all of those sketches long ago. I should have set them on fire myself.
I soften my grip in her hair and she drops the top of her head into my chest and I hear her cry and feel the wet warmth of tears and I’m so fucking finished with tears. So fucking finished with the past.
I bow my head, set my lips on top of hers. I kiss her and I don’t think she hears my whisper. I know she doesn’t.
When I started this, it was about Helena.
When I decided this, it was because I didn’t get the girl.
Because I wanted to punish Helena.
But it’s different now. Everything is different. It’s been different ever since I first walked into that apartment and saw those sketches and inside them, I saw her. I saw Amelia.
I wrap my arms around her and she’s freezing.
“It’s you, Amelia. You.” I push hair from her face. “You’re for me.”
She doesn’t fight me when I lift her up, but she does turn her face away, hides it in the crook of my neck.
I want her out of here. Out of this cold. This dark.
I carry her to my room, to my bed. I lay her down and take off the rags of her dress. I clean the cuts on her feet from the broken bottle of whiskey and when I’m done, I lie beside her, and I kiss her cheeks, her temples, her eyelids. Take her hand in mine and feel how soft she is, and I’ve never wanted to be this close to anyone before. No, it’s not that. It’s not a want.
“It was me,” I say.
She looks at me, and I think how tired she must be. How utterly drained.
“Charlie. Liona. The apartment. It was all me. I hired them. I paid them. I set it all up. It was all me from the very beginning.”
She turns away, but I touch her face, make her look at me.
“I could have just taken you, like I did anyway, but I wanted the game. I wanted to fuck with you. And you were right. It was all to hurt her.”
Her forehead wrinkles and I think about everything she would have seen down there. All those scenes from the island.
Sebastian. Helena. Me.
“Stop,” she says weakly, trying again to look away.
I shake my head.
“But then I saw the drawings,” I say. “Everything changed when I saw that sketchbook. Every single thing.”
Her sad eyes study me.
“And then I watched you all those nights. I saw your face. And what I saw, you were like this…” I search for the words and wipe away the tears sliding down her cheeks and I see my gloved hand, and I think how strange it is, how that glove doesn’t belong.
Not anymore.
“You were like this strange, beautiful, broken thing. You were in pieces. And all that time, what I wanted, what I was doing, was collecting all those pieces of you and I didn’t even know it.”
She takes my hand in hers and I can see in her eyes what she would have seen down in that room and I feel it again, that angry fire.
When she begins to peel off the glove, I don’t stop her.
She sets the glove aside.
I don’t know what I expect she’ll do when she sees it. Jump. Scream. Be repulsed.
But she does none of those things. Instead, she touches the scarred, raw skin of my hand. Traces the deep crescent-shaped wedge burned out of my palm.
“You stopped him from branding her.”
I snort. “I’m not the hero and my brother isn’t the monster. It was because of me it would have happened at all. I only stopped what I started.”
“Did you love her?”
I lean my head against the headboard and study the ceiling for a long time before looking back at her.
“I need you to answer that.”
She deserves an answer to this question. I know it. “What happened on that island had nothing to do with love. Not where I was concerned.”
Sadness, only sadness.
“Did you hear what I said to you?” I ask.
“What?”
“Downstairs. In the catacombs.”
“You said you don’t want her.”
“What else?”
Her gaze shifts to her lap, thick lashes hiding her eyes from me.
“What else, Amelia?”
It takes her an eternity to look up at me. “You said that you love me.”
24
Amelia
I watch him watch me.
He touches my face, leans toward me, kisses my mouth.
I close my eyes, and he’s so gentle, so soft with me.
I put my hand on his chest and I kiss him back and it’s like we’re doing it for the first time. Like this, like it’s the first time we touch. First time we kiss.
“I love you,” he says against my mouth.
I slide my fingers into his hair as he rolls me onto my back and lies on top of me and I like his weight on me. It feels safe and for some reason, I find myself crying again and he’s kissing me harder and I think about what he warned me not to do that first day. When he told me not to fall in love with him.
I think I’ve loved him for a long time. Long before he brought me to this house.
He draws back, looks at my tears.
I shake my head, pull him to me. We smell like smoke and earth, but I don’t care.
I kiss him again, wrap one leg around his middle and when he slides inside me, he looks at me again, like he likes watching me take him.
“Why?” I ask.
“Why what?” He stops moving, pushes dark hair from my face, his fingers soft and warm on my skin, warmer than that leather.
“Why do you love me?”
He smiles. It’s the softest smile I’ve ever seen. “Because I’m in pieces too and only when I’m inside you am I whole.”
He moves inside me and he’s warm and big and I feel safe, feel like he’ll never let me go and I cling to him because how he feels, it’s how I feel too.
I think I needed him to take me like he did. I think there wasn’t ever anything else for me. Never anyone else.
He draws up a little, watching me as his thrusts go deeper, faster, harder, and he looks at me like he does, I arch my back and I lean up to kiss him, eyes open, to lick his cut lip and kiss him and feel him thicken inside me and we come together, connected in every way, and I think I can’t ever be without him. I can’t ever be away from this man. Because those pieces he’s collected, he’s still got them, and I don’t want them back because I won’t ever be whole without him.
But as th
e orgasm passes and we lie panting together, the heavy weight of reality returns.
“I need to tell you something,” I say.
He rolls onto his back, looks up at the ceiling.
“Helena’s pregnant.”
His reaction is different than I expect, and he nods slowly and the look in his eyes, it’s strange, almost resigned.
“You knew?” I ask.
“I found out the other night,” he says, shifting his gaze to me.
“How?”
“My mother.”
“How did she know?”
“It doesn’t matter, not anymore. None of it does.”
I have to say this next part. I don’t want to. God knows, I don’t want to, but I have to. And I know he’s thought about it too.
“You could be the father.”
As if on cue, my phone that’s charging beside the bed, buzzes. I look at it, watch it vibrate along the nightstand. It’s face-down so I don’t see who it is. I reach for it but I’m too late and the screen shows the missed call.
All of the missed calls.
I sit up and scroll through them. Scroll through call after call.
Sebastian.
They’re all from him.
There must be twenty attempts in the last twenty-four hours.
I push my hair behind my ear. “Something’s wrong.”
Before I can call him back, it vibrates in my hand. It’s Sebastian again.
I swipe to answer. “Hello?”
I’m right. Something’s wrong. I can hear it in the way he breathes. Feel it in the weight of silence.
“Where have you been?” His voice is strained, hoarse, like he can just manage to get the words out.
“What’s happened?” I’m already crying.
“She tried to call you. I fucking tried—” His voice breaks.
“Where’s my sister?” I ask, suddenly frantic. “Where’s Helena?”
“You need to come.”
“Where’s Helena?” I scream.
“The babies.” He stops like he can’t go on and silence seeps into the emptiness.
The babies?
“What?” I finally ask, my voice barely above a whisper.
He doesn’t need to say it though. I know. I already know.
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