He doesn’t though. He says the thing he stopped Saint to say. “What if everyone else picks us, St. Sebastian? You and I?”
“Us for the ritual?” St. Sebastian asks. “Like one of us is the bride?”
He laughs, as if Auden made a joke, but Auden doesn’t laugh back.
Saint sobers.
“I’m okay with that,” he says, his words quick but quiet too. “Are you okay with that?”
“You really think it would be a good idea for us to fuck?” Auden asks. “Really?”
Saint shivers again, like Auden’s chill is finally succeeding where the damp, Dartmoor night couldn’t. “It doesn’t mean anything,” Saint whispers. “Tonight is just a game.”
“People keep saying that, but it doesn’t make it true. And you better believe that if I fuck you, it’s going to mean something.”
“Like what? Revenge? Possession? Finishing what you started eight years ago?”
A low noise rumbles in Auden’s throat—a rough, animal noise. “All of it .”
Saint bites his lip again, and now Auden can’t help it, he just can’t, no matter how much he should hate the boy who hurt him all those years ago, no matter how much he should be mourning Delphine. He twists his other hand in Saint’s shirt and wrenches his pierced Judas up to his mouth.
The kiss is a crash and their lips meet in a collision of flesh and teeth and metal. There’s breath and taste and ferocious, feral energy, as if they’re trying to fight each other, trying to eat each other, and they only have this moment to do it in. And then Auden yanks Saint even closer, one hand moving to thread through Saint’s dark, silky hair and the other hand dropping to the unbelievably tight curve of Saint’s arse, kneading the flesh there as if it already belongs to him. Auden’s just that little bit taller, just enough that Saint’s swelling organ has nowhere to go but against the base of Auden’s own erection, and he wants to stay like this forever, devouring St. Sebastian’s mouth and rubbing his cock against St. Sebastian’s cock and listening to every helpless noise Saint makes as he does.
He wants to.
He also wants Proserpina.
He wants both of them so much he thinks he might be entirely made up of want, he thinks all his thorns are finally puncturing through his skin and out into the real world and everyone will see and they’ll know. His darkness and his light and all the twines and ravels of his depraved, thorny heart.
He breaks off abruptly, terrified of that, terrified of himself. Terrified of how St. Sebastian makes him feel.
He releases his old enemy and Saint staggers back, wiping his mouth and looking stunned.
“What . . . what was that for?” Saint asks in a whisper.
Auden doesn’t have an answer.
“It could be us,” Saint says. “If it’s us, we could be okay. We could be . . . you know. Good. It could be good.”
Fuck , fuck it could be. Auden can picture it, can see Saint’s bared skin, a darker gold than normal in the glow of the fire; he can see the curve of Saint’s backside and the velvet throb of his erection as it beads helplessly with pre-cum at the head. He could pin Saint down and slick up his arse while the others watched, he could push into him with his forearm on the back of Saint’s neck and the fire warm on their skin. He could wrap the thorns around his and Saint’s hands until their story was written in blood from both of them, not just Auden’s blood alone. He could make Saint feel once, just fucking once , how much it hurts to want him.
It hurts so much.
It hurts more than stitches, than bleeding. It hurts more than breaking.
If Auden hurts any more with it, he’ll die.
“It can’t be us,” he manages to say. “It can’t .”
And before he can see how much his words hurt Saint, he turns away and starts back for the house.
Chapter 23
No one looks at the bowl on the table.
“I think it’s the best way,” Becket says finally. “I’ve thought about the consequences of us picking ourselves, and I think this might give us more freedom. To feel like the choice was taken away. And I think it will also free us from arguing about virginity as an abstract patriarchal concept for another hour, because this way the bride can be anyone. So can the lord. And we’ve all said we’re clean, so there aren’t any health worries to affect our choice either.”
We’re in the library right now, all fresh and showered, because the Consecration called for a ritual cleansing beforehand, and no one had been ready to suggest we actually bathe each other, which somehow feels like an even more intimate act than sex. So separate showers it was, and now we’re in warm clothes with our lanterns on the table and raincoats draped across chairs. Half-Christian as the ceremony is, our supplies aren’t what I would have expected from the handful of times I’ve been in the new age shop in Lawrence, Kansas. There are no ceremonial knives or wands, no ornate chalices or bowls of salt.
And we couldn’t find robes, which is just as well, because even though the rain has stopped, there’s no doubt that it’s going to start up again.
Becket has helpfully printed up a paper script of the ceremony for each of us, cribbed from the Consecration and Dartham’s book, and those rest in a neat stack next to long, whippy cuts of roses wrapped in tissue paper. Our thorns.
The cakes and ale ended up being small shortbread cookies Abby made for us and a bottle of Prosecco from Delphine’s never-ending supply. Abby made the cookies stamped with a St. Brigid’s cross on top because we told her we were having a St. Brigid’s Day party, and they’re nestled artfully in a picnic basket along with the wine and some slender glass flutes.
That’s Thornchapel for you. Even when you’re on your way to the muddy, magic sex rite, all the little details must be handled with class. No Tupperware and plastic cups shoved into backpacks at Thornchapel.
“What happened to choosing with intention?” Saint asks. “I seem to remember you giving a little speech about that.”
Becket’s about to answer, but I cut in. “I think this is the best way too. If someone gets chosen and they just can’t do it, then we’ll choose someone else, no big deal.”
Saint darts a fast look over at Auden, who’s currently squatting down to pet Sir James Frazer. “I guess,” Saint says slowly.
I’m still not over what happened between us last night, so my voice is sharp when I say, “Look, no one wants to nominate themselves—that would feel weird and greedy—but it’s impossible to nominate someone else for something like this. The only choice is no choice.”
“Maybe fate will decide,” Delphine says wistfully.
“Fate is a lie,” comes Rebecca’s predictable answer.
Becket rocks up on his heels, like he’s getting ready to launch into a sermon about cynicism, and Saint looks like he’s about to argue some more, and Auden just keeps petting the dog, like our squabbling is some kind of relaxing background noise that he doesn’t need to pay attention to. Except then his green-brown eyes flick up to mine with a perceptive heat that makes me shiver, and I recognize that he’s been paying attention all along.
“Draw, Proserpina,” he tells me. “You go first.”
It’s not an exhortation but a command, and I’m obeying before I even understand why I’m obeying.
Not that I need long to understand why I’m doing it.
It’s Auden. It’s because it’s Auden, and I’m still angry over what happened in the tower, I’m still angry about what I confessed and am embarrassed that he only pushed me into confessing because he was heartbroken over Delphine—but my anger and embarrassment still isn’t enough to stop the curl of pleasure I get when he nods in approval at my obedience.
God, this would all just be so much easier if Saint and Auden weren’t here.
But then if they weren’t here, would I still be trembling with hungry, horny eagerness as I stick my hand into the bowl of paper and pick?
Becket made the slips, and he kept them simple—a black circle for the bride, a b
lack X for the person who will play the lord. So there’s no mistaking what I’ll be doing when I unfold the paper and see the crooked O scrawled in hasty marker.
My blood is running so hot and fast that I think I might be catching fire. Tonight is the night I finally take my not-a-gateway step, tonight is the night when I’ll lose my construct-or-not virginity.
I want this.
I want this.
And I don’t even care who the lord is. I glance around at all my friends, all their eyes trained on me, and I know I’d be safe and happy with any one of them. If it’s Becket, then I know he’ll be thoughtful, and if it’s Delphine, then I know it will be sweet. If it’s Rebecca, and I hope it is, she’ll know exactly what a sub girl needs for her first time.
If it’s Saint or it’s Auden—well, then I don’t know anything except what it’s been like in my dreams, and in my dreams, it’s always been a gorgeous, filthy fuck that leaves me gasping and begging for more, more, more. Even if I hate them both a little bit right now, that hate is only a thorn on the stem of something much bigger and much older.
“I’m St. Brigid. The bride,” I tell them, my mouth dry with excitement and maybe a little bit of fear, but the fun kind. “I’m going to keep it. I mean, I want to do it. I want to be her.”
“Okay then,” Becket says. Behind me, I hear Auden stand up, but I don’t dare look at him right now, or Saint. I don’t think I can bear it if they see all the things I feel made obvious in my red-stained cheeks.
There’s a pause when no one really knows who should go next, and then Saint just mutters, “Fuck it,” and grabs the bowl off the table, holding it out for everyone. And all at once, the five others reach in, fingers and palms moving past each other in a jostling foreplay of what’s about to come, and everyone seems to realize it all at the same time, that soon it will be just more than hands and wrists touching. There’s a slightly awkward moment when everyone pulls back at the same time, looking down at their papers to avoid looking at anyone else.
“It’s not me,” Becket says, and when I look over at him, his face is inscrutable. I can’t tell if he’s disappointed or relieved.
And I don’t know if I’m disappointed or relieved when Saint says, “Me neither.”
“It’s not me,” Rebecca adds, showing us the blank paper.
Auden runs a hand through his hair and then drops it to his side. I try not to remember the memory of that hand wrapped in my own hair as it pulled me down to my knees. “It’s not me.”
Delphine gives a shy little beam and then shows us the X . “Looks like I’m the lord of Thornchapel tonight.”
If it bothers Auden that Delphine is representing his home for our ritual when she could have had that role in real life if she’d married him, he doesn’t show it. Instead he nods, a little furrow pulling between his brows as he mentally assesses our supplies and then checks his watch.
“It’s nearly nine now,” he says. “I think if we have everything we need, we should head out there while the rain is holding off.”
We all start getting our things, and I walk over to Delphine and squeeze her hand.
“I don’t know what to say to someone I’m about to have sex with,” I whisper, and her giggle fills the room.
“Me neither,” she says back, a little gleefully.
“Is this the fun adventure you wanted?”
She dimples at me. “It is.” And then she squeezes my hand back. “I’ve been thinking, you know, about what everyone said yesterday about virginity and first times and what they mean. And I think if we get to pick, then I’m going to pick this as my first time. I’m going to lose my virginity with you, Poe Markham, and I couldn’t be happier.”
* * *
We were too shy for the ritual bathing, but otherwise we’re trying to follow the Consecration ’s rubric for the ceremony as closely as we can. So Delphine ventures down to the thorn chapel first—after both Rebecca and Auden make sure her phone is with her and charged and also that she has a small flashlight in case the whole lantern thing doesn’t work out—and then we follow about fifteen minutes later.
At first, I feel very silly as we grab our things, light our lanterns, and make for the south wing. Even after we come out onto the terrace, Becket closing the door behind us and giving the whining Sir James Frazer one last affectionate scratch before locking him in the house, I still feel like we’re about to play a very awkward party game. Like we’re going to get there and no one is going to be feeling it and it’s going to feel so forced and embarrassing and we’ll realize we’re not children anymore and the time for games and play is over. And then we’ll trudge back home, moody and chilled, in a humiliated silence that will stretch beyond tonight and into tomorrow, into the next week and the week after that, until it becomes obvious to all of us that we can’t be friends any longer.
And then I’ll have nothing.
Not better knowledge of myself, not better knowledge of my mother, not even a fun memory to mark the time I spent here. Nothing.
But that’s not what happens.
The farther and farther we get from the house, the more real everything starts to become. The homey light from the windows spills only halfway down the terrace steps, and then, more suddenly than you’d expect, we’re in darkness as we walk across the lawn.
The low rain clouds above push the dark down onto us; the trees on either side press it in. The dark rolls down the moors like fog, settling more deeply in the low places and thickening the air until every breath is a lungful of wet, Dartmoor night. Only our lanterns beat it back, but even then it’s only barely, and every step we take down to the concealed path coming out of the maze is a step away from comfort and the known. A step away from reason and modernity and all the things I hadn’t realized I depended on so much until suddenly I’m in the cold, damp night with only a lantern to light my way.
No music, no podcasts, no blue-glow screen to connect me to anything other than this moment right here. This single line of us moving wordlessly toward the woods and stepping between the trees, this darkness and these dancing flames trapped behind glass as our lanterns sway. The crunch of the occasional leaf or stick as we step, the puffs of exertion as we walk, the rustle of hidden animals under the cover of night as they go about their animal business.
“Can you feel it?” someone whispers, and I realize it’s Becket. He sounds rapturous. “Can you feel it?”
For a moment, I don’t think I can, I think I’m only feeling the usual fascination I have toward the winter landscape, but after a minute or two, I start to sense it. A prickle at the back of my neck. A strange hum in my chest.
Heat at the back of my eyelids, like I’m about to cry, except I’m not sure if they’re happy tears or sad tears or both. It’s more like I’m remembering something I’ve forgotten, and I’ve forgotten so long ago that the remembering of it feels like discovery.
It’s like the memory of my mother calling my name or the feeling of my first library card, plastic and colorful in my hand. It’s like kissing Saint or kneeling before Auden. It’s like having someone trace pain up and down my body until the world makes sense again. It’s like the smell of old books and the sound of thick-leaved trees in a summer storm and the chatter of a clear river over bright stones.
It’s home and it’s not. It’s old and it’s young, and it’s far and it’s near, and it’s in my body and also dancing along my skin, dancing away too fast for me to grab at it.
It’s loving and it’s stern.
It’s generous and it’s cruel.
It’s every feeling I ever associated with God, but instead of a church of stone and glass, it’s here in the woods, suffusing every particle of air and darkness and damp with burning, bright life.
“I feel it,” I murmur, and at the same time I hear Saint say, “Yes, I feel it too.”
Rebecca doesn’t answer, but Auden does pause for a moment. He’s behind me, at the very back of our line, and when I turn to see why he’s stopped,
he’s standing there with the lantern by his side and his head bowed, as if he’s praying. But when I lift my own lantern to see his face, I see more than awe and humility there, I see something else. Something wild and new and feral.
Something awake.
My mother’s word comes back to me then.
Convivificat .
Something inside Auden is stirring, and as soon as I think it, I perceive that maybe the same is happening for me, that each breath I breathe of this God-filled winter air is a breath that’s changing me. Like the magic of Thornchapel is coming into my lungs and from my lungs to my blood and from my blood to every beating, living part of my body, until my heart and my mind and every curve, corner and plane of my skin is tingling with it.
Our eyes meet through the bright haze of the lantern light and I think I see him swallow.
“Let’s go to the thorn chapel, Proserpina,” he says. “Let’s finish this.”
And he’s not asking, he’s not suggesting. He’s telling, and so I turn and together we walk into the heart of the magic and into the living air of the thorn chapel.
Chapter 24
Delphine is waiting for us by the altar, all faint flickering light and glimpses of long gold hair. And there is something very lordly about her as we approach the two menhirs that guard the entrance to the stone row. Even in her red wool coat and rain boots, she looks regal, and even though she’s been alone in this buzzing, magic night for at least fifteen minutes, she seems nothing short of confident and brave.
Sweet, bubbly Delphine is the lord of the manor for real right now, and somehow that makes perfect sense. Somehow it feels like it couldn’t have happened any other way.
One by one, we enter the stone row, Rebecca first, then Becket, then Saint. I follow them, dreaming on my feet, my skin and lips and breasts tingling with whatever is in the air tonight, nature or God or many gods or even just the manifested energy of enormous, thrilling potential.
A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel Book 1) Page 24