A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel Book 1)

by Sierra Simone

  And because I’m dreaming, I’m not ready for what I feel as I pass through the guard stones and begin my walk to the altar.

  I feel drunk, even though I haven’t had anything to drink, and I’m sure I must be asleep, even though I’m more awake than I’ve ever been. I can sense the weight of this stone-lined path, the sheer gravity of it, as if it gathers everything to itself so that it can run like a river down to the altar at the end. With each step closer I get to the end, I hear impossible things. Music, voices, drums. Sounds from nowhere, sounds from another time.

  And then I’m within the ruins of the chapel, and the drums recede ever so slightly, although they don’t entirely go away. They stay just within hearing, just within awareness. They match the pound and pulse of my heart; they match the fall of my feet on sacred ground.

  I tell myself I’m dreaming.

  I tell myself it can’t be what I think. I’m too fanciful, too ready to believe, too eager.

  But even Rebecca—the least eager of us to believe—looks troubled as we meet Delphine at the altar. She keeps glancing around the ruins and into the trees, as if she’s trying to locate the source of a sound, and I notice Saint is too.

  Auden has eyes only for the altar. Or rather, a point just beyond it, a point where a door could be if a door existed, which it doesn’t.

  But before I can ask him what he sees, Becket starts the ceremony, having memorized the script as if it were one of his normal priestly duties. As if it being about St. Brigid just makes it another arcane Catholic rite, and nothing more.

  “Lord, we bring you your bride, St. Brigid,” he says. “What will you have us do?”

  I expected this to be awkward too, like when students are forced to read a play aloud in class, but maybe the long walk in the dark woods has pressed all the awkwardness right out of us or maybe those otherworldly drums are encouraging us or maybe it’s that Becket says his part so surely and so seriously it feels impossible not to be sure and serious along with him.

  Or maybe it’s because this is all a dream, and in a dream, you can do anything you want without shame.

  Delphine already has her paper in her hand and glances down at it once before answering. “Make a circle of light around us and then bring her to me.”

  Rustling over the wet grass, we walk a circle around Delphine and set the items we brought down at the altar as we finish. Then we each find a place to set our lantern down, until they’re in a circle around the altar and us and a low wooden platform that must have been built this morning. I wonder who built it until I see Saint watching me examine it. I give him a tentative smile, still upset about what’s between us, but thanking him for his thoughtfulness. Tonight when I share my body with someone else for the very first time, I won’t have to do it in the cold mud and that’s because of him.

  My smile seems to surprise a vulnerable near-smile of his own right out of him, but he clamps down on it quickly, returning to his usual closed-off expression.

  Becket told us earlier that the circle is one of the most important parts of the ceremony, that it represents protection and the sacred, that it marks the space we’ll move in as holy. And so accordingly, four of us have arranged our lanterns to line up with the four cardinal directions, and as we all set them down, we each said a prayer to St. Brigid, asking her to protect us and protect our circle as we celebrate her feast.

  And then we turn back to Delphine, all of us in a circle of faint light. The darkness pools in the corners of the chapel and in the center of our circle, but it’s not ominous, it’s not frightening. It feels like a shadowed library or a dark beach. Awake and inviting. Quiet, except for the low pulse of drums that can’t be seen and the snatches of whispers coming from the woods.

  Rebecca keeps glaring around her with narrowed eyes, as if she expects to catch the source of the noise and scold it for not falling in order with the known universe.

  I withdraw a long, white taper from my coat pocket and walk to the south lantern. I remember this part without looking at my paper, and I murmur, “St. Brigid, patron saint of cattle and newborn babes, wardeness of fire and sweet water, we light this flame thinking of you.”

  I kneel and open the little glass door of the lantern, touching my taper to the big, sturdy candle inside. The flame hisses and jumps to life, and I close the lantern and stand, hardly able to see over the dancing brightness of the flame.

  “Bring my bride to me,” Delphine says once my candle is lit, and it’s so unlike her, so unlike her usual girlish self. It’s commanding and almost arrogant and deeply, deeply sexy. My pulse starts thudding deep in my cunt when Becket takes my hand and leads me to her, my lord for the night.

  And so I’m brought before the altar.

  There’re so many differences from the times I’ve dreamed this. The rustle of my coat, the sound of sodden grass under my boots. The huff of my breath in the air and the twist in my stomach and the burn of the others watching my back as I walk. I’m not bearing a torc like in the pictures, and I’m not in a robe, but it doesn’t take away from how inevitable it feels to slowly make my way to the lord who will extract promises from me. How heady and how divine and how right . Like this one moment, this one night, is what I’ve been seeking my entire life without knowing it. Like every answer to every question about myself and my mother and her past and this house and the boys I hate myself for loving is waiting just beyond a veil I can’t see, and if I can reach through it, if I can part it with reverent fingertips and step in . . .

  Reach for what and step where, I’m not sure. But I am sure that I can’t stop myself from trying. I am sure touching that veil might be the most important thing that’s ever happened to me. It’s the closest to God I’ve ever felt, and I don’t know if that’s okay to feel, if that’s allowed, to have Catholic feelings inside an arguably pagan space, but I do. I do, and they’re all jumbled up together so thickly I almost can’t remember what they felt like separately, and then when I stop in front of Delphine and she cups her hands around my face, I think this must be what Becket feels every time he performs the Liturgy of the Eucharist and fuses the holy into the profane. Except right now, we are the wafers being transfigured, all six of us; we are being made into something other and better and sanctified as we stand in a circle and act out the ancient human ache for renewal and spring.

  Becket, who turned out to be something of an expert in Celtic paganism, explained to us that there’s a difference between evoking someone like St. Brigid and invoking St. Brigid—meaning that we invited our saint to our ceremony, meaning that we asked her to protect us, but we didn’t ask to be her. So in theory, I’m only playing a role, I’m only echoing the words she would say if she were here.

  But I feel a kick of dizziness when Delphine asks, “St. Brigid, we beg your blessing on us,” and I say, “You have it.”

  Wax drops from my taper onto my hand, hot and clinging, and the pain takes the dizziness and marries it to a breathless sort of hyperreality, grounding me to this moment even though I’m dreaming it too.

  Delphine replies, “Then bestow your blessing upon all who ask.”

  Another kick of dizziness when Becket presses three candles into the soft grass covering the altar and I lean down to light them with my own candle.

  “I promise to keep the fires burning,” I say as I light the first one, feeling like I’m floating outside of myself . . . or maybe I’m deeper inside myself than I’ve ever been and that’s why I’m so dizzy, that’s why I feel like something shimmering and hot is pulling my chest tight with love and fear.

  “I promise to keep the waters clean,” I say, lighting the second one. A tear spills free and slides down my cheek and I barely feel it, all I can feel is what God and St. Brigid and priests must feel when they cup blessings in their hands like water.

  “I promise to bring the lambs through birth safely and to bring the new shoots from the earth,” I finish, lighting the third candle. I straighten up and turn to the others. More hot wax run
s down my fingers and wrist, sending echoes of its heat to my breasts and belly.

  “I promise to bless all of you and be your blessing in turn.”

  “Then light the fire,” Delphine says softly. “So that we may feel your blessing warm us all.”

  I cross the circle to the cone of wood and kindling that’s been covered with a tarp, and Saint is there, pulling it away and readying it all for me, and then I kneel down and touch my taper to the crumpled newspaper underneath the wood.

  There’s a hush all through us and through the trees themselves as the paper catches, as the small sticks above those catch, and as finally, finally, the big split logs catch too. It reminds me of the Catholic tradition of Candlemas, of bringing in your candles for the year to be blessed, and the idea of keeping the same sacred flame burning all year long.

  One flame to another flame to another and another and so on, until everything is connected, everything is hallowed by memory and hope.

  When I walk back to Delphine, I set my taper in the grass of the altar too, right in the middle of the three candles I lit earlier. It’s so soft and muddy that the candle goes easily in, and then I take a deep breath and turn to my lord.

  “Undress, Proserpina,” Delphine says as she takes several steps back to give me space, and it’s not part of the ritual really, she’s just giving me my cue. But either way, the words send a reverent shiver through me. I’m about to undress as I’m playing a goddess-turned-saint and then I’m going to bind myself to the lord of the manor with thorns and then I’m going to lay down between the fire and the altar and spread my legs for her.

  I’m shivering hard enough that I’m fumbling with the zipper of my coat, and after a long minute, I feel someone come up behind me and reach around my waist. I look down to see Auden’s long fingers easily finding the tab of my zipper and tugging it down, and then his hands are peeling the coat from me, laying it in a neat fold on the ground.

  He helps me with my sweater next, his cool fingers brushing against my bare stomach as he pulls up the hem, and then his hands carefully smoothing out my hair after I’m free of the soft wool. And then he does something even more unexpected as I shiver there in my bra, and he gets to his knees in front of me.

  “Auden,” I whisper.

  In the orange-red light of the fire, it’s impossible to tell if his eyes are more green than brown when he looks up at me. “Let me,” he says. “Let me do this.”

  I can’t speak. All I can do is nod.

  I don’t know if he’s atoning for what happened last night or if he merely wants to help the girl who’s about to bare so much in front of so many, but either way, there’s something powerful in the way he reaches for my boots and slowly works them free of my feet. Something that’s not submissive at all, even while he’s doing an act I’ve always associated with submission. I try to imagine Emily or any of the other Dominants at my old club doing this, willingly kneeling in the cold mud to pull off someone else’s muddy boots and I just can’t. Many of the Dominants I know don’t even like it when their submissive walks ahead of them down a hallway.

  But that’s not Auden. His shoulders are still wide and strong as he works the second boot off, his power and restraint evident in every careful tug and pull. He still looks like a prince, still moves like a prince, and when he glances up at me to check on me, there’s nothing but command in his gaze.

  It’s like all the bitterness, all the entitlement, everything that came with being the heir to so much money and the recipient of so little love, is burning away here by the Imbolc fire. Inside our circle, by the altar, surrounded by friends and enemies and priests, he’s being purified. He’s returning somehow to the boy who stood at this altar twelve years ago and yanked both me and Saint into a wrenching, unforgettable kiss.

  And so when he finishes with my socks and stands to unbutton my pants, I have the only reaction I can to the force of his presence, and I bow my head. Like I’m before a throne.

  Auden’s fingers are deft with the button and zipper of my jeans, and then he ducks his head to mine so he can whisper low in my ear, “How can I serve this goddess right now?”

  My breath is stuck somewhere in my chest and I can’t get it out. “I think you mean ‘saint’,” I finally whisper.

  “I don’t serve saints. And anyway, you’re a goddess.”

  “So? You’re the real lord of Thornchapel.”

  “Not tonight,” he says.

  God, the things I want with him. The things I’ve wanted for years and years. The dreams I’ve had . . .

  I turn my face just enough that it brushes against his—my smooth cheek against his hot, stubbled one. I hear his breath catch, feel his fingers curl around my waistband as if to steady himself.

  I look past him to see the others, all of them talking in a low group on the other side of the circle and giving Auden and me privacy while I undress, and I feel a curl of bravery. “I want to know what you want,” I tell him.

  My bravery is rewarded.

  Auden’s breath is warm on my ear and on the corner of my jaw as he speaks. “Here’s what I want, Bride of Thornchapel. I want to touch your cunt. I want to slide my hand down your panties and then push my fingers into you. I want to see if you’re wet. I want to know if you get wetter when I’m inside you.”

  I try to breathe, I really try, but his words heat my blood so much that everything seems impossible. “Oh?” I manage.

  “Yes, oh .” He pushes his face farther in, burying his nose in my neck. “I want to touch you as if you were mine.”

  My heart tumbles around all over my chest; if I thought I was breathless before, it’s nothing compared to now. The word mine out of those charming, crooked lips, the word mine murmured against my skin . . .

  “As if you were the lord tonight and I was your bride, or as if I was yours outside of here too? Because you must know by now what it takes for me to belong to someone. For me to be theirs.”

  “One must earn you,” he says softly.

  “Yes. Someone would earn me by seeing to my needs, indulging me, pushing me to be smarter and kinder and braver. They earn me by hurting me when I ask for it and taking care of me after, they earn me with tenderness and pain and love and depravity. I’m not saying I can’t do anything else—” I think of Saint as I say this “—but if someone wanted to catch me and keep me for good, that’s how they’d do it.”

  “Proserpina, if you knew how much I wanted that, you’d run straight out of here.”

  My heart pulls up into my throat at the same time my eyelids burn with tears. God, I want him. Want his pain and his care and his affection—

  A thought intrudes, sharp and digging and unwelcome.

  Remember last night? He doesn’t know what he wants.

  “That’s the breakup talking,” I say, speaking the words aloud as soon as realization blooms in my mind. “This is your breakup talking right now—”

  He silences me with one hand over my mouth and the other hand down my panties, and within an instant, he’s got two blunt fingertips teasing at my clit. Pleasure sears up every pathway, burning away every thought and every word I meant to say.

  Fuck , that feels good. I can’t remember what I was accusing him of or why, because all I can think of is how good it feels to have him tickling over my secret curls and exploring all the places I fold or swell or both. No one has ever touched my pussy like this, no one but me, and I never knew how different it could feel with another person, how electric, how dirty and how good. I don’t even care that he’s confusing the hell out of me with all his post-breakup feelings, I don’t even care that he doesn’t know what he wants, I only care that he keeps doing this and making me feel that .

  I buck my hips against him and whimper against his palm.

  “Bite my hand if you want me to stop,” he says quietly, and I roll my lips inward so there’s no chance of me doing it accidentally.

  He gives a dark chuckle at that.

  I look again at our
friends, who can’t hear us, but who can definitely see Auden’s hand over my mouth and his fingers in my panties, and they’ve stopped their conversation now. They’re watching us. My cheeks flush with shame, but it’s the kind of shame I like, the kind of shame that gets me wet and squirmy, and Auden notices.

  “Ah, fuck, Poe,” he mutters, his clever fingers sliding even lower and discovering for himself how much I like the shame. “You like them watching? You like them seeing how much you need your cunt played with?”

  I nod against his hand and he gives me that lopsided boy-king grin, the one I can’t resist, and then I nod even harder.

  Oh God. I’m so fucked. All he’s ever going to have to do is smile at me and I’ll be his, no matter what.

  “I’m going to finger you now,” he says. “Just a little. Just enough to make sure you’re ready for your groom tonight. Bite me if you want me to stop.”

  No. No, I never want him to stop. I want him inside me, rubbing me, getting his fingers dirty with me. I want to be his, even though tonight I’m already promised to someone else. And so since I don’t bite his palm, he begins. With enough tenderness to be sweet and enough prerogative to be interesting, he pushes the tips of his fingers inside of me, widening me. Spreading me.

  “You’re so wet,” he whispers. “So fucking wet.”

  He carefully pushes in and out, testing where I’m tight, pressing against something inside me that makes me moan in pain and then moan again as the pain dulls into pleasure.

  I’m quivering so much now, making more noises against his hand, because I want him deeper, want him wider. I want his mouth on me, I want his cock wedging me open. I want it all, I’ve been waiting for too damn long, and I want it right now—

  “God, I could play with you all night.” And with a regretful sigh—the kind of sigh one might make at leaving a good drink unfinished at night’s end—Auden slides his hand free of my pants and drops his other hand from my mouth. “Open,” he orders, and with an instinct I’ve never had a chance to use before, I part my lips.