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even when our bodies protested, even when it burned us or broke us.
“You’re lucky,” he said, “that I have a soft spot for caged birds.”
Atrius, on his hands and knees, clutching the head of a stag with bare arms, his teeth sunk deep into its throat. His shirt and jacket were discarded in a pile nearby, his bare skin covered in blood.
A woman alone in this world sometimes needs to perform to make men take her seriously.”
“We need to go back—” I said. But the sudden wall of water swallowed my words.
like the sound made him see something he’d missed before.
And then, in the secret silence, where no one could see me, I trailed my fingertips up my own arm. Just out of curiosity. Just to remember how it felt. A meaningless touch. Strange thing to crave.
Why did I find an uneasy comfort in the warmth of his soul next to mine?
“Tell me, formidable assassin, how this plan of yours would work.”
You thought you escaped, but you will always be mine. Look at all these marks you cannot wash away.
his fingertip rose and flicked the edge of the veil, making the silken fabric ripple. And he mouthed, I hate this thing.
“I’m supposed to make sure you eat. If you don’t, I’ll be the one in trouble for it.” My hand went to my chest, pressed over the strange twinge there. I turned around again. Erekkus held out a bowl of rice and meat.
His head tilted slightly—so, so slightly, like it wasn’t even intentional—as if to resist the urge to bury it in my hair.
“Do you think I don’t see,” he said, voice low, “that the past is devouring you, too?”
“I can’t make promises,” he murmured. He said it like an apology. “Even if you could,” I replied, “I wouldn’t believe them.”
to him, but felt in my own heart: It’s been a week. You’re hurting. It had been. I was. But now, for the first time in eight days, I finally slept.
I did not need to look up. But I heard it when Atrius did, because he let out this horrible, choked sound, strangled, like the air was dying in his throat. Erekkus saw it next, and he wasn’t nearly as quiet. “Fucking goddess,” he gasped. “Get them down! Get them fucking down!”
“You shouldn’t be here.” This time he spoke against my mouth—not quite a kiss, but the promise of one. I whispered, “Why?” “Because you make me ravenous.” You make me ravenous.
“I dreamed about this,” he murmured. “What you might look like, unraveled and desperate, in the seconds before I let you go. I want to savor it.”
And you aren’t just giving up your eyes. You’re giving up the sea.
The last thing I remembered before sleep took me was my hand curling around his—a mindless impulse, like a compass drifting north.
His voice cracked. Bathed in such intense light, no one else could see the single tear slide down his cheek. No one but me.
He choked out, “My pact to you has been fulfilled.” Yes, it was difficult to get the attention of a god. But this? This was enough. In fact, it was enough to get the attention of two.
Almost nothing. And yet, it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever witnessed. Beautiful in an intangible way that made me think of scraps of paint flying out over the sea. It is the sea.
I choked out, “I’m not afraid of death.” But I am afraid of this.
He frowned at Atrius. “Do vampires drink pineapple juice?”
The little chair. The easel. The carefully arranged line of paint jars. “It could be yours, too,” he said, somewhat awkwardly. “If you wanted.”
TEARS
So much more than paper.
