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That was when Atta saw it. The blossom sprouting from his lungs. Not a phantom or a trick of the lamplight. Not even a seedling-looking thing one could pass off as an abnormal growth of some sort. No, it was a macabre bloom of foreign flora that had taken root in the man’s lung, and flowered.
Imogen was right. Professor Murdoch was horribly attractive, in a scholarly way as she had put it, with piercing eyes, a cut, stubbled jaw, and brown hair so artfully careless it was begging to have fingers run through it. There was something strange and mysterious about him, as Imogen also mentioned, and Mrs O’Sullivan alluded to as well, come to think of it.
All right, Jane Bennet, get your shite together. You are a Lizzie, damn it. And this man is no fucking Darcy.
Outside, the campus was bustling with students, a hint of the approaching autumn on the wind, stirring the leaves that would soon lose their chlorophyll and show the world how beautiful it is to die.
Emmy rolled her eyes and sat up on the bed. “I didn’t say slutty or that you have to fuck him. It has very little to do with who the man is, anyway. It’s about her, the woman in the scenario. When a woman feels sexy, she feels confident and in control. It puts a spell on men. It has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with power. It’s just another tool in a woman’s arsenal.” She laid back, resting on her elbows. “You clearly have the brains. Make people see you.”
Professor Sonder Murdoch was the cliff-jump that terrified, the majestic wolf that captivated, the risk you knew might kill you, yet you couldn’t pass it up.
“If we were never challenged, Atta, we would never grow.”
Turning on his heel, he strode away, one hand in his pocket and the other—the one that had just been so very close to touching her—clenched in a fist at his side.
“There’s a little phrase wise women live by. If he wants to, he will. It’s usually more romantic than our particular scenario, but the point still stands. If you wanted to murder me, you would. Now, come on.”
“I’m vintage, darling.”
“Sometimes fear cleanses the soul, Atta. It reminds us to look at the important things we took for granted while at peace.”
“You can be surrounded by people and still be alone, Atta.”
Fucking hell she was beautiful when she was angry. But not as beautiful as when she laughed.
If Sonder Murdoch was the dark lord, her soul was begging to be burned to ash.
Holy hell. To her tipsy ears, her name sounded like forbidden honey on his tongue.
“If you so much as look at her the wrong way, I’m the one who will make you wish you were dead. That’s who the fuck I am.”
He huffed a laugh, enjoying how close he was to her. How alone they were. He wanted to take her beautiful face in his hands and learn how that smart mouth tasted. “If we need plausible deniability, we’re already fucked, a stór.”*
a stór (uh stohr)—Irish Gaelic; meaning my darling, or my treasure
“Pot, kettle.”
“You, darling, will find out when we get there.” She wasn’t sure why he’d begun calling her that. Perhaps it was only something he typically said to his friends, but it made Atta’s knees weak every time. When he’d said it to her in Gaelic. . . She’d almost swooned.
“Superstitions and fairytales all originate from somewhere. Did you know that most supposed fairytales can be found in ancient civilisations that had no contact with one another and the tales have only minor variations?” She shrugged. “Same with religious stories.”
She had the most peculiar feeling, looking in his eyes across the room, as if she was becoming the heroine of a Gothic novel.
Ἁμαρτία. Hamartia. To err, to have a tragic flaw.
“I’m not much of a kidder, a stór.”
“Clever woman. Yes, my mother said they were not only a way to remember the dead but a great form of protection. She set about collecting these over the years. Here.”
Poetry wasn’t in life; it was in what we’ve made of the past, lending it romanticism instead of watching it burn and lie in the ashes.
He shouldn’t have brought her into this, this girl made up of poetry and bones, flowers and viscera, everything beautiful and meaningful in life.
Sonder stared at her, her hair blowing in the wind and making her look like an apparition. A dark faerie queen. Jesus Christ. He was falling in love with her.
“Pure in heart, keep a stayed mind. Seekers find what’s lost o’ mine.”
“Thank you! My saviour, my gloomy little cloud. I’ll be your sunshine if you’ll be my rain.”
“They are, perhaps, human souls in the crucible—these creatures of whim.” -W.B. Yeats, Irish Fairy Tales & Folklore
“I’ll wait all night if it means you’ll stay.”
Her heart was horribly, horribly at risk with this man.
Atta’s shoulders slumped as she chewed on her bottom lip. Jesus, that was distracting.
Atta stood from the floor, where he always seemed to find her working rather than at a desk or a table. He adored that about her.
“Are you even listening to me?” he finally heard her say sharply. She popped a cube of cheese in her mouth. “Are you drunk?” “Only on you.” The words were out before he could stop them.
“As smoke alights on the Fae, so are they driven away; as wax melts before the flame, so the wicked perish; gone in light of day—”
“How I thought I was destined to be alone, but it turns out I was starving all these years, waiting for you?”
He moved inside her again, and she arched her back, moaning, and he let out that low, rumbling laugh, her whole body vibrating with it. But then he began a rhythm that felt so familiar it was as if they’d done this countless times. Loved each other countless times in countless other lives, other realities.
They collapsed together on his bed, and he held her tucked against his chest as if he never wanted to let her go.
(Nee war-in sul-is nah mawd-in-ye gun law) No morning’s sun lasts all day; an Irish Gaelic saying meaning: life is finite, enjoy it while you can
If either of them was a mad scientist, it was Atta—and he adored it.
Atta tucked a pen behind her ear and he took another mental snapshot of her.
No woman had ever made him feel so alive. So desperate for her. So madly in love. He knew the moment he’d fallen. It was standing there in The Old Library, holding a book in his hand as she told him she’d watched him years ago, stand the same way in the same library. When she’d laughed and said it was annoying, when he had that first laugh, he knew then and there he'd set the world on fire for her. Slay a thousand beasts, cure any Plague, fight to the death. For her. His Patroclus.
“Do you know that I’m in love with you?” She smiled, the sleepy, blissful smile he knew was his. “I thought that might be the case, yeah.” “You’ve tangled yourself up in my soul like a vine, a stór.” He dragged his thumb across her bottom lip and she smiled against his touch. “I’m terrified of this world, Sonder. But I don’t fear facing it with you.”
I want to drown in this love, darling, he’d told her one morning when she apologised for hogging the bed.
“You, a stór, are everything that is right with the world. My world. With all the worlds. And don’t you dare apologise for it.”
There were overlapping lullabies on rotation in her head, but not the kind that lull to sleep, the kind that usher in nightmares.
Hello, daughter of many worlds.
He was intoxicating, more than the wine, more than anything. Not only his mouth but everything about him. His grumpiness, his stoicism with everyone but her, his mind, his dreams, the way he could command a room, the way being a professor was in his very bones, his soul.
