Page 66 of Sophie's Ruin
Henry’s eyes shuttered.
“Come here,” he whispered—no, hebegged.
I didn’t deserve him. Funny how mere weeks ago, I’d thought him a monster. There was only one monster in this room, and itwasn’t him. I didn’t deserve him, yet my legs carried me to him, my body always pulled toward him as if I couldn’t physically be more than a few feet away.
They moved in unison,Isabelle had said earlier about Vincent and Rosalind. Now I thought I knew what she’d meant. I might be a monster, and I might not deserve him, but I couldn’t stay away from him, either. It was physically impossible. I would always come to him as long as he wanted me by his side. And if there ever came a day when he didn’t…well, I would still be close, hiding in the shadows, watching from afar…longing, desperate for another touch. But that day was not today, so I would take what he would give for as long as he would give it.
Slowly, I approached the bed and perched on the edge, close to where he was sitting. When he reached for my hand, I flinched, trying to pull away, as if my touch would hurt him.
I did this,I thought with a shudder, my gaze dropping to his chest.
These hands that itched to touch him, to trace the defined muscles and beautiful features, had caused him severe pain and suffering. I’d been desperate to protect him from the others. In the end, I’d failed to protect him from myself. A ragged cry broke past my lips, and I clamped my free hand over my mouth.
“Shh.” Henry reached out and pried my hand away, before clasping the back of my neck and resting his forehead against mine. “Breathe with me.”
At first, I couldn’t do as he’d instructed because I was shaking too much, but after a while, I focused on the beating of his heart and his controlled, measured inhales and exhales. I began to match the rhythm, filling up my lungs with air when he did and letting it out slowly when he exhaled. Being so close to him helped soothe me, too, his fresh and woodsy scent surrounding me, settling over me with the comfort of a blanket.
Once my breathing had evened out, Henry pulled away and let go of my neck. He didn’t let go of my hand, though, as he settled back against the headboard.
His eyes were haunted, and he swallowed, his throat bobbing, before he opened his mouth to speak. My heart dropped. He was going to send me away. Any second now, he would utter the words that would undo me, sentencing me to an eternity of misery and pain. Of loneliness. Because I knew there would never be another. Not after him.
My heart and my breathing sped up again, but before I could succumb to a full-blown panic attack, Henry said, “I think it’s time I tell you about my human family.” He didn’t say “my real family” because the Duval clan was his real family, too. Just in a different life. In the life after the almost-death that had made him a vampire. But he had a past life. A life before that moment when Vincent had decided to save him because he’d seen good in him. Gods, how grateful I was to Vincent for everything. For helping my grandmother, then my mother with the amulet, for giving me Henry.
I held my breath, waiting for him to continue. He didn’t for a long time.
The look on his face was tortured and pained, and his voice was hoarse when he finally spoke. “My father, Bernard, was a doctor.” A pause and a thick swallow as if it were difficult for him to force the words out, to speak about his family. “He was like a rock, unwavering and firm. My mother, Louise,” the corners of his mouth lifted slightly as his voice became gentle, reverent, “She was a nurse. They were healers in a small village they grew up in before they moved to the city. My mother was the softness to my father’s hardness, but she was strong. It was the kind of quiet strength that told you if my father, the rock, ever crumbled, she would be there to pick up the pieces, making him whole again.” Deep-blue eyes locked on me, and he wasn’t just lookingatme, but alsointome. Could he see the broken shards of my heart? “Your strength is not always quiet, but you do remind me of her.”
“You mean me before…before I became this.” I didn’t deserve to be compared to her, to the one who’d brought him into this world.
Henry’s lips thinned into a firm line, and he didn’t acknowledge my comment before he continued, “They had me when they were young, and they wanted more children, but as the years went on, it became clear that wasn’t going to happen for them. One day, when I was nineteen, apprenticing with my father, someone brought a little girl into the infirmary where he worked. They found her on the streets, gravely ill. She was an orphan. We nursed her back to health and took her in.”
“What was her name?”
“Marceline…Marcy.” A smile lit up his face, genuine and warm, the brightest one I’d ever seen. “It was almost strange how easily she fit in. One day, it was just the three of us. The next day, we were a family of four, and it felt like Marcy had been with us all along, as if she’d always occupied the spare bedroom by the stairs, and that place in our hearts we hadn’t even known was empty until she came into our lives.”
Now it made sense why Henry was so good at finding those who were lost—he’d done it before with Marcy. I wondered if he’d fought so hard for Isabelle because she reminded him of his little sister.
“What happened to them?”
Henry’s smile fell, and his features became so hard I knew they would feel like stone under my fingertips if I were to touch him. And I wanted to touch him. I wanted to wrap myself around him to shield him from the oppressive darkness that had descended on him.
“I was twenty-five when Vincent turned me. Marcy had been with us for six years at that point. She had just turned twelve and was beginning to learn from my mother, hoping to become a nurse one day…” Henry closed his eyes and clenched his jaw, the muscles of his face contorting as if he were in excruciating pain. I hated seeing him like this, and I almost opened my mouth to tell him he didn’t have to finish the story, but before I could, he continued, “I was confused, deranged, and…hungry.”
My stomach dropped as Henry began to tremble, his hand shaking around mine.
“I felt so lost, and there was only one place I knew I would feel found again. I wanted to escape what I’d become, I wanted to go…home.” His voice broke on the last word, and he was breaking, too, crumbling right before my eyes.
When a vampire is first turned, the bloodlust is nearly impossible to control. I had Vincent by my side to guide me through it, but he couldn’t always be there to stop me when the hunger struck,Henry had told me before.
He’d wanted to go home, where his father could protect him from what he’d become, where his mother could offer a warm embrace and tell him he wasn’t a monster, where his sister’s light could banish the shadows. Even in his deranged state, he’d been drawn to the safety of his home, to his safe haven. But his family hadn’t been able to save him from himself. The bloodlust had prevailed.
A harsh exhale left Henry as he opened his eyes. He didn’t look at me, though. His black lashes swept down, and he lowered his gaze to the ground.
“I slaughtered them,” he said so low I could barely discern the words, even with my supernatural hearing.
Shame and sorrow poured out of him, and I finally understood why he carried this weight around him, this guilt. His hand tightened around mine to the point of pain, as if Iwere his lifeline to this reality. He needed me to tether him to the present lest he’d be lost in the horrible memories of the past forever. I placed my other hand on top of his and pressed it in quiet support—I’m here.
“That’s why you don’t have portraits of them anywhere,” I said quietly. I’d wondered before why his bedroom was so bare, not offering even a glimpse into his past or who he was.
