Page 116 of Feast of Sparks (Thornchapel 2)
My shaft pulses as I remember, thickening and then sending a wave of soreness ricocheting through my belly. I wince as I adjust myself.
It’s a good thing Beltane’s only once a year. I don’t know if I’d be able to survive this much fucking otherwise.
When I’m ready to go, I get my phone and take a look around Auden’s room—the room that will soon be mine too.
The wide wood planks gleam with newness, and the pale walls are lined with bookshelves. Hooks and ropes stud the beams, and the bed—a custom thing that’s wide enough for three people and a dog to sleep comfortably—is made with discreet hooks and bolts and fastenings. Underneath it are two large trunks, full of the tools of Auden’s new trade, and at the end of the bedroom is the door to the large ensuite, which has a shower built with convenient handles and footrests.
Ah, to be a kinky architect.
It’s Auden’s desk, though, that tugs at my heart the most. He does most of his work in the dedicated office one floor up, and so I think this desk is supposed to be a place for not-work. For inspiration. But there’s only blank paper and neat cups of ink pens on it now, and I wonder
how long it’s been since he’s drawn. Truly drawn, not for work, not plans, but drawings for himself, drawings of people or places or feelings.
It makes me sad that he hasn’t been, a sadness that feels too profound for something so small, but maybe it’s not a small thing at all. It feels big. It feels big enough to fill my chest and push into my throat and burn at my eyes.
I think that’s why I do what I do next, although I can’t be sure, because the simple curl of curiosity is there too. I walk over to the desk and thumb through the blank paper, as if I expect Auden to have hidden his art inside the stack like camouflage. I open the wide drawer under the top, having the sudden and heartbreaking image of him drawing something and then shoving it away in a fit of pique.
The drawer is empty, save for a leather journal, which I pull out and open before I can talk myself out of it.
My breath stutters when it opens to a picture of me. Adolescent me with eyeliner and a scowl and hunched shoulders. When I turn the page, it’s a teenage me again, standing in front of a priest with my lips parted, waiting for communion. On the page after that is a sketch of Proserpina, less precise and less detailed than the others, as if he were drawing her from memory and imagining what she’d look like at fourteen or fifteen. Which he would have been.
This journal must have been his when he was a teenager, his version of a diary, and my chest tightens even more as I think about him saving this. Keeping it. Even when he thought he’d never see Poe again. Even when he hated me. He kept these.
I close the journal, desperate to see more and also knowing that I’m not allowed, that this is a privilege I haven’t earned, and I need to put it back where I found it. But something falls out of the book as I close it, and I bend down to pick it up.
It’s a letter of several pages, folded in half, and I’m feeling guilty enough for having snooped through the journal itself that I’m not inclined to snoop further—until, that is I see my name on one of the pages that slipped free.
St. Sebastian, it says. The line goes on: middle name Perth—her little joke, I suppose. It means ‘from the thorns.’
Something prickles at the back of my neck, something cold, something certain that what I hold in my hands is very, very important and also very dangerous. I set the journal on the desk and sit into the chair, not even noticing when Sir James slides off the bed and comes to lay on my feet. I smooth out the letter and read it from the beginning.
And when I’m finished, I read it again.
And a third time, although this time I don’t even see the words so much as feel them.
I should have known better than to look, I think numbly. Why didn’t I know better?
I put the letter on the desk, along with the top sheet, which is actually a separate letter from Auden’s lawyer, Mr. Cremer. Apparently he’d been the one to send these pages along to Auden, and he recommends Auden call him as soon as he has the time so that he can inform Mr. Cremer if there are any practical ramifications that need attending to.
I want to laugh at the idea, at the suggestion that all the letter presents is a legal problem—and one that can be tidied up with a phone call at that. No, this isn’t a legal problem. It’s not even a problem.
It’s a knife in my throat. It’s a blowtorch right to the heart.
No, I think. It’s worse than that.
It’s the end.
I stand up without even really being aware that I’m doing it, and something in my demeanor makes Sir James rise and nose gently at my hand, as if trying to make sure I’m okay.
I’m not. I’m not okay. I never will be, because this is the end. This is the end, and Auden knew.
When he chased me through the forest, he knew. When he bit me over the heart, he knew.
When he made me swear to him as a god that nothing would ever, ever tear us apart again—he knew.
How—
But why—
