Page 130 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
Do it, I want to say. Whatever it is, just do it to me, please, please, please.
And for a moment, I think he might. His eyes are hot on my mouth and his hand curls tight over mine, and I see the Thorn King in his face, I see the god who runs through the trees, and I wish he would kiss me, grab me, fuck me. Make it so I have no choice. Make me feel his love, make it inevitable, and then I can have it both ways. I can be made to have him and I can have the hating him for making me.
But Auden is too wise or too cruel for that.
He pulls away, his hand lifting off mine, fitful lightning flickering through the clouds as he does.
My entire body mourns the loss of his touch, and not for the first time or even for the millionth, I hope hell is real and I hope Ralph Guest is there. Not just for what he did here in the thorn chapel, for what he did to my mother and Poe’s mother, but for what he’s done to me and Auden now. For the future he stole from us, for the love we can’t share because we never had a choice about sharing his blood.
Auden drags his hands over his face. “Everything I want is wrong,” he says, sounding unhappy.
Maybe it is.
But . . .
“I want it too,” I whisper.
“That’s what makes it so hard.”
“Yeah,” I say. I almost want to add I’m sorry, to let him know that I appreciate what he’s given up for the sake of my soul. That I appreciate the gesture even more because everyone knows I don’t even really believe in souls at all.
But I do know that the St. Sebastian who was my mother’s son is slipping away bit by bit, day by day. And I’m terrified of waking up one morning and seeing a man she’d be ashamed of, a man roistering and carousing inside her greatest fears.
Don’t see him again.
Don’t see him again.
How could she have known, though, what she was asking? How could she have known that my heart was already curved and notched to fit perfectly against his?
The wind kicks up a little, fluttering the pages of Auden’s sketchpad. He watches it dispassionately, staring down at the sketched depiction of the altar and the door as the paper rustles and flaps in the breeze.
“Do you think we’re cursed?” he asks. “That the Guests are cursed for what they’ve done here?”
I suppose he’s thinking of us. He’s thinking of his father and his neglected mother, who lived and died in her unhappiness. He’s thinking of Randolph, who according to Poe, watched Estamond die here and who later watched all his children die.
But I look around at the ruins—lush and carpeted with roses and berries and thorns—I think of the majestic house, the river, the hills, the everything else.
“I don’t know. There is a lot to being a Guest that isn’t cursed. Maybe Becket would say that they’re—or we’re, I suppose—blessed.”
“I don’t care what Becket says,” Auden replies sharply. “I want to know what you think.”
“Why?” I ask. “Why does it matter what I think? Curses aren’t real.”
“But what the Guests have done here might be real. And if that’s real, then wouldn’t it leave some kind of . . . imprint? Some sort of stain?”
He’s looking at the real altar now, and I follow his gaze, thinking about it too. What people might have done here for centuries and longer.
Here and there, Poe’s father had said. King and door.
“What do you think it was like?” asks Auden quietly. And I know he doesn’t mean watching something like that, I know he doesn’t mean witnessing it. I know he means doing it. He means being it—being the Thorn King. Striding up to the altar with the torc around your neck, knowing death was only moments away.
I hate the look on Auden’s face just now, like he’s already walking up to the altar himself, like he’s already preparing to be slain. His eyes are wet and bright, and there’s color high on his cheeks, and his breathing is fast, so fast.
Every curve and line of him has gone completely taut, like he’s rigid with anticipation and fear.
“Auden,” I whisper. “It’s not going to ha
ppen again. It’s never going to happen again.”
