Maybe this was the escape he wanted, the one way Belle could no longer control him. All he needed do was give in to his morning stupor; sleep would come from which he would never awaken.
As if the thought had summoned her, she landed beside him, shadows curling around her.
“Is this how you choose to go?” Belle asked, no anger or judgment in her tone, merely a hint of curiosity.
“Leave me alone,” he gasped, wrapping his pain around him like a shield.
“Là, là,c’est tellement mélodramatique. Are you sulking over the loss of your toy?” She gestured out over the city. “There are others. So many others.”
“What do you want from me? Even now, you plague me still. How did you even find me?”
“The answer to both your questions is the same, my pet. Imadeyou, and I am not yet done with you.”
Antoine laughed, a hollow sound even as it felt like his skin was being stripped from him in swathes. “It is too late, madame. Find another to torment. I am finished, and grateful for it.”
“Mon vertueux, always so noble.”
She called him virtuous again. That was ironic. He didn’t feel virtuous, he felt… numb.
What he really wanted was escape—from her, not from life itself.
But what could he do? She was forever so much more powerful than he. Even now, she rested one hand on one knee as she watched him, the sun a backdrop like it was an inconvenience. The hood of her cloak was pulled up, the only concession to its presence, while he was unable to move, the pain too crippling.
Not long now.Escape was coming anyway, just when he’d decided living was preferable.
Ironically, it was the agony that gave the lie to his thoughts. Death was so final, so empty, so permanent. Even pain was better than that; feeling something over feeling nothing.
“A beautiful morning,” she said, though she didn’t look away from him. “Is the anguish of living so great that you would wish to give all this up? So many mornings yet to come, so many chattel to pine over. So much misery to wallow in. Are you done, truly?”
He wanted to answer, to say he wasn’t, but he couldn’t. The burn had reached within, the physical at last surpassing the hurt in his soul, and the words wouldn’t come.
What would he say, anyway? Did she want him to beg?
It was as if she knew he couldn’t speak, for she didn’t wait. Instead, she bit into her own wrist until blood welled out around the twin fang marks, then held it to his lips.
She didn’t have to tell him to drink; his body wanted to survive even if he had his doubts, and his hand moved of its own accord to grip her wrist, holding it tightly as he fed.
Her blood was so much more powerful than that of any chattel he had ever tasted. He’d forgotten—or he’d never known, having nothing to compare it to when first she had given him her blood. That had been in a chalice; this was more intimate, somehow.
Belle sighed softly as he pulled from her again, a note of pleasure in the sound. Not from anything he had done: he hadn’t bitten her, there was none of his serum in her blood. None of the secretion that made those like Éliane lose their minds in pleasure.
He fed, and she let him. Mouthful after mouthful. Some of it was his own blood, for she had fed from him often enough. He truly was her pet.
Fear and helplessness make good bedfellows for hate.
At last, his hand fell away limp, and he had no strength left to feed. Her blood had healed him; the agony had diminished, his skin no longer hurt, but in its place came such weariness as he had never known. It was long past dawn now, and he couldn’t fight it any longer.
“Sleep,mon cœur noir,you will awake stronger for this.”
Her black heart? Was that how she saw him, or what she wanted him to be?
The thought was smothered in the heaviness of the deepest fatigue, and Antoine knew no more.
Six
Boston, Massachusetts, Present Day.
“Welcome, everyone.” Zara’s mystical voice had the hushed, breathy quality of someone well-practiced in communing with unseen forces. “Tonight is a special night, and I thank you all for coming. Tonight, we gather not just for ritual and sisterhood, but for knowledge and discovery.”
