That sentence lingers like there are things left unsaid, and that’s when I realise there are.
“You’d do it again, wouldn’t you?You don’t regret the choice you made, just the consequences it had?”I say.
Her expression falls.Two giant tears roll over her lids and plummet down her cheeks.“Yes,” she whispers and a string of sobs follow her confession.“Does that change things between us?Can you still love me knowing that I’d choose to make you fall to your knees and sacrifice me again if I had to?”
Does it?
It feels like she just stabbed me between my ribs.And yet, I think it’s the most honest conversation we’ve had.
“If I said it didn’t hurt, I’d be lying.But I did the same thing to you.I agreed to give you to Ignatius in exchange for my freedom because I was cross with you.I’d be a hypocrite to stop loving you.”
She sags against me.“Gods, I thought I’d lost you.”
I stroke her head as she nuzzles against my chest.
“Lucy…”
“Yeah?”she breathes.
“I’m so sorry.I should never have agreed to help Ignatius.It was the most selfish thing I think I’ve ever done.”
“And yet I understand completely.When I made you kill me, gods, you must have thought I’d never loved you, that I was using you all along.”
I press my lips together, exhausted from the conversation.Exhausted in general.My body aches.I am weary beyond anything I’ve ever experienced.
Lucy must sense that, because she leans over the bed and fiddles with my trousers, there’s the rushing sound of leather being pulled and then the clank of a metal belt buckle.
When she reappears, my mouth hangs open.
She’s looped the belt around her neck.Her hips wriggle and she slides onto the floor into the Nadu position, only instead of looking at the floor and waiting like the good little sub she is, she’s holding the belt strap up to me.
“I think I know the perfect way to apologise to each other.”
I grin and take the strap.
30
Midnight
Something is wrong.
I’m curled against Lucy.Our bodies satiated from devouring each other.Darkness long since wrapped around House Inferos, but I couldn’t sleep.The weariness eating my soul kept me churning everything over.
And over the last hour a wrongness has snuck in and clung to my bones like ligaments.
I scratch my face, smearing something against my cheek.Moth debris.
Ignatius is imprisoned, he’s not calling me to reap.So what the hell?
Lucy’s reanimated moths are all dead-dead.I peel myself away from Lucy and roll onto my back.
Something flickers in the corner of the room.
Goosebumps track down my spine.I reach over and flick the bedside lamp on, slip and hit the main bedroom light at the same time.
The room should be showered in light.Instead, a dim glow emanates from both the lamp and the ceiling and my blood runs colder than ice.
I slam my hand over my mouth and stifle a scream.
