It was agonized fire. “Stop thinking of me. Think ofyourself,” he begged her, in a voice more raw than her own. Horrible to hear, now that she understood it all. Now that the lengths he had gone to were clear. He had burned himself alive, just to let her warm herself with the glow.
“How can I? How can I, how can I?” she cried. “You made yourself the object of all my loathing, you endured all my loathing—while loving me so deeply it defies description. You did it out of love for me. Tell me you didn’t do it out of love for me.”
“I could have just told you. I should have.”
“Oh, but we both know why you didn’t.”
“Don’t say it. Please. Just let’s stop now.”
He did step forward, then. He put a trembling hand out, clearly trying to ask her to be gentle. She had to look away, over the lake,just to keep going. Shehadto keep going. “God knows I want to. But I can’t. I can’t. Because the idea is burned right into me. It’s there like a brand on my heart—the reason you kept silent, even when you could have said. I see it more clearly than I can my own self: You just knew I would forgive you, if you did. You knew I would want to be by your side. That I would love you again. Instead of doing the final thing you were sure had to be done. Just one more thing to keep me safe, after all the others put in place. That knife at your throat, that I can still see whenever I close my eyes,” she said, trying her best not to cry as she did.
And doubly so when he reacted.
His hand went up as if to take hold of her face. As if to draw her to him, hold her in his arms. But then he forced it to close, before he could. He made a fist and crushed it against his mouth.
She almost felt the agonized sound he made into it.
Before he made himself be calm. He took some soothing breaths, paced, put his hands in his hair. The same way he probably had every time she had turned her back, after he said or did something cruel. She even saw his face settle into something like that scathing stoicism, once the job was done. “It’s what I deserved. You have to know it is. You saw what I did to you, all those years ago,” he said, flat and cold. Face turned toward the lake, so he couldn’t be moved.
It was all right, though. She knew how to undo that, too.
“Yes, I did. I saw. But the thing is, seeing isn’t the only way to understand something,” she said, and he scoffed. He shook his head.
“What else could there be?” he said.
Though she saw the way he went still. How he folded his arms across his chest.He did that so frequently to protect his act, hermind whispered.Like with the cigarettes, too.And it strengthened her resolve. “I heard my own voice in my head. I felt my own feelings. And I know one thing now for sure. If you speak to the murdered dead, they can say something that no one else is ever able to truly know in quite the same way: precisely what happened, when they died.”
“Yes. I savaged you.”
“So you remember doing it, then.”
“When in that feral state, I am conscious of nothing.”
“You were conscious enough in the library to lay me somewhere soft to sleep,” she said, tone neutral but the meaning so clear it made him let out a shaky breath. And she could see his gaze turning inward. Considering what that meant, and what she might be suggesting by it.
Even though he tried his best to discard it.
“You don’t know I did that.”
“I didn’t then—I thought I just managed to escape. But now it’s obvious.”
“Even so, it’s not evidence of anything. I was younger then, I was less in control—when things happened, I just couldn’t steady myself. You had to run from me all the time. Always the countdown. Always the hunt.”
He made a sound of horror, thinking of his own terrible mistakes.
But all she could do was marvel over the sudden rush of memories.
And every one of them so different in feeling to that time after the ball. God, thethrillof them by comparison. The joy of them. How could he imagine she didn’t know about the joy? “Eventhough they never actually ended badly, at all,” she said, stunned and full of wonder. “Youneverhurt me. It truly was just a game. I ran through the long grass, through the trees, through the maze. And you would just catch me. In my nightdress, waiting in the middle, swooning for you on the very stone table you pretended to torment me on.”
“I shouldn’t have let that happen.”
“But it says everything you need to know now, love. You sank those teeth in while between my legs, my whole self offered up so willingly you could have taken everything I had. And instead you did nothing but give me joy. Give me gentleness. Give me exactly what you knew I loved.”
“That doesn’t mean I didn’t do this.”
“Maybe not. But the fact that I recall being killed by magic certainly does.”
Now he looked. Half broken and convinced already, quite clearly. But still trying to resist, until she delivered that kicker. Then after that, all he had left was one faint protest. “Why would you let me argue all of this if youknewit wasn’t true,” he said, as she closed the only ever so slight gap that still existed between them.
