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Madrid went by in a blur. By the time we hit Italy, a cold dread had settled into me that something was terribly wrong. Ambri was acting weird and growing more distant with every passing day. We hardly spoke and when we did, he was curt and distracted. It kept me up at night, wondering and worrying, on top of the mounting stress of the tour.
Any minute now, some critic was going to break from the pack and write that I was a fraud, drawing mythical creatures instead of something serious. No one did, but that didn’t stop me from tossing and turning. My days were crammed with interviews and media events, when all I really wanted was a moment to talk with Ambri and figure out what the hell was going on. Or to just curl up in bed with him and sleep, secure in his arms.
But he didn’t lie with me in the bed anymore.
Am I losing him?
The thought made me sick to my stomach, and I channeled that fear into my paintings. Every morning, I got out of bed at the crack of dawn—whether I’d slept or not—and painted as if possessed, working off the sketches of Ambri I’d done in London.
Back then, I was never far from my sketchbook. I caught him in moments of pure beauty—when he looked the most human. Most like himself. I didn’t know it then, but my new collection would be about transformation. Instead of painting him as a demon, I painted him as a human with the demon form hovering over his shoulder. Or lurking in the shadows. Or merging with him like a photo’s double image.
I could never capture him the way I wanted, but I tried. I fucking tried, infusing every painting with as much hope as I could. The last painting in the collection would be as I saw him when I’d been sick. No demon, just Ambri as he sat in the windowsill in a white dress shirt that was open at the collar, his hair messed. His expression was heavy with worry, but his hope had shone through, as bright as the sunlight that bathed him in gold.
It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, because that’s when I knew I loved him and that I would always love him.
But as the tour through Europe progressed, the paintings began to reveal my fear. The human version of Ambri was like a portrait—straightforward and clean. The demon form haunting him was like a different painting on the same canvas. They became horrifying monsters that reached for him, their wings like shadows that threatened to swallow him up.
I used a wide variety of techniques and styles—whatever the painting told me it needed. I took a pallet knife and slashed brushstrokes onto the canvas, leaving waves of thick black paint. Or I’d sgrafitto a swath of color, scraping a fork, a pin, or my own fingernails through the paint to evoke desperation.
Pain.
Terror.
The fear that Ambri’s dark world was taking him back.
The afternoon of the gallery show, I emerged from the studio, wiping paint off my hands to find Ambri sitting on the couch in our suite at the St. Regis Roma. He was dressed as impeccably as ever in a black suit.
“Going out?” I asked, trying to keep my tone light.
“Hmm? No. I…no.”
I stood awkwardly next to the couch. “Well, I was thinking of getting lunch. Something light before the show tonight.”
“Whatever you want, Cole.”
I stared at the ceiling for a moment, willing back a wave of complicated emotions.
Don’t give up on him, Liebling!
I didn’t know where the hopeful voice came from, but I wanted desperately to believe I only had to obey, and everything would be okay again.
“Hey,” I said brightly, kneeling on the floor in front of him. I rested my hands on his thighs. “Let’s get out of this hotel, get some gelato, and look at some art that isn’t fucking mine and just…be together.” I slid my hands up higher. “Unless…you’d rather stay here andbe togetherright now. Right here on this couch.”
Ambri inhaled sharply through his nose, and I took that as an encouraging sign. But when I raised my eyes, he was staring over my shoulder, looking annoyed.
I shot to my feet, my face hot. “Oh, I’m sorry, am Iboringyou?”
“Yes,” he said and dismissed my stricken expression. “I mean, no. Not you. I don’t know.” He got up with an irritated groan and went to the window, his back to me. “The entire world bores me, Cole,” he said. “I made this tour when I was a child in exile from my home and then a thousand times after that.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. “So maybe coming with me was a mistake. Maybe it’s too much for you.”
“Maybe,” he said coldly. “Or maybe after nearly three hundred years, it’s fair to say humanity doesn’t impress me anymore. I grow tired of it.”
I clenched my jaw. “I see.”
Ambri cleared his throat and slowly turned to face me, as if it were effort. He smiled tightly and shrugged. “What can I say? Like the food I can no longer taste, it’s losing its flavor.”
His words stabbed me in the chest. I crossed my arms to hold it all in. “Sure. Okay. Well, I don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to do with that information, so I’m going to go take a shower, then take a walk and…eat gelato.”
