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With her, it’s something else entirely. Lust. A hunger like I’ve never felt before. A yearning to touch. To possess. A thing I fear will never be sated, not with her.
The chime of the clock echoes from the main hall of the house. I check the time on my father’s antique watch. Six o’clock.
I get to my feet and, after glancing at the last photograph taken of my family days before our parents’ final trip, I blow out every candle and make my way back from the dark wing to the library. If I wasn’t sure before whether my grandmother knew where I spent the days I vanished from the house, I am now. Because there she is, seated in my armchair studying the stained-glass window, a tumbler of whiskey on the table between the two chairs. Without turning to me, she pushes the glass toward the empty chair. Grandmother doesn’t drink. It’s a vice.
“Grandmother.” I cross to that chair because there’s no sense in doing anything but that, and I take a seat, picking up the tumbler and sipping from it.
“Azrael,” she says with a smile that turns the blood in my veins to ice. “I understand the witch will be joining the family for dinner.”
“The witch is my wife. And yes, she will eat with us.”
“Why?”
“Because she needs to eat.”
“She can eat with the servants. You’ve already given her a room of her own in our home, which I am against.”
“Yes, I’m aware.”
“You’ve allowed her to roam freely.”
“Do you expect me to keep her under lock and key for a full year?”
“It does not need to be a full year, as you know,” she says.
The muscles in my face tense as I try not to show any emotion. Once The Tithe is collected, it falls to The Penitent to make The Sacrifice within a calendar year. Each Sacrifice is marked in The Book of Tithes, a logbook of sorts, and historically, The Sacrifice is made anywhere from a few weeks after the marriage to a full year.
“The sooner the better, if you ask me.”
“Lucky for her, it’s not up to you.”
She narrows her watery gaze on me. “You’ve taken her to your bed.” She grins a knowing grin.
“And?”
“Don’t let the whore turn your head. You can have any woman you want. You’ve fulfilled your obligation with this one.”
“What do you want, Grandmother?” I ask, checking the time.
“I want what needs to be done to keep our family safe and prosperous.”
“And you want me to hurry up about it.”
She nods.
I get to my feet. She rises to hers and we face one another.
“You understand what is required of me, do you not?” I ask.
“Of course. Your sacrifice, too, will be great, and we will honor you for it.”
“Not that part. The other. The fact that it will be my hands that spill her blood.”
She simply raises her chin, stubborn as ever. She is obsessed with this curse, with making The Sacrifice. Over the last decade, it has consumed her and stolen the little bit of humanity she had left. “Your family needs you, Azrael.”
“It will happen on my terms and in my time. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll collect my wife for dinner.” I set my empty glass down and head toward the door.
“Rébecca may not have a year,” she calls out from behind me.
I stop, because this always makes me stop.
“If we were to lose her,” she says from closer than I expect. “You’d never forgive yourself. I know you.”
I rub my forehead, not sure I’ll make it through dinner with this migraine.
The door opens and I hear Rébecca. “He’s usually in here when you can’t find him,” she’s saying. She giggles and starts to say something else, too, but as soon as she sees us and realizes I’m not alone, she stops dead in her tracks. I swear she shrinks a few inches in front of the old woman.
“What did I tell you about associating with the witch?” Grandmother says, stalking toward my sister, who takes a step backward. At the same moment I grab hold of my grandmother’s arm, Willow, whose hand Rébecca was holding, pushes my sister behind her.
“She didn’t seek me out. I heard some music and got lost searching for the source,” Willow says, although I can see her guilt.
Was she snooping? And how did she hear the music?
Grandmother is seething. She turns to me, rage making her face go beet red. She tugs her arm out of my grasp, so angry she spits the words she speaks. “You let her wander around this house, who knows what she’ll do! What more curses will you allow this witch to bring down on our heads for your own selfish desires, Azrael Delacroix?”
Willow snort-laughs.
“How dare you, witch?” Grandmother practically hisses.
“She’s not…” starts my little sister, but she stops when she sees Grandmother’s face.
