CHAPTER THREE
The Taste of Control
When I woke up the next morning, Brandon and Pricina were in my room. They were on the other side of the glass partition Pricina created. They stared at me with faces as still as masks.
I tucked my ankle with the scrunchie around it under my bottom and resolved not to leave the bed until I had put the metal ring back through my ankle. I could not let them see the progress I’d made… unless they already knew.
“Have you found Christian yet?” I asked snarkily.
They didn’t answer but continued staring. Did they know what I’d done?
“Are you even looking for him?” I tried again.
Brandon cleared his throat and said, “I think we’ve made a mistake not explaining the bigger picture to you.”
I nodded impatiently. “Can we not talk today? Would that be even a little bit possible? Could you two just leave and maybe not come back ever? I’m pretty sure I’d rather die today than talk to you again, Brandon.” This was not how I usually spoke to them. I had never before mentioned dying or that I’d like to die.
It made Branon’s eye twitch.
Pricina had a different reaction. For the first time, she smiled. I couldn’t tell what emotion accompanied the expression. Was she happy? Or was it something else?
Brandon stuttered, his eyes wide in horror. “After you took a bullet to the head and lived? How do you plan to die? Are you thinking you could die if we never came back and you ran out of food?”
“The food you guys gave me sucks. I haven’t complained because I thought that it was part of your grand design. Give me yucky food, make me desperate, and get me to do what you want. I want you to leave. I’ll eat the food or I won’t, but with my access to the Red Forest, I’m pretty sure I don’t have to eat anymore. It’s merely a luxury and with luxuries like powdered milk and quick oats to be had, who would care for your generosity?”
He clicked his tongue. “I see. We’ve been too hard on you. We should have done more to show you that we’re your friends.”
I snorted when he said the word ‘friends’. Nothing about what the two of them had done since I arrived smacked of friendship. They had subjected me to the most humane form of torture, but they’d also separated me from Christian, which pissed me off.
“It’s just that we’re in a remote location and getting supplies here is tricky at best,” Brandon said, still prattling on about the food.
“I don’t care about your excuses or your pathetic offer of friendship. We are not friends. I don’t need to eat and you don’t need to come back here. I hate listening to you talk,” I said with only the tiniest sprinkling of malice because I’d already tried throwing tantrums with very little success.
“Would you talk to her?” he asked, pointing to Pricina.
“If she’s going to say the same crap as you, I’d rather not,” I said bluntly.
“I won’t,” Pricina said crisply.
She glared downward and used her matter manipulation to drop the stones that made up the floor under Brandon and without warning, he fell through the cracks, chair and all. He screamed, but she sealed up the hole and blocked the sound.
“He won’t die,” she said, motioning for a chair from another room to come into the bedroom and seat her. The way it moved was unusual, almost like it was on invisible rails. Its movements were mechanical and choppy. She sat down gracefully and looked at me.
I looked back at her.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
She broke eye contact and gazed out the window at the snow-covered mountainsides lit only by the light from my window. “Did he tell you that he’s my husband?”
“Brandon?” I asked hopefully since there were no other men around.
She nodded, sucking on her lower teeth in an expression of exasperation. “He’s quite a bit younger than me. He’s only three hundred, while I am somewhere between fifteen hundred and seventeen hundred. He thought he could speak to you better because of the history he has with you and Christian, but it’s clear that he’s failed and now I can try.” She turned her neck to the side and I heard the bones crack.
The sheet of glass between us rolled itself into a tube and sat next to her, slowly taking the form of a transparent bishop like a piece on a chessboard, but so large it sat a little higher than her head.
“That’s a neat trick,” I said. For once, I didn’t sound like I was so disgusted I was about to choke on my own tongue.
She began slowly. “I think you object to entering Christian’s heart because you have been raised to believe that there are certain boundaries in this world that shouldn’t be crossed. You believe in property, don’t you? This land belongs to this person, so it’s theirs. In your case, you do not want to enter Christian’s heart because his secrets are not yours. Like you’re back in his house in Scotland and all the books are under lock and key. If those books had not been behind glass, would you have read them?”
I remembered my disappointment. I had wanted to learn everything about him, read every book he had read before, and feel a little bit of what he felt, but all of that was locked against me.
“This is like that,” she continued in a measured, easy voice. “He didn’t give you the key to the cabinets of his library. If anything, it was like he put the library inside you. That’s what his heart is. It’s everything about him you have ever wanted to know. He didn’t give you his heart to merely be a pump for your blood, though it has served that function for you.” She paused. “If you don’t understand, you should know that Christian is damaged. He was broken before he gave you his heart. When you were ill and he sat with you in the hospital, he would have seen you, not just as someone he could save if he was willing to sacrifice enough, but also as someone who could save him.”
I gasped. How so?
Pricina was much better at this than Brandon.
She continued. “You loved him so much. You would have given him anything he wanted, done anything for him. Put yourself back in that moment. If he had asked you to cut out your heart and give it to him, would you have done it? If he was the one who asked?”
I felt myself deflating as she read my mind and spoke my words. I tried not to show a reaction. She was almost two thousand years old. Of course, she knew how to pull someone’s heartstrings.
“How many people do you think Christian has held in his arms at the very moment their hearts stopped beating? How many people could he have saved by giving them a piece of his body? Maybe all of them… but how many of them could have returned the favor by saving him? Not even one… except you. You are what he wants completely. He knew he was marrying you as a fourteen-year-old girl. He knew how unacceptable that was to everyone in this day and age… especially how it might look to you. He couldn’t risk offending you… and yet… He knew he couldn’t trust himself to stay with you all the time. He would want things from you. He’d want you to love him the way you could never love him as a child. Think of how he treated you,” she commanded softly.
And I did. I thought of all the presents he’d showered on me. All the times when he thought the most enjoyable way to spend an afternoon was to watch me try on clothes. He would buy me anything I liked, no matter what number was written on the price tag.
I thought of all the times we’d sat in cafes and sipped delicious drinks and he’d listened to me prattle. When I was young, I’d say stupid things and he’d look at me with this look on his face that I couldn’t identify. Was I stupid? Was he bored listening to me? He swore he never was, that he could listen to me talk forever.
“He had to wait,” Pricina continued. “He had to wait until you were ready to accept his situation, his age, his skills, and all that he is. It’s a lot. Not everyone could. But he knew if he waited long enough, if he was patient long enough, you would come to him and be what he envisioned you could be. You’re becoming it now. Can you feel it?”
As she spoke, I really wanted to hate her. I wanted to hate her as much as I hated Brandon if not more. “How do you know all this?” I meant to ask rudely, but it came off meekly.
“I once had a husband who was almost like Christian. I understood everything about him, and though Christian is a different man and the specifics are different, real love, real bonds, and real relationships are all formed in the same ways. That’s why you’re married to him because of your cores—yours and his—you promised everything to each other and you sealed it with your own blood. For that reason, no matter what resistance you face, what truths you discover, or what you find that is broken. Inside his heart, you will still feel the same way toward each other. You could give each other everything. He wants you there.”
She stood up and said one more thing, “Regardless of how things seem, this isn’t about Brandon or me. Locking you here was not a selfish thing, though it may appear that way to you now. If you don’t want us to return, we will not. The way out is through Christian’s heart. Don’t be afraid. Brandon performed your wedding correctly and Christian will give you everything. Goodbye.”
Pricina strode out and slammed the door to my bedroom behind her without touching it. She didn’t want me to see how she left my part of the castle, but oddly enough, she left her bishop in my bedroom.