CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

Killing Him Softly

When we got home, I turned to Christian. “Was I as awkward as I felt?”

He inclined his head. “You just need to catch the magic of being Holly.”

“What do you mean?”

He pulled me into his arms. “Holly is not like other women. She’s sophisticated, stylish, educated, but she also believes in the power of the wind through your hair.” He blew a puff of warm air into the red tendril by my ear. “She believes in things no one can see, not even through a microscope, but are there nonetheless.”

I smiled. “That wasn’t what I used to be like, was it?”

“Not at all. It shouldn’t be hard to trick Trinity into believing that you’re Holly instead of Beth. Since that is who you have become so thoroughly, it isn’t tricking her at all.”

“You change yourself effortlessly. How do you do it?”

“I have been trying to tell you. You have changed anyway. You just have to be the new you. You’ve grown so much. The old you was so pouty. Even with your bottom lip bigger now, I have seen you pout once.”

“I’m pouty?” I cried, suddenly provoked.

He smiled, deflating my anger with his charm. “Yes. You were very pouty. You even got poutier as the years went on. You were much poutier at Trinity’s wedding than you were even when you were dying in your early teens. I could never figure out where you learned to be that way. Trinity isn’t like that. She’s caustic when she’s mad. You used to pout like if you could make me stare at your lips long enough, I’d cave and give you what you want.”

I dropped a shoulder and gave up. “It never worked.”

“On the contrary,” he said, taking my hand and twirling me. “It worked very well. I was your slave… as far as I could be.”

I put my hand on his chest to stop spinning.

“Remember not to pout,” he reminded me. “Remember that Holly doesn’t do that sort of thing to get her way. No sulking either. You used to sulk like an offended empress. You need to put your old mannerisms aside and embrace new ones. You need to come up with some bench-mark moves to fall back on.”

“Is that why you were always folding yourself into angles like the iron bars in a stained glass window?”

He turned away. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

I put my index finger between my eyebrows, my middle finger on the tip of my nose, and looked at him through the angular shape I’d created.

“Oh, that?” he muttered, trying to sound nonchalant. “No. That’s what I do. If I’m doing that, I’ve forgotten to hide my true self.”

“You’ve done that a lot around me,” I said, feeling a pleasurable flip inside my stomach.

He kissed me, drawing me close like he couldn’t stand even an inch between us.

When he let up, he said, “It might take some time. Imagine with me that you’ve just come home from a dinner party. What is the first thing you’re going to do?”

“I’m going to sit on this pouf and make you take my boots off me.” I lowered myself onto it.

He shrugged and dropped to his knees. Sensitively, he felt up the side of my leg for the zipper just below my knee. “Maybe you haven’t changed as much as I thought. This is a Beth move, not a Holly move.”

“I don’t understand why both women wouldn’t enjoy having a man’s hand between their legs.”

“You are totally sticking out your bottom lip,” he laughed.

“I can’t help it. This girl’s bottom lip is enormous.”

“All the more reason not to do it,” he said as he rubbed my feet through my stockings before he placed my boots on the drying rack.

I leaned forward into him. “We’re alone. I want to let my guard down, go find the bedroom, and fool around with you.”

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He leaned against the wall. “Do you really feel like that would be right with that sword sticking out of your chest? Do you feel like everything is right between us?” he asked somberly.

“Can you see it?” I mouthed urgently.

He nodded. “A little bit from time to time. It looks like two and a half feet of black onyx that’s been sharpened into a blade. It reminds me of ceremonial knives priests used to use to kill sacrifices in the old days, except it’s longer and crueler.”

“One of the little gods in the village, Axel, said he had seen many objects used in the process of forging connections. He said the sword was elegant.”

“It is elegant,” Christian conceded bitterly. “The path to eternity is as narrow as a sword’s edge.” He sighed. “Do you not understand? I’m not a god anymore. I’m not even a lesser god. I’m merely immortal, and I have fallen so low that it’s not ridiculous that I could die at any moment. If I somehow forget to make my blood cells move, collect oxygen and move again. I will die… immediately. You’ll roll over in bed next to me and I’ll just be dead. The shame I feel is so bitter it’s toxic. If it weren’t for your little pet there, Rhuk, I would have left you already.”

“Left me? Why?” I blurted, angry and flustered in an instant.

“Because I can’t stand to face you like this. I don’t want to do this together with you. I want to leave, find Charles the way I find things, and cut his heart out, but I am tragically afraid I can’t do this by myself. I need Brandon to help me with the surgery once I find it… and I think it will be faster to find Charles if Rhuk helps. If I can give your rock a direction to search, it would be much faster than anything I could do by myself.”

“And me?”

“I adore you so completely that I feel sick that I’m not your equal. If you ask me to fool around with you, I’ll drop dead on the spot.”

I let out the breath I had been holding in and took a fresh breath to stop myself from ripping at the seams. He needed to concentrate on keeping his blood pumping. I was so furious, impatient, and desperate that I could hear my own blood pumping in my ears.

“Well,” I said, evil and manipulative in the same blink of an eye. “Instead of that, I guess I can practice being Holly?”

“Excellent idea,” he said brightly, happy to move the subject to anything else.

“Wonderful. I need to change. I don’t think Holly would engage in guided meditation therapy dressed in a houndstooth print. “Does that fireplace work?”

“I think so.”

“Great. Get a fire going while I get changed.”

Ten minutes later, I sat on the floor cross-legged with my half-husband and told him to close his eyes. Then, with my eyes like a predator’s, I told him to see the veins in his eyelids and imagine for a moment that they were the limbs of trees being swayed by an unseen wind.

“Beth, I don’t want to go there,” he said, almost like he’d cry.

“I understand,” I said soothingly, stroking his hands with mine. “Going there, you will see your palace in decay, your once-grand insides withered and worn. I know something of what the inside of you once was. It wasn’t red at all, was it? It was white… dazzling. It made your gold rooms inside Nhagaspir look tawdry and faint, didn’t it? The white was white against white upon white. Impregnable. Unbreakable. Immortal. And now? What is it? What do you see?”

He fainted on the rug.

I snatched at his wrist to check his pulse before I realized that he wouldn’t have a pulse one way or the other. I’d have to think of another way to test his vitals. Deciding quickly on an old method, I fetched a compact mirror from my purse and slipped it under his nose. It fogged up. He was breathing.

I heaved a sigh of relief.

I remembered all the time I spent in the Red Forest back in the castle. I had laid in my bed for days with my only action being opening my eyes once a day. How long would he stay in the Red Forest?

I would have to watch him all night, like a nurse, whose only tools were a mirror and a diamond. “Rhuk, can you tell that he’s breathing?”

“Of course. The air is moving in and out of his lungs.”

I closed my eyes and through that second sight, I could see it too, but it took so much effort to always be jumping into that world where matter could be manipulated. “This is hard, Rhuk. I gained all that knowledge, but I’m too dumb to use it.”

“You’re just getting used to not being a human anymore. The truth is, you don’t need a mirror. You’ll never need one ever again. If you want to see how you look, look at yourself through the lens of matter manipulation. Through it, you’ll be able to see if your makeup is perfect, if your hair is out of place, and anything else you’re curious about. You would never need a mirror to look over your shoulder. You can see anything in any direction. Certainly, you wouldn’t need one to make sure Christian is still alive when he’s this close.”

I had been thinking about how tired I was and how I would love to sink into the warm, comfortable bed that had been prepared in the master bedroom on the second floor. Suddenly, going to sleep seemed reprehensible.

“Is it asking too much of you to ask you to keep an eye on Christian as well as look for Charles?”

“If either one of those things is important to you, you should give it to me as my full-time job,” Rhuk replied.

“I need another one of you,” I said, getting up.

“Finding another fresh chunk of dolomite isn’t easy,” it said with a nervous chuckle. “You wouldn’t replace me, would you?”

“I’m not replacing you,” I scoffed. “I need to do some work and I can’t sit here like an idiot and count Christian’s breaths. Obviously, I need help.”

“I want to be your most important servant,” Rhuk said, sounding sulky.

Was that what I sounded like?

“You’ll always be my most important pet,” I reassured it.

“Okay, if you promise,” it said. “In that case, there’s a package of pencils over there if you want to make more diamonds.”

Indeed, there was a little fold-away desk in the corner by the window. I opened it and let the table fall forward. There was a package of pink and gold chevron pencils there. I cracked the box open. It was as good a place to start as any.