Blood & Honey
“Why? You don’t have a problem making decisions for me.” Jerking away, I pressed a hand against the door, fighting to prevent the words from spilling out of me. To swallow the bitter vitriol that had settled in my bones after weeks of his disapproval. His hatred. Aberrant, he’d called me. Like a sickness. A poison. And his face—after I’d saved his ass with the ice in Le Ventre—
“I’m clearly not making decisions for you,” he said dryly, dropping my arm. “Or we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
Hateful tears welled in my eyes. “You’re right. You’d be dead at the bottom of a pool with a frozen dick.” My hand curled into a fist against the wood. “Or you’d be dead in the remains of a pub with a burnt one. Or bleeding out in La F?ret des Yeux from a thief’s blade. Or in Le Ventre from werewolves’ teeth.” I laughed then—wild, perhaps hysterical—my nails biting into the door hard enough to leave marks in the wood. “Let’s pick a death, shall we? God forbid I take the decision away from you.”
He pressed forward, so close now I felt his chest against my back. “What happened in the blood camp, Lou?”
I couldn’t look at him. Wouldn’t look at him. Never before had I felt so stupid—so stupid and callow and unappreciated. “A funeral,” I said, voice wooden. “For Etienne Gilly.”
“A funeral,” he repeated softly, planting his hand on the wood above my head, “for Etienne Gilly.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you didn’t need to know.”
His head dropped to my shoulder. “Lou—”
“Forgive me, husband, for trying to keep you happy—”
Snapping his head up, he snarled, “If you want to make me happy, you’d treat me like your partner. Your spouse. You wouldn’t keep secrets from me like a foolish child. You wouldn’t play with memories or steal Balisardas. You wouldn’t turn yourself to ice. Are you—are you trying to get yourself killed? I don’t—I just—” He pushed away, and I turned, watching him drag a hand through his hair. “What is it going to take, Lou? When are you going to see how reckless you’re being—”
“You churlish ass.” My voice rose, and I fought the urge to pound my fists and stomp my feet, to show him what a foolish child I could be. “I have sacrificed everything to keep your ungrateful ass alive, and you’ve scorned me at every turn.”
“I never asked you to sacrifice anything—”
I lifted my hands to his face. “Perhaps I can find a pattern to reverse time. Is that what you want? Would you rather have died in that pool than lived to see me become who I truly am? I’m a witch, Reid. A witch. I have the power to protect the ones I love, and I will sacrifice anything for them. If that makes me a monster—if that makes me aberrant—I’ll don the teeth and claws to make it easier for you. I’ll get worse, if that justifies your twisted rhetoric. Much, much worse.”
“Goddamn it, I’m trying to protect you,” he said angrily, flinging my hands out of his face. “Don’t turn this into something it’s not. I love you, Lou. I know you’re not a monster. Look around.” He extended his arms, eyes widening. “I’m still here. But if you don’t stop sacrificing pieces of yourself to save us, there won’t be anything left. You don’t owe us those pieces—not me, not Coco, not Ansel. We don’t want them. We want you.”
“You can cut the shit, Reid.”
“It’s not shit.”
“No? Tell me something, then—that night when I robbed Tremblay’s townhouse, you thought I was a criminal, not a witch. Why?”
“Because you were a criminal.”
“Answer the question.”
“I don’t know.” He scoffed, the sound harsh and jarring in the stillness of the shop. “You were wearing a suit three sizes too big and a mustache, for God’s sake. You looked like a little girl playing dress-up.”
“So that’s it. I was too human. You couldn’t fathom me being a witch because I wasn’t inherently evil enough. I wore pants and ate sticky buns and sang pub songs, and a witch could never do those things. But you knew, didn’t you? Deep down, you knew what I was. All the signs were there. I called the witch at Tremblay’s a friend. And Estelle—I mourned her. I knew more about magic than anyone in the Tower, loathed the books in the library that denounced it. I bathed twice a day to wash away the scent, and our room smelled permanently of the candles I stole from the sanctuary. But your prejudices ran deep. Too deep. You didn’t want to see it—didn’t want to admit that you were falling in love with a witch.”
He shook his head in vehement denial. It was as good as a condemnation.
A sick sort of satisfaction swept through me. I was right, after all. My magic hadn’t twisted me; it’d twisted him, taking root in the space between us and wrapping around his heart. “After everything, I thought you could change—could learn, could grow—but I was wrong. You’re still the same as you were then—a scared little boy who thinks all things that roam the night are monsters, and all things that rule the day are gods.”
“That’s not true. You know that’s not true—”
But with one realization came another. This one bit deeper, its thorns drawing blood. “You’re never going to accept me.” I stared up at him. “No matter how hard I try, no matter how much I wish it weren’t so . . . you’re not my husband, and I’m not your wife. Our marriage—our entire relationship—it was a lie. A hoax. A trick. We’re natural enemies, Reid. You’ll always be a witch hunter. I’ll always be a witch. And we’ll always bring each other pain.”
A beat of silence passed, as deep and dark as the pit opening in my chest. The mother-of-pearl ring burned a circle of fire into my finger, and I tore at the golden band, desperately trying to remove it—to return it. It wasn’t mine. It’d never been mine. Reid hadn’t been the only one playing pretend.
He marched forward, ignoring my struggle and gripping my face between his hands. “Stop this. Stop. You need to listen to me.”
“Stop telling me what I need to do.” Why wouldn’t he just admit it? Why couldn’t he say the words that would set me free? That would set him free? It wasn’t fair to either of us to continue this way, aching and yearning and pining after something that could never be. Not like this.
“You’re doing it again.” His thumbs stroked my cheeks anxiously, desperately, as my hysteria built. “Don’t make a rash decision. Stop and think, Lou. Feel the truth in my words. I’m here. I’m not leaving.”
My gaze sharpened on his face, and I reached deep, searching for something—anything—that’d force him to admit he thought me a monster. To admit the truth. I thrust the ring into his pocket. “You wanted to know about the man. Gilles.” Though somewhere inside that pit a voice warned me to stop, I couldn’t. It hurt. That revulsion in his eyes when he’d seen me in Le Ventre—I could never forget it. I’d done everything for him, and now I—I was scared. Scared he was right. Scared he wasn’t.
Scared I’d get worse before I got better. Much, much worse.
Reid’s thumbs stilled on my cheeks. I forced myself to meet his eyes, to speak each word to them.
“He was your brother, Reid. Gilles was your brother. Morgane has been hunting your siblings, torturing them to send me a message. She murdered two more at the blood camp while I was there—Etienne and Gabrielle Gilly. That is why La Voisin joined us—because Morgane murdered your brother and sister. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to distract you from our plan. I didn’t want you to feel pain—guilt—for two people you’ve never known. I stopped you from saving Gilles because it didn’t matter if he died, so long as you lived. I did it for the greater good—my greater good. Do you understand now? Does that make me a monster?”
He stared at me for a long moment, white-faced and trembling. At last, he dropped his hands and stepped back. The anguish in his eyes cleaved my chest in two, and fresh tears trickled down my cheeks. “No,” he finally murmured, brushing them away one last time. A farewell. “It makes you your mother.”
I waited several minutes after Reid left the shop to break down. To sob and scream and smash the glass beetles from their shelves, crush the calla lilies beneath my boot. When I finally cracked the door open a half hour later, the shadows of the alley had vanished in the afternoon sun, and he was nowhere in sight. Instead, Charles waited at the threshold. I breathed a sigh of relief—then stopped short.
A small piece of paper had been tacked to the door. It fluttered in the breeze.
Pretty porcelain, pretty doll, forgotten and alone,
Trapped within a mirrored grave, she wears a mask of bone.
I tore it from the door with shaking fingers, peering down the alley behind me. Whoever had left this here had done it while I was still inside the shop—either when Reid and I had argued or after Reid had left. Perhaps Manon had found me, after all. I didn’t question why she hadn’t attacked, however. I didn’t question the morbid words of her riddle. It didn’t matter. They didn’t matter.
Nothing mattered at all.
A Change of Plans
Reid