LikeIbelong to her.
“That’s it, Little Lamb, keep coming for me,” I order her, words breathy, worship reflecting back to her in my tone. “Fuck, so beautiful.”
Her whole body tightens like a bow string, her eyes are on mine, deep wide orbs as she lets go, coming around a weapon that, at least for me, holds significance to us.
It feels fitting, something coming full circle.
Our love is not gentle. It’s an invocation whispered through trembling lips in shadowed corners of forbidden places. To love her is to stand too close to the flame, feeling my skin crisp and burn and peel, and stepping closer anyway. She's destruction wrapped in reverence; the sin I endlessly return to as though salvation were ever an option. Every touch feels like trespass, every breath between us a confession we’ll never atone for.
“I had twenty-four hours to claim you, or they were going to kill you,” I tell her straight, unfeeling, emotionless, the axe thrown away from us, my body covering hers, our noses touching. “Milus, he finally realised why I’d been such a disobedient shit all those years we were apart.” She’s crying now, big fat tears rolling down her cheeks, they’re so easily identifiable from the raindrops rolling down her face in exactly the same way, because hers are full of a pain I can taste as my tongue laps upwards of her cheeks, in an attempt to consume it for her.
The suffering.
Realisation.
“I was keeping you safe, away from me, away from here,” I drop my forehead to hers, her eyes shut, mine on her closed lids even though my vision is blurred being so close. “Because I love you, Penelope.”
And they wanted you here, but I don’t know why.
You were a player in their game long before your name was ever whispered into my ear.
There are too many dots missing for me to connect them.
“I love you more than any soul has ever loved another.”
Chapter 20
PENELOPE
Christmas. It came and went without anyone noticing. It doesn’t mean anything here, and I don’t know if I care. If I should. I don’t remember ever having one that I enjoyed, so I’m unsure why it seems to bother me now. But the memories of Christmas Eve’s past are playing on a loop inside my head.
Choir carols echoing through the many different churches and cathedrals I have found myself in over the years, always tucked up on the back row of wooden pews, keeping myself small, hidden, unassuming. Even on the most freezing of nights, something about them always made me feel warm. Welcome. As though something so much larger than me opened up its arms to embrace me when I wandered inside.
My fondest memory of my life before this, before now, after Billy left me, and I was a young woman lost in a world that continuously found a way to hurt her, was the Bow Bells.
St Mary-le-Bow Church ordinarily ring the Bow Bells every night at nine-pm. From inside the main hall they vibrate all theway through your bones, your teeth. They sound so loud and so proud, they always made me stand a little taller. Even if it were only whilst they sounded, they made me feel like I was home. And on Christmas Eve, just once, they rung out at midnight, it made my whole body go cold, it was so beautiful.
It’s strange to think now, that I ever took comfort in it at all, ever sought out a religious place to rest myself for midnight mass. Out of every act of abuse or violence from religious men I have ever endured, it’s still always been the religious spaces I’ve found comfort.
I don’t think I believe in anything like that.
I’ve only ever found true comfort in a god of my own.
Whether of my own making or not, I am unsure, but as I look across the space,ourspace, and stare into his icy blue eyes, a wicked twinkle in them as he looks over at me from the door, his chin dipped in goodbye, but his attention always entirely on me. I question whether or not I really am here by chance, or if I find myself here by the summoning of some unknown divine being that has always had this path mapped out specifically for me.
“Goodbye, Little Lamb,” Billy says quietly from the main suite door, backing out of it as his smile widens, tongue flicking over his canine, before he rolls his gaze over the entirety of me once more. “Be good,” he winks, and with that, he leaves the room, the door clicking closed quietly as he goes.
We’ve been better.
Since the woods.
The grave.
The body.
The axe.
It’s only been a few days, but we’ve been good.
