His throat bobs. “It was poison. My mother bought a tincture from down in the village market for my bruises. It took me a few days to realize what was happening, but by the time I did, it was too late.” He grits his teeth. “I’d seen something, something I wasn’t supposed to see.”
“What did you see?” I cup his jaw in my palm, watching warmth begin to seep into his skin.
“A woman coming up from the churchyard, a body slung between her arms. I didn’t see who it was, not really. But the next day, I went to church, and by the following day, I was here. Dead. Given my choice. But I chose not to choose. How could I when—” His eyes turn haunted, ghosts of his past masquerading there as memory. “I watched my own funeral, you know? What a terrible thing it was. No one told any good stories.”
A smile cracks on my lips. I don’t want to think about who the woman was. What she might have been doing with a body ripped from hallowed earth. I lift a hand to Bram’s arm.
“The village mourned for you, Bram. Everyone felt your loss. Your mother didn’t leave Avery Manor for months, and when she finally did, she was all skin and bone. She hardly comes into the village, even now—”
“I know.” Bram’s voice is soft as downy feathers. “I watch her and my sisters sometimes. They’re all so old now. Isabel is set to be married in the spring, to a coppersmith from Kinnington.” There is a catch to his voice, and I fight the urge to take him into my arms right here and now. He clears his throat. “Somedays, all I dream about is going back home, being a part of it all.” He steps away, looks down at his hands. “But how can I, really? I’m a walking dead thing, Adelaide. They’ll think I’m a monster.”
I observe the man in front of me. The man with so much life it hurts. Who holds the dying in his hands and sees stars. Who stood afraid andbroken before me and asked to be brought back home. There can be no monster in something so beautiful.
I take his hands in mine, pull him close until I smell the lifeblood rushing through his drying veins. Ink and strong tea and old books. I trace the lines of his palm, raise my eyes to his.
“You are not a monster, Bram Avery.”
He dips his brow low, his voice deep and soft as crushed velvet. “Are you flirting with me or trying to start a fight?”
My smile widens. I lift a hand to his jaw. Once more, warmth is spreading. He makes a sound at the back of his throat that lights a fire in my belly.
“Why not both?”
He closes the gap between us in a single movement, lips coming to mine. My stomach flutters, a thousand bumblebees trapped against the viscera. Bram lifts me in his arms and spreads me out on the cot, as though I am as light as air. The red light streaming in through the window paints him in hues of caramel, his irises like fire.
Here, in this place, his armor is cast down. Destroyed. I can read every thought on his face, every desire and need. His hand comes to peel away my sleeve, lips tracing the line of my collarbone. I suck in air, fear boiling in my belly.
With Ransom, it was all heady and rushed and hot. There was no love in it. Only wicked, suffocating desire. An all-consuming forest fire. Control and power and the need to have me. To own me. To make me his so he could raise himself, become as strong as Mother.
But with Bram, his fingers gently rake my sides, and I shudder. He is nothing but frosty mornings. Hearthside with a wool blanket, a mug of tea, a tattered and well-worn book. Bram is winter on a window, ice like patterns of lace.
“Bram,” I whisper, throat choked with an emotion I cannot name.
“Yes?” His voice is a breath at my throat.
Can he feel it against his lips, the rhythm of my heart?
A-live, a-live, a-live.
But there is something more now too. Something that, in one blisteringly lovely moment, is both wonderful and terrible at the same time.
Love-d, love-d, love-d.
I stop, push Bram off me, and sit up. My hands are shaking in my lap, birds with clipped wings.
“I’m sorry,” comes Bram’s voice. “I shouldn’t—”
“It’s not you,” I say. My breath is coming in short puffs, chest heaving and crashing like a storm at sea. “It’s me. There’s…there’s something wrong with me.” I look down at my hands, the scars running silver at my wrists.
“What?” Bram’s voice is gravelly, his face twisting. One hand reaches for mine, but I pull away.
When I look up at him, his face morphs through my tears.
“My father used to tie me to a chair. Used to make me memorize the Blessed Scripture because he thought it would make me better.” My lips tremble. “You are not the monster, Bram. Because…because I am. A Reaper.”
“Oh, Adelaide.”
The sound of my name in his mouth is enough to send my heart racing. He cups my jaw, pulls me closer. One hand slips across my waist, settling at the small of my back. I press my hands against his chest, maintaining distance between us, something to lessen the pain.
