“Stop…” I think I choke out.
“I can ease this suffering.”
The voice is in my head. Tangling with mine. Distorting my resistance. Stroking the raw nerve of every pleasure point so that even the pain has me arching.
“Don’t want this,” I tell myself even as the room starts flicking in and out of focus. “Please…”
The air is so thick. So hot. My skin feels flushed. Tender. I think I’m going to be sick, but if I throw up, I’ll choke.
It speaks again with a low rasp that prickles beneath my skin.
“What do you want, Lenora?”
The answer is simple. It’s on the tip of my tongue, teetering precariously. So delicate and dangerous.
There is only one thing I want.
“Tell me,”it purrs as if already in my head and only waiting for me to unleash it into the world.
But I’m not crazy.
I don’t speak to things that aren’t there. I don’t let myself indulge in insane behavior.
And deep down, I know what becomes of those who dabble in such things. I know the price. What I want, I can get myself without the aid of … whatever this thing is.
I shut my eyes instead. If this is a dream, it will be gone when I open them again. If it is a demon, I will not submit.
Something feather-light sweeps my face. Almost a breath, a faint chuckle. Like I have amused it by my defiance.
“Perhaps you wish to remain in your agony. I will wait.”
My eyelids sweep open, mind braced to confront some horrific sight, but finding only the ceiling overhead. White with only the usual cluster of shadows in the corners. The room itself sits in its usual chill. The familiar whisper of naked branches outside my terrace window. The familiar echo of my own labored breaths as I wait for the chaos raging inside me to calm.
This is new.
Before tonight, it had stayed behind the mirror. It had stayed at the edges of my periphery.
It’s grief. I know it is. That thing hadn’t existed before a week ago. It only crawled free of whatever unholy thing contained it after that evening.
“We won’t be long.”
Eliah captured my face between his long fingers. Yellow and red smudges stained his skin with the faint scent of turpentine. I found myself turning into his palm, inhaling him.
“The sooner you stop distracting us, the sooner we’ll return,” Ames teased, lips nuzzling the curve of my neck from behind.
His arms were too tight around my middle. His hold, too unyielding as I stood between them in the dimly lit foyer. Soft dusk shone across the gleaming marble, illuminating the liquid silver pools peering down at me.
“Be careful,” I whispered. “The roads...”
Eliah kissed me, so slow and sweet I forgot my words.
“You worry too much,” he teased once he’d properly disorientated my thoughts.
I did worry too much. I always sensed that gnawing anxiety deep in the pit of my stomach when they left home.
“Nerves,”Mrs. Pym always said. “It’s natural.”
But nothing about that unease felt natural.
