“I’m glad you told me. Really.”
I can’t think of anything to say in response, slightly fearful that I might ruin it with the wrong sentence. Her right hand slides around me to my shoulder blade, gentle above the place she once claimed my heart crawled to hide. As if she can hear me second-guessing myself, she locates the knot and presses her palm flat.
Stop.Breathe.You’re fine.
Then, her free hand finds my forearm, and she isn’t coy about the way she lazily traces the inkwork. She maps the blade of the dagger, then stalls at the hilt once she realises something. “It’s… words. The hilt’s made out of letters?”
“In Garamond Bold Italic.”
She shifts in my lap to get a better look and lifts my arm towards the light. Her eyes soften as though she’s discovered something fragile and is afraid to break it. “Your… your font?”
I have to stop my voice from cracking when I echo, “My font. The heir who shouldn’t be but is. It’s still Garamond, still belongs with my brothers—but tilts just enough to remind me I don’t exactly fit. Bent crooked by the weight of expectation.”
Her quiet snort takes me by surprise. “Boldanditalic? That has to be the most dramatic self-diagnosis I’ve ever heard.” The corner of my mouth betrays me. “Could be worse. At least you’re not Arial.”
“And what’s wrong with Arial?” I tease.
“Dunno, but some weirdo told me it’s tap water. Something about bland tea in a beige cup.”
The almost direct quote makes my heart grow ten times in size. “Sounds like a man who knows what he’s talking about. Intelligent as hell, probably.”
“Hm, modest too.” I keep lazily scratching at her scalp, but my breath catches when she leans in and reads, “Say less, mean more.” Every syllable vibrates into my chest, like she’s branding my creed onto me. A soft laugh escapes her. “What does it mean?”
My longest tenant knocks again upon hearing her question. I don’t know which words to string together to tell her that the blade is blood I’ve never spilt. It’s a lesser violence inked into my skin. My father wanted war, open rebellion to prove a point, and I gave him quiet. I killed him a million times that way, with this weapon, and she has no idea she’s tracing the evidence of the boy who wanted to slit his father’s throat.
“It means I’d rather stay silent than speak a lie,” I say eventually.
She tilts her head back the slightest bit, glassy eyes meeting mine. “Hm. If you’re unable to lie, then tell me whether you think I’m a bad person. Y’know, for killing Gabriel.”
“I don’t.”
The answer comes fast. Absolute in its intensity, and her title cleaves me in half.
Murderess.
It should disgust me, but it tugs me closer, shoves me to my knees and yanks my head back until I’ve acknowledged what sits before me. This manifestation of things I could only dream of. This woman who has let her tenant out, and instead of disgust, I feel envious. Which one of us is the sinner, then? The woman who spilt blood or the man who has only had the courage to fantasise about it?
Perhaps it’s both and neither. Perhaps there’s no difference between prince and haunted witch. Perhaps there never was. Sitting here sanctifying her sin, I’ve wed myself to her crime, so I take her guilt and lock it tightly behind my ribs. I breathe a little easier once she drifts off to sleep, and those ten minutes I’ve bargained for dissolve in my arms.
Ten minutes—as if I could ever measure her in anything less than an eternity.
31
I KNOW THY NAME
FRANCESCA
The first thing I see when I open my eyes is the glaring 02:16 blinking back at me. Second thing I notice is that I’m cocooned in heat, pressed against a radiator with a heartbeat—a heartbeat that’s currently thundering in my left ear. My leg is thrown across Eric’s hip with the kind of contentment I last experienced sharing a bed with Lucy. He’s got one arm caged around my waist, his other palm anchored firmly on my upper thigh as if bracing for another attack, even in sleep.
Eric looks nothing like the solemn prince or quiet academic right now. His golden hair is darker in this light, untidy waves falling across his forehead. Sleep has smoothed the ever-present furrow between his brows, and I catch myself marvelling at the traces of the boy he might once have been. A faint spot of drool glimmers at the corner of his mouth, the universe finally giving me proof that he is indeed human. I think I make a sound. Maybe a quiet laugh, but I’m so tired I don’t even think it leaves my head.
Prince Problematic barely stirs, affirming the latter.
Naked in the lap of Godwyn’s heir in that tub, I should’ve been ashamed, on my knees, pleading with Adelina forforgiveness. Even though I’ve never been a believer in omens—at least not in the same sense as Gran and Nanna—something incorporeal pokes me in the left shoulder as my guilt tries to establish itself.
A phantom finger presses down, whispering,‘Go on, you want him’.My right shoulder echoes the sting in a strange agreement with its twin; I’mallowedwant. Allowed to deserve this. Deserve it to the point where I could become insufferable about it. Deserve this soft catastrophe because his mouth is an off switch. For a girl living with the dead, silence inside my skull is raunchier than any sex ever could be.
One simple‘Just this’,and I’m no longer a girl trapped in a coffin. ‘Just this’, and the ‘this’ in question is resurrection.
