“I wouldn’t expect you to,” Beatrix says. “I imagine it’s all a bit too human.” The suffering, and everything else that comes along with it.
The faerie’s eyes flare bright. Beatrix gasps as a wave of pain and nausea crashes over her. She clutches the edge of the sink until her knuckles match the porcelain.
“This can end tonight. Now. Just say the word.”
Beatrix struggles to keep her voice steady. “It doesn’t matter how many times you ask me. The answer will always be no.”
The faerie sneers. “Always is a very long time. Perhaps you don’t understand that yet. It has only been four hundred years, give or take a few decades. Not that you’ve made the mistake of counting.”
Beatrix glares at her.
“Oh dear,” the faerie says, mocking concern. “How very human of you.”
“Making mistakes?” Beatrix snaps.
“Hoping,” the faerie replies. And then she’s gone. The face staring at Beatrix from the glass is her own, white as a sheet.
She takes a shallow breath, steadies herself as the muscles in her arm stitch themselves back together, her nerves reconnect, her skin regrows. She can feel it all, like she’s still in that factory, still burning. Like it might just kill her this time.
She vomits in the sink. She deserves it. This is the price she pays for living.
“Bea? Are you all right?” Oliver calls through the door.
She doesn’t answer. She grits her teeth and sinks to the floor as another wave of fire pulses through her arm. A sob escapes her lips. She can’t hold it in. She squeezes her eyes shut, presses her forehead against the cold tiles.
She could end it.
She could call out to the faerie.
She could take it back.
Oliver’s hand slides into hers, a steady grip in her trembling one. He whispers in her ear, tells her it will all be over soon. That it will be all right. That he is here.
The pain subsides, and so do Beatrix’s tears. But she can’t will her body to move off the floor. Can’t bring herself to look at Oliver. He stays with her, stroking her hair, neither of them saying anything for a long time.
“Talk to me, Bea,” Oliver says quietly.
Beatrix is hollow. Empty, except for one thought rattling in her head. “I shouldn’t be here.”
Oliver’s hand stills in her hair. His fingers graze along her chin, tilting her face until she is looking into his eyes: the summer sky, darkened by storm clouds tonight.
“I’m glad you are.” And something about that look in his eyes, that strained note in his voice when he says it, makes her believe him.
“I’m glad you’re here, too.” She means here, sitting on the bathroom floor, holding her. Here, in 1916. Here, in her impossibly long life. She hopes he knows.
Oliver helps her off the floor. She refills the tub, and he leaves her alone with a worried, weary glance. She doesn’t leave the bath until the water has gone cold, her fingertips wrinkled like dried currants. She dries herself with one of the inn’s scratchy white towels and slips Oliver’s button-down over her shoulders, breathing in the scent of him.
Beatrix steps out of the bathroom, her hair still damp down her back. The room is empty. A single lamp casts a warm, dim glow from the bedside table. The blankets have been turned down on the bed, inviting her to sleep. To forget. Beatrix sinks down onto the mattress.
He didn’t even say goodbye.
Oliver has never stayed the night. She shouldn’t be surprised he’s gone. But tonight it hurts, deeper than anything she has felt in centuries. Because he is gone, and she is alone, and this is how it ends. The opposite of déjà vu, a premonition of her inevitable future.
The door creaks open. “I thought I could find you something to eat, but—”
Beatrix springs to her feet and rounds on Oliver. Because he has made her feel like this. Despair and joy and longing in a single breath—an ache in her bones when he is gone, and a lightness in her heart when he is here. Because she doesn’t want to let him go, doesn’t want to count the years until he returns to her.
The days.
