Nicholas's hands still. He looks down at me, ties off the thick thread with fingers that tremble just slightly, and cups my face in bloody hands. His face comes undone entirely now that the concentration holding it has been released.
But he did not hear the words.
Perhaps I did not actually say them.
There are tears in his amber eyes. I can see them as he leans close, his lips warm and desperate as they find mine.
“Shhhhh," he breathes. "It is alright, my love. I am here.”
But I am already leaving.
Because I did not tell him about the flower soon enough. I did not try hard enough. It is too late. He has already closed the wound and the monster inside me has burrowed into my brain. It is enraged. It is sad.
And now it will have its revenge.
I do not know where I am.
I do not know who I am.
I do not know who this man is with his lips pressed to mine.
I am not me anymore.
I am the monsterIcreated.
Chapter 24
My companion dragged me back from the memories, cold air caressing my skin.
I was back behind my own eyes—back in the glass prison my companion had constructed from my own skull, watching through my face as though my body were a window I could press my hands against, but the lock had been painted shut.
The cemetery spread out around me in the moonlight, all silver-washed stone and deep shadow, the old graves standing in their crooked rows like audience members who had been waiting a very long time for the performance to conclude. Mist threaded between the headstones, low and unhurried. Somewhere distant an owl called once and fell silent.
Nicholas knelt before a freshly turned grave, his hands steady and careful as he worked to untangle a vine wrapped in small luminous flowers, the two plants intertwined so completely that separating them required patience I was grateful he possessed.
Nicholas.
My husband.
The truth of it moved through me, vast and aching—arriving too late, the way all the most important realizations usually did. There had never been a dead wife haunting the corridors of Ambrose House with vines crawling from her throat.
Because I was his wife.
I was the ghost.
The vine had stolen my memories, stripped every beloved thing from me and left me empty, and when the chance to remember had finally pressed through, it had twisted those memories into weapons—convincing me that Nicholas had killed his wife, that he had put the vine in her, that I was in danger, that he was the monster—all of it engineered to drive me toward the flower with enough desperation to overcome my own judgment.
Now you know how it feels,the voice said, somewhere in the dark interior of me, stripped of its usual hunger and carrying something that sounded, horribly, like cruel satisfaction.To be separated from the one you love.
From my cage, I was bleeding without any visible wound, my heart torn open on the truth of what the vine had done and what I had done before it, and unable to shed a single tear because my companion controlled the mechanisms of my face and had decided grief was not currently useful.
Let me out,I said, pressing forward against the back of my eyes with everything I had. The words echoed off the soft tissue of my skull, returning to me muffled and small.Please. Let me out.
My body shifted. My lips curled into an expression that had never belonged to my face before, the smile sinister and cold.
When I have my flower,the vine replied.
I stilled.
