Page 102
“Because there was a barrier between us?”
“Because I could not lose what I did not know I had,” I exclaim.
Her fingers touch my cheek. I close my eyes behind the blindfold. Pointless, perhaps, but necessary.
“You have me,” she says.
The words enter me like a blade slid gently between ribs. Not to kill. To open.
“Do I?”
Her thumb brushes my jaw and she states, “In the ways I choose to give myself, yes.”
I turn my face into her touch. That is what makes her more terrifying than any woman I have known. She chooses and tonight, she chooses to stand before me in the dark.
“I feel as though I have known you longer than this life,” I whisper. Her fingers still. The confession escapes before I can stop it; “Perhaps that is a foolish thought.”
“No.” The word is barely a breath and I cannot see her face. I am grateful I cannot, it is easier, somehow, to bleed honestly in the dark.
“Life felt guilty,” I say. “For all it took. For all it broke. So it gave me you.”
Her hand slides to the back of my neck. “Edward.”
“I know.” My voice roughens. “I know I should not say such things.”
“Why?” Her tone puzzled.
“Because the moment I believe in them, I fear they will be taken.”
The silence that follows is not empty, it is full of her breathing and the beautiful echo of music still living in the wooden floor beneath us. Then she steps closer, her body brushes mine. My pulse quickens. She takes my hands and places them at her waist.
Giving me permission. I hold her and the world stops, no The Collector, no blood. I am not one of the boys hiding in rooms where monsters wore human faces. Only Olive beneath my hands, the blindfold over my eyes and this strange mercy of being trusted.
“I will not let them take you,” I say.
My voice is too low, too final but it is truth. Whatever war comes, whatever web the Collector has woven, from the lords, governors and rich men crawl from their golden holes to defend him, I will burn them out.
I will let Alcott blow open every door, as Lazarus sets every ballroom dripping with blood. I will put myself between Olive and every hand reaching to claim her until there is nothing left of me but bone and devotion. They will not take her, not while I breathe. Not while any of us do. Olive’s hand tightens at my neck.
“Your mind went somewhere,” she says softly.
“I came back.”
“To me?”
“Always.”
She removes the blindfold, then the theater returns slowly. Olive’s face is close to mine, eyes shining with something I am still afraid to name because naming precious things has always felt like inviting a curse but fear no longer gets to be the loudest voice within me.
“I love you,” I say.
Her lips part. I did not plan it and I do not take it back. For years, I have been a thousand broken shards held together by duty, guilt, and fear. I thought love would shatter me further and wanting her would expose every fracture.
Instead, she has knelt beside the wreckage and begun fitting pieces together. Alcott has his place, his wild mind, his dangerous hands. Lazarus too with his color and chaos, and ability to make brokenness feel theatrical instead of shameful. Then our Olive is at the center of our world. Not fixing us, not saving us but standing among the shards and daring us to make something beautiful out of what remained.
Broken glass can still catch light, that is what we are. Sharp fragments. Dangerous, but together, we reflect something neither of us could have made alone. Olive touches my face. For a moment, I think she will answer. Perhaps she does not know how, neither of us do. Instead, she kisses me. Just her mouth on mine and the mirrors catching us from every angle, as we begin to make love. Making a hundred versions of one impossible truth. I love her. I love her. I love her.
Morrigan hates me. This becomes clear within six seconds of entering Olive’s home. The jungle cat stands on the back of a velvet chair near the parlor window, golden eyes narrowed, spotted body perfectly still except for the slow, judgmental flick of her tail. I stop in the doorway as Olive removes her gloves with maddening calm.
