Page 164

Olive closes her eyes. We form around her, but not as a cage.

A circle.

A shelter. A vow.

Her knees bend, and we lower with her to the stage floor. The four of us sit among candlelight and mirrors, the cello’s final echo still living somewhere in the wood beneath us. Olive’s shoulder rests against my chest. Lazarus has one hand near her ankle, not touching until she places her foot lightly against his thigh. Alcott sits behind her, fingers moving carefully through her hair when she allows it.

Every touch is a question. Every yes is a miracle. Eventually, she turns her face toward me. “I want this.”

The words strike the room still. Lazarus’s hand goes motionless. Alcott’s breathing changes. My pulse hammers once.

“Olive,” I say softly.

“I know what I said.”

“We do not need—”

“I know what I need.” The quiet certainty in her voice stops me.

She looks from me to Lazarus to Alcott.

“I am tired of him living in every touch. I am tired of my body remembering only fear. I want something else there. I want to choose. To be touched because I ask, held because I reach, wanted because I am here, not because someone took.”

Alcott’s hand stills in her hair. “You do not have to prove anything to us.”

Her mouth curves faintly. “I am not proving anything.”

She looks down at herself, at her hands, at the stage, then at the mirrors that have held every version of her. She looks back at us. “I am taking something back.”

The words settle into me like scripture. I lean my forehead against hers. “Then we are yours to command.”

A shiver runs through her. Lazarus bows his head. “With pleasure.”

Olive breathes in slowly and shaking, then smiles. The candles flicker around us, the mirrors catch our bodies in fragments. Four damaged people on a stage after closing, surrounded by velvet, darkness, and the echo of music. No performance. No ownership. Only choice and trust. Only the slow, careful beginning of another intimate kind of memory. And as Olive reaches for us, I understand something I had been too frightened to believe. Healing her did not only bring her back to us; it brought us back to ourselves. Love is a woman dancing barefoot on a dark stage, trembling and free, then choosing to be held by the monsters who adore her.

47. Peace is Not Silence - Olive

EVEN

My new form of peace, I have learned, is suspiciously loud. It clinks spoons against teacups. It burns toast. It knocks over jam. It argues with Lazarus Graves about whether normal biscuits may be considered a complete breakfast if one eats enough of them. It also, apparently, has feathers. Thanatos sits outside the kitchen window, his enormous wings tucked neatly against his body, staring at us through the glass as though he has been invited to judge the morning and finds it lacking. Morrigan sits on the table, and she is not supposed to be on the table. Everyone knows this. Morrigan most of all and she simply does not care.

“Morrigan,” I say.

The ocelot looks at me. Her tail flicks once, that is the entirety of her apology. Edward stands at the stove, sleeves rolled to his elbows, concentrating on a pan of eggs as though it is a bomb Alcott has failed to label properly.

“Do not distract me,” he says.

“I said nothing,” Alcott retorts.

“You were thinking loudly.”

“I was thinking your eggs look frightened.” He sputters at him.

“They do not.”

“They do,” Lazarus says from the pantry. “Those eggs have seen God.”

Edward points a spatula at him. “You are not helping.”