Darkling (15 page)

Crack
. A bone breaks.

When he lands in a heap at the bottom, he doesn’t move. I’m about to run to him when he lets out a noise that makes me shiver.
A moan that sounds like groaning wood and the bleat of a hooved animal.

Something’s wrong. My body hair is standing on end and I take a step back. He presses his palms on the floor and raises his head to lock eyes with me. Through the blood on his face, I can only see one clearly. For a moment, his gaze is frightened, even as his mouth forms into a sneer.

“Run,” he growls. Then his eyes are darkened with malice. He doesn’t look like Tristan anymore.

I run as fast as I can on my healing ankle. With a roar, he chases after me. I try the front door but it’s still locked. I bolt into the dining room, knocking over chairs as I pass. I don’t know what’s going on. He is fast.
Faster than me.

“You killed her,” he screams.

I glance over my shoulder as I enter the kitchen and he leaps over the fallen chairs with ease. I overturn the rough table and grab the same knife that I picked up the first time I entered this room.

Tristan skids to a halt as he reaches the table. He tries to circle, to lunge at me, but I leap to the other side. He is panting and has a manic glint in his eyes. The expression is so foreign on his face that I hurl a pot at him.

He bats it out of the way and lunges at me again. I shriek as he catches my arm, but he’s still on the other side of the table. I wrestle away from him and dart out of the room. I nearly trip over the fallen chairs, and am about to head up the stairs when I remember that I can’t.

Whirling about to face him, I realize he hasn’t followed me into the parlor. I back away from the foot of the stairs, slowly. My naked heel slips on something.
A small pool of blood. His blood.

Leaping away, I listen. My pulse is racing and I can’t catch my breath.

Something falls in the kitchen. He must still be in there. Slowly side-stepping, I inch over to the entryway. I can see the corner of the kitchen. There is a shadow there. He seems to be standing still. Listening to me.

I close my mouth and breathe through my nose so that I can better listen then inch a little closer to the middle so that I can see more.

No. No he’s not in the kitchen anymore. Where did he –

He flies at me out of nowhere. His body slams into mine and I’m tackled onto my back. My head hits the floor with a thud and I see pinpricks of light as he climbs on top of me. His hands grope my neck. He means to strangle me. I grab his wrists and try to pry them off.

“You killed her,” he screams again. His brown eyes are tinted red.

“No!” I shove. His icy thumbs are digging into my flesh, bruising my windpipe. I start kicking. Blood drips from his face onto mine.

“You killed her.”

He is trapped in his own anger.

“She died,” I choke out. “Years ago. Remember?”

The darting lights are coming back. The knife is still in my hand, so I ram the butt into the side of his head as hard as I can. His grip relaxes as he slumps off of me, landing on his side. I gasp, trying to force air into my swollen throat, sitting up and making the lights dance more furiously. I rest a hand to my neck as I force in another squeaky breath then scoot away from his body. He is unconscious but I still don’t want to be within reach.

The lamps go out. I swear I can hear a woman laughing upstairs behind the chained door.

I sit still for some time, until I don’t feel lightheaded anymore. Then I grab the low table to help me to my feet. I am filled with a cold sickness. He tried to kill me. Tears are blurring my vision as I back away from his still form, his back to me.

A part of me knows that I should’ve expected this. That he is still part spirit and that spirits get caught up in their passions. This is why spirits shouldn’t have bodies. But he had seemed so living. And he was my friend. Now I’m alone. I allow myself to cry. My neck is bruising. Why did I trust him? Why does he have to be half dead?

I scoot into the far corner of the room against the outside wall and hug myself. It’s some time before my tears stop. I’m not only crying for how frightened he made me. I’m crying because I’m trapped here.
Because my little brother is starving. Because Scarlet died. Because Lady died. Because I haven’t seen the sun in five years. Because I’m tired of being brave and alone.

The fire suddenly dims. Tristan stirs.

Pulling my knees up closer to my chest, my cheeks still wet with tears, I feel like a little girl again but don’t care. I want my big sister. Not this man. Not this deceptive, turbulent man. He can keep his corpse bride.

I see Tristan’s silhouette as he sits up and gingerly touches the side of his head. He wipes away what he can of the blood. By the callous way he is touching his injuries, I know he has healed himself. He huddles by the fire for a moment, hugging his knees. Tristan rocks back and forth for a while then suddenly stiffens. I’m worried he’s angry again and I tense. Then he looks about, as if he has lost something. I shrink a little when he spots me in the corner. Dried blood is smeared, darkening half of his face.

“Don’t come near me,” I say lowly.

His eyes are wide and deer-like but no amount of beauty could draw me back to them right now. Not after I saw them gleam with such malice. He starts to scoot towards me.

“Don’t,” I bark and he stops.

“Oh, Willow,” he whispers. “Are you very hurt?”

It still pains me to breathe but I doubt there will be any permanent damage. Not to my body, at least. His expression is full of remorse. I don’t want to stop being angry with him. I rest my cheek on my arm, looking away.

“I’m so very sorry,” he whispers. “I don’t know what got into me.” His voice cracks but I’m still not going to look. “I couldn’t stop myself. I was so filled with rage… you must hate me.”

I don’t answer. Let him think what he will. So long as he keeps his distance. I know he’s watching me. Waiting for me to alleviate his guilt by doing what he always does when Victoria hurts him. Forgive and forget. Not me. Not now. I’ll never get so wrapped up in another that I lose my own will.

“I could fetch you some water,” he offers quietly.
“Some food?”

I’m quite comfortable how I am. I don’t budge. Let him feel his regret. Let him learn his lesson.

After some time, he rises. I shift to rest my forehead against my crossed arms, hiding my face. He’s lighting some of the candles and lamps and I like the darkness of my own little cave. By the sounds of it, he’s going about the house and straightening up. I hear him right the chairs and table. Tidy up the kitchen. Clean the blood off the floor.

It takes him some time and I am content in my hiding spot.
Comfortable. Even though my shoulder is burning where Victoria scratched me open. As the shock fades, I think back on what happened. At least I’d had some warning beforehand. I could sense his anger building. It won’t catch me off guard again. And he had warned me, as well, I realize. Before his eyes took on that horrible glint, they had been his. He had told me to run. If he knew what was coming, if he could feel the hatred building inside, then it wasn’t his. Spirits trapped in their passion don’t realize they’re trapped. Which means it was her.

I close my eyes and let out a breath. Of course it was her. What better way to make me give up than to have my last shred of hope pulled out from under me? I know Tristan. I know him boiled down to his purest form, his simplest essence. He would never hurt me on his own. Even when he was more spirit than man, he wasn’t one to become trapped inside
himself. I feel more stable now that I am certain his attack was her doing. I just wish it wasn’t his hands that did it.

Tristan comes back into the room. I know he’s standing just a few feet from me and wonder if he knows what I know. He sets something down beside me then stokes the fire.

“Enough is enough,” he says quietly. “Thank you for all you’ve done for me, but I’m afraid it’s not working. I’ll never be human again.”

He walks away so quietly that I don’t realize he’s moving until one of the floorboards squeaks in the dining room.

I pull my head up then. He blames himself. Not her. Which isn’t right. I should tell him that he tried to warn me. He has set a goblet of water near me. Reaching out for it, I take a sip. It isn’t just water. There’s some sort of dried plant in it, as well. He remembers his apothecary recipes. It soothes my throat. I’m ready to talk now.

I take a deep breath and let it out. It doesn’t hurt, but my joints ache as I slowly force myself up. I’m about to follow him into the kitchen when I hear a bang. It startles me. That selfish excuse for a woman won’t give us a moment’s peace. The sound came from the kitchen which isn’t lit well. I hobble forward and see twin grotesque shadows from separate candles swaying on the wall. The bang wasn’t Victoria at all. Tristan has hanged himself.

I
run to the kitchen and kick aside a stool that I realize he used to get high enough. Tristan’s eyes are closed and he isn’t breathing. He isn’t fighting. I grab his legs and try lifting him. I know he can reform his body after having lost it, but his body has never died before. I don’t know what will happen if it does.

“Tristan!”

His legs keep slipping. I’m not strong enough. I let go and right the stool before sprinting back into the parlor and retrieving my knife. By the time I reach the kitchen again, his skin is ashen white, his lips blue. Climbing on the stool, I hiss as my ankle complains. Then I hack at the rope. It snaps and he hits the ground hard, making me wince. I didn’t think of that part.

Hopping back down, I cut the rope off his neck. The skin there is already yellowing with bruising. I feel his pulse. It takes me a while to find it but when I do, I gasp in relief. It’s faint and floundering but there.

Now that he’s hit his head twice in a few hours, I feel guilty for striking him before, but I had to. I throw the rope in the hearth. I need to get him near the fire so he can heal himself when he comes to.

I break a sweat doing so, but I manage to drag him back into the parlor, in front of the fire. I refill the goblet. Wetting my hand, I pat his face and try to wake him. It doesn’t work. His skin isn’t as pale but his lips are still purple. His hands are like ice but that’s not something new.

“Tristan?”

There’s nothing else I can do, so I grab a cloth and gently clean the dried blood off of his face and hands. As I do, it gets harder and harder to breathe. Not because of my throat.
Because of my chest. Because of what he said before he tried to kill himself. Because of what I didn’t say.

I left him alone with his guilt. His terrible guilt thinking that he’d attacked me of his own will. I hadn’t intended to be cruel. I wasn’t thinking clearly. But I’d done it all the same. I start crying again. I hate crying. It gives me a headache and exhausts me, yet still, I rest my forehead on Tristan’s chest and weep.

Maybe he was right. Maybe he will never be human again. He is still spirit enough for her to attack him like she did, to turn him against me. Then again, we all exist as both body and spirit. In life, the body is more important. It’s our spirit house. I was trying to help Tristan to that point of balance. He thinks we failed. But Victoria seems to think we’re succeeding. Why else would she try so desperately to stop me?

Mine
, she had said. She was claiming Tristan as hers. I’m taking him away from her. As I saw in his memory of her near-kidnapping of him, she was willing to do whatever it took to keep him. She killed that bounty hunter to protect him. No, not him…

I am looking at his face again, half-turned towards me, his features haloed in golden firelight. It wasn’t him she was protecting, was it? It was herself and her possessions.

Victoria wanted Tristan for her own. She couldn’t even share him with his parents. She wanted him for the sake of having him, not loving him. She may have thought that was love, but looking at him now, I realize it wasn’t. He was like a rose to her. A thing of beauty for her to prune and pick and set upon a shelf to gaze at.

Her suffocating addiction to him not only overwhelmed her to the point of hurting him, but Tristan as well. His parents were unaffectionate and strict, yes. But they were right to have tried to protect him from Victoria. Their disapproval of her and Tristan’s relationship may have had nothing to do with her being poor and everything to do with her being out of control.