A Wounded Name (Fiction - Young Adult) (20 page)

Father ignores him with grave dignity and pulls open the heavy door. It frames a young man of average height, his ashy blond hair slightly messy around his face. His brown eyes flick over each face in turn, identifying each person present. He’s the type of boy you notice when you pass but don’t look back over your shoulder to see again. Normally, at any rate. When he’s in a role, it’s impossible to look away from him.

Keith gives Father a polite nod. “Hello, Dean Castellan. Dane asked me to come up.”

“Dane, you have a guest.”

“Dane, you have a guest,” Dane echoes. “O Jephthah, judge of Israel, what a treasure hadst thou!”

Horatio straightens abruptly, reaches behind Dane’s knees to touch my shoulder.

But I recognize the allusion, as Father doesn’t, as the Toms do not. But Jephthah … somehow it doesn’t surprise me that Dane uses this name. He must feel a great connection with a man who made such a foolish vow.

Dane swore revenge.

Jephthah swore sacrifice.

Judges 11:31. Every girl, sophomore and up, would understand Dane.

For victory over the Ammonites, Jephthah swore to honor God with the burned sacrifice of the first person he saw upon returning home. The soldiers entered the town of Mizpah greeted by music, and drawn by the sound of tambourines, his daughter danced from the house in joy.

A vow is a vow, a promise, especially when made to God.

At Horatio’s small sound of question, I look down and realize that my hand is pressed against my chest, fingertips over the star of my heart and palm over the place where two months has yet to take away the phantom feeling of Dane’s class ring.

Because what Horatio may not remember—but I think Dane does—is that his daughter accepts that an oath must be fulfilled. His oath was foolish, given without thought to the consequences. Her love was real.

“A treasure?” echoes Father.

“A treasure beyond value: a beautiful daughter and no more, but he loved her exceedingly well.”

Father’s eyes snap to me, and I can see the triumph in them. He thinks this feeds his theory, that this proves him right.

“Aren’t I right, old Jephthah?

“If you are intent on calling me such, then yes, I have a daughter I love exceedingly well.”

“No, no, that doesn’t follow!”

“Then what does?” Father asks with careful patience.

“Learn from the mockery that is your daughter’s education. I hear it is the pinnacle of rudeness to so ignore any who’ve come so expressly to see me.” He finally acknowledges Keith with a nod and a secretive smile. “Thank you for coming. Sit here in my place.” He jumps up and pounds the space he left. “We have much to speak of.”

“Um, Dane—”

“Surely you’ll forgive me this one shred of business, Tom?” Dane asks Guil without looking away from Keith. He takes two steps down and turns as Keith drops casually between Horatio and me, but one step down. “I thought to present a show, a gift as it were, and there’s no one better than you for such a thing.”

“I wouldn’t be here if I weren’t already curious, Danemark. You needn’t bait the trap any further.”

Except the trap isn’t for Keith. It’s for the old man who watches with avid interest, for the pair of fools who have already missed the biggest clue they could hope for.

“A show, Dane?”

With a sudden burst of energy, Dane leaps down from the stairs and half lands across my father. The mug drops from startled hands and shatters on the tile, coffee spilling in a dark flood. “A show, old man, a show! A performance, a play, a wonderful confection!”

The syringe in my pocket is cold against my fingers, the clay bead rough but secure. I draw it out, hidden within the curve of my hand, and offer it to Keith. He just looks at me and I shrug, aware of Horatio’s eyes on me as well. “You’ll need it. For when he gets to the point. Don’t let him see it, but … if I’m right … you’ll need it for what he wants you to do.”

“And how do you know what he wants me to do, little Ophelia?” he asks me, not entirely unkind.

“Did you know that Jephthah’s daughter is never named?”

Keith doesn’t understand; Horatio does. His eyes close against a physical wave of pain, his hand drops from my shoulder. He understands.

Father scowls at the mess and impatiently shoves away Dane’s weight. “Ophelia, come away, this is no place for you right now, not without other ladies present. Go to your room; I’ll bring you breakfast presently.”

“Yes, Jephthah’s daughter, go weep in the hills, for you shall never marry.”

Keith looks up sharply, his entire body taut like a hunting dog on point. Now, only a little, he understands.

I leave my coat for the maids and walk up the stairs, Dane’s laughter wrapping around to blister my skin.

CHAPTER 26

When Father brings me my breakfast, he brings also an admonishment to remain in my room until he comes for me. After all, the trap will yield nothing if Dane takes the bait before there are witnesses. He scolds me lightly for my company downstairs, but his mind is already on the scene to come and the expectation that his theory will be proven correct.

I so rarely find an appetite; his words and mood rob me of it entirely. The breakfast cools, untouched, on my nightstand as I change into something suited to skulking in a corner of the school waiting for Dane to stumble upon me. My skin itches from the turtleneck, a symptom of the cold outside, so I wind and knot a dark, filmy scarf around my neck to hide the bruises.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, I reach between the mattresses and remove the plastic bag of forgotten pills, missed days that number far more than they should. Guilt cradles the madness, but it won’t keep me from adding today’s pills to the mix. I can’t take them without food, but eating will only make me nauseous and then neither food nor medications will stay down. There seems little point to making the attempt. I pry open the lid for Sunday and empty the contents into my hand.

Five pills. Five chemical wonders to blind me to the world.

Four, I suppose; I’m fairly sure one of them is actually birth control, to keep my hormones regular despite all the chemicals. Not that Father would ever speak to me of something like birth control. Even Gertrude can’t bring herself to discuss such things with me. It was Nurse Jacobson who had to teach me about various feminine products and what to expect. And it’s Nurse Jacobson who silently keeps me stocked with such items as I require them. She once offered to buy me a private supply of them, but the thought of Reynaldo pawing through them looking for secrets made my stomach curdle.

Four little pills, and the question of normality and madness decided between them. If I took three or two or even just one would I be a little less mad? Not cut off entirely from the world I love and fear but sane enough that the wildness in my eyes would be gone?

I separate out the pink one, the one I’m almost positive is the contraceptive, and swallow it dry even as I spill the others into the bag. They clink against those of the other forgotten or skipped days. One of those days is my birthday, the one day I’m allowed to skip without guilt, but there are so many other days in there, a calendar of sorrow and seduction and rage.

Metal scrapes against the door, and panic leaps to throb in my battered throat. I shove the bag beneath me to hide it and scramble for a reason to send Father away even just for a few minutes.

But it isn’t Father.

It’s Dane.

He closes the door quietly behind him, pulls a wooden wedge from his pocket, and jams it between the wood and the carpet. It isn’t a lock; it won’t entirely keep anyone out, but it will slow them down. I should ask why, but I never ask Dane the questions that Polonius’ daughter should. He shrugs out of his black blazer and tosses it across the hope chest at the foot of the bed. Metal flashes at the small of his back, but he faces me before I can see it properly.

“When it comes to your own safety, you would lie to me,” he says quietly. He kneels down in front of me and sits back on his heels, his hands palm down on my thighs. I can see bruises and splits across his swollen knuckles, the blood-heavy darkness across one side of his hand that says he’s broken something. How many hours has he spent punishing himself in the weight room, trying to exorcise something that’s too much a part of him to kill? “To protect me.”

“Dane—”

“I need to see them.”

I should argue. I should lie. I should tell him they’re nothing, that they can barely be noticed.

I’m better at lying by omission.

My fingers unwind the loose knot at my collarbone and tug the scarf away until it slithers in a silken fall between my breasts to pool in my lap. My hair falls forward to follow it, to continue the masquerade as a whole person. My hands brush against his on the way to the hem of my sweater. I bunch it between my fingers, the cashmere soft and comforting, and slowly pull it over my head and down my arms.

Air hisses between his teeth, and he closes his eyes against a wave of pain that swamps over me. His hands slide up my hips, around my waist, and gently pull me off the bed until I sit across his thighs, our faces level with each other. Fingers continue their path up my spine, curve around my shoulder and down my arms until he can encircle my wrists and bring them up for his inspection. Dark grey eyes trace the marks of his pain, deepest where the delicate bones ground together beneath his grip.

His lips press against the damage, soft flares of pain in their wake. When he finishes with one hand, he places my palm flat against his heart, the beat erratic but strong, and moves to the other. Tears gleam in his eyes, splash against my skin, and these too he kisses away, every touch an apology.

A tendril of flame reaches out to him from the star in my heart, tries to connect to him, to share the warmth that keeps the lake at bay.

His hands brush against my face, slide into my hair to anchor it back from my face, tilt my head back, and he continues his apologies to the necklace that blooms around my throat. Each touch is slow and unhurried, stripped of the frenzy that so often jerks him away like a marionette with too many strings. All I can see is the scarred plaster of my ceiling where my fan used to be, so I close my eyes and blaze with his fire. Finally, his mouth finds mine, a caress as sweet and gentle as bathing my bruises in his tears.

When his hands brought me trembling too close to the dark abyss, he breathed air into my battered lungs. He takes it back from me now, shares it between us in a prayer too fragile for words, for thought. Stars are fire, fire as hungry as the cold, dark waters of the lake, and the oxygen burns away too quickly, leaves me gasping against his lips even though the brilliancy of that colored darkness is so delicious. Dane pulls away, rests his forehead against the edge of the mattress by my cheek.

“There’s a question, Ophelia,” he whispers against my ear.

“Only one?”

“Only one. Only ever one. A single question: to be or not to be?” He lifts his head away, one hand still woven through my hair, to meet my eyes. There’s a deadly, feral intensity in his gaze, even as his voice turns over the words in the closest thing to calm he’s known for so long. His other hand slides down my side, my leg, to rest against my knee. “Is it more worthy, more noble, to endure this chaotic hell or to stand ground against a sea of troubles and, by standing, end them?

“To die … but that’s sleep, no more.” His eyes plead for confirmation. “And by sleeping we end the heartache and the million wounds of the flesh that we inherit.” His hands shake against my skin in a fine tremor, like a ballad’s final notes reverberating on the harp strings. “Isn’t that the best we could wish for? To die, to sleep; to sleep, to dream …” His hand clenches in my hair, pulling my head back, and he presses his lips against the ring of bruises on my throat. “But we suffer such terrors in life. The dreams that come in that sleep of death must give us pause, and that’s what keeps us back, isn’t it?

“Who would willingly bear the assault of time, the oppressor’s wrong, the insult of pride, the injustice of law too slow and unwieldy, the offense of power and not integrity rising to success, and the constant contempt so often smeared on good men by those who are only ever less?” His words tumble over each, white-hot and too painful, blood spilling from wounds that should be invisible. “Who, when he might lay himself to rest with no more than …” His hand moves back up my leg, but this time there’s a cold kiss of metal, a scrape of too-sharp edges. He lifts a gun between us, so close our lips brush against the steel. It’s a small gun, meant for concealment, with the Danemark crest tooled into the handle. The flash of metal at the small of his back. “Who would tolerate all this?” His eyes beg an answer from me, but the hemorrhage can’t be stopped. “Except we dread what comes after, that undiscovered country from which no traveler may ever return … No one, except you. You know, but the rest of us fear and let that fear chain us to cowardice and conscience and sap all hope of action from a moment too mired in thought to become action. But you, you traveled there, and you returned. Why would you ever want to return?”

The barrel, short and compact, drags an angry line down my jaw as he presses it into the hollow of my throat. His thumb clicks back the hammer, and suddenly my pulse thunders against the delicate skin, so violent I wonder it doesn’t roll down the barrel in a ripple, a peal, a sound more than the rush of blood in my ears.

“You didn’t even have to answer the question to find out.” The gun moves away and presses now against his temple, his gaze never leaving mine. “What happens, Ophelia? At that moment when you cross the boundary, when you enter that new land and leave this pain and despair behind. Does something welcome you? All promises would be left behind, vengeance simply a missed opportunity, and is there ever truly a guarantee of being consigned to Hell? Can Hell truly be worse that this?

“Do you have any idea how lucky you were, Ophelia? To find that peace without any sacrifice?” He laughs despairingly, and the gun drops to the carpet. “I’d give anything just for a moment of that peace, death without cowardice or choice, a glorious accident that claims all guilt and burden. And your mother, how much luckier, to escape entirely these relentless coils and not be so roughly yanked back. Was she grateful, do you think? Did she understand how lucky she was that such an accident came her way?”

“It wasn’t an accident.”

The honesty shreds my lips, and I swallow hard against a mouth of dry fear and blood. He stares at me; his hands tighten against me in a spasmodic gesture that just as abruptly releases me for fear of bruising further, but the fire that burns in my chest has leapt into his eyes, his soul, to blaze like a beacon in an endless night.

“Say that again,” he demands harshly.

There’s so little breath, even less voice, but somehow the words find shape a second time. “It wasn’t an accident.”

“What happened?”

“Arrogance and love too blind built the City of Ys beneath the expanse of the tide,” I whisper brokenly. Mama’s voice bleeds into mine, the memory of her words shaping mine, but now, too, is the burn of Dane’s kisses, of his touch that makes me yearn and blaze and
need
. “The King caused a great bronze wall to be built around the city to hold back all of Nature’s power and fury, for the Princess Dahut loved the ocean. The night she took a stranger in red armor to her bed, a terrible storm, such as sailors name widow-makers, crashed against the walls, shook the city until every bell in the cathedrals tolled, and Dahut told the stranger not to fear, for the walls could only be breached by the key that lived around her father’s neck.

“The stranger’s lips traced poison into her skin; he kissed the words into her mind, until with a single thrust the idea became hers, planted in her need for the man in her bed, and she stole the key from the neck of her sleeping father. Together, Dahut and the stranger in red armor opened the gates at highest tide, and the storm-swollen waters swept in to drown all the city. But it waits.”

“The city?”

“Beneath the lake. When it’s quiet you can hear the bells of the cathedrals; and deep in the waters thousands of candles burn like a reflection of the heavens. Mama promised she’d take me there.” My voice shakes against the memory of the cold place. I’ve been so good; I haven’t told anyone, not since the first time, but now Dane’s pain leeches the words from my skin and oh, God, I don’t want to go back to the cold place, but he’s here, right here, and I can’t go anywhere but where he leads. “Dahut fled to the embrace of dozens, hundreds, of men because she had such a terrible emptiness the ocean waited to fill, and so did Mama. She promised. Such a beautiful city, sleeping beneath the waves and waiting for Paris to fall so it can rise again, such music from the bells that floats through the dark stillness, and she promised, so she took us into the water so we could go down and see the city. Because she promised.” I close my eyes, immediately open them again because the lake is there in the darkness. “It wasn’t an accident; it was a promise.”

“A promise.” His hands curl into fists in the coverlet, his entire face transformed by the fierce, terrible satisfaction that writes the features of a raging ghost into living flesh. One hand tears the plastic of the bag of pills, no longer hidden beneath me, and he drags it down between us. Wonder joins the fury, the dark joy. “She found the city, didn’t she? When our fathers dragged you from the water, she went on without you and found it?”

I nod helplessly. For the first time, I understand why others are afraid of me, because this madness is so alien, so familiar.

So beautiful.

So heart-breakingly beautiful.

Or perhaps just heart-breaking.

“And when a storm shakes the school, you go out and dance in the rain,” he breathes. His pulse races against his throat; his chest rises and falls in a sharp, jerky rhythm that’s almost a pant. “Your mother’s daughter.”

His lips crash against mine, swallow the cry of pain at hearing the words spoken with such certainty, such truth. Such joy.

“And you promised her, didn’t you, Ophelia?” he murmurs against my heated skin. “You promised her you’d see the city one day.”

“She promised.”

“And so did you!” He lurches to his feet, drags me up with him, and yanks me into the bathroom, the bag of pills still clutched in one hand. He spins me on the tile and slams the door behind us, trapping us in the small space. His manic laughter stokes the star in my chest until the flames sear away the bruises in my throat. “These pills are supposed to hide you from her promise, from your promise. Your father would make a liar of you, Ophelia, when our honor is the only thing we can claim as our own. You let him shape your world into lies.”

“Dane!”

With a swift, sudden gesture, he upends the bag. Dozens, hundreds of pills pour into the porcelain bowl of the toilet, a pebbled river of white, blue, yellow, and pink. We both stare at them, at the ripples that bob across the disturbed surface of the water. Is this what he did with his? Threw them away against the temptation of taking them, of moderating the grief with chemicals? He takes my hand and thrusts it against the cold metal of the handle. “Don’t let him, Ophelia.”