RoseBlood(17)

He swallowed a groan. All this time he’d waited, hoping he might one day connect with the mirror piece of his soul. His flamme jumelle.

For the academy’s new arrival to be that mirror was a twist of the scalpel. He despised the confusion and conflict she inspired in him, and he despised himself for being drawn to her.

“Rune,” he muttered in hushed tones. In ancient times, runes were mystical, divine liturgies, powerful enough to cast spells. That explained why he was bewitched by her.

All he could do today was make mistakes. It would have been enough proof to see her eyes from the other side of the mirror, the way they glistened with unspent energy. If he’d only left then, instead of following her through the narrow secret passageways inside the wall to the third floor; instead of watching through the mirrors and hearing her sing . . .

He knew her the moment he saw her soul bared, the instant she released the first note. He’d heard her in visions for years. She had inspired countless compositions upon his violin.

Today, after hearing her in reality, the music rang in his head and burned an imprint behind his eyes. So many colors and emotions, a spectrum of auras—vivid and alive. An abundance of energy so pure, every sensory receptor in his body had reacted. He tasted the music, more luxurious than fresh honeycomb melting on the tongue; he felt the notes on his skin, soothing like raindrops on a hot day.

He’d never experienced anything so healing and sweet.

Yet it nearly broke her to sing.

He tried to be calculating, tried to remind himself that that was as it should be; that it would work to his advantage—the way it pained her to use her gift. She must despise music by now.

Instead, he couldn’t stop thinking that if this were another time, another place, nothing would stop him from reaching out. When she fell to her knees, her aura faded to a dark gray too close to black, drained of vitality; it was all he could do to stay hidden. She was so small in stature, so fine-boned and fragile—like the other songbirds he’d healed throughout his life. He understood her pain. Her energies were unbalanced. He had the ability to help her. Her song never broke her in his visions. Instead, her song was her power, because he played for her.

He cut a glance to his Stradivarius, shut within a case in the corner, sugar-coated in dust and fringed with spider webs. He hadn’t touched the violin for two years, ever since the academy first opened. He wondered if she’d missed their duets as much as he had.

But today, the melodic energy he’d absorbed from her song shook the silent wail of the violin’s strings and rattled the cage of his ribs. A plea so visceral it sucked the core of his heart dry, making it wither and curl like the dead roses he’d left for her to fret over earlier.

How was he going to do what was expected of him now? To have the girl anywhere close to him would only open his veins and bleed him dry.

He would avoid her as much as possible. He had six weeks until Halloween, when they would meet. Until then, the groundwork for bringing her down could be played out behind the scenes . . . all his clues placed without ever having to be face-to-face. During that time, he’d find another outlet to stifle his yearnings—a way to push her voice from his conscious mind. Although there was little he could do for the subconscious.

No matter what, he would not lose sight of his goal. He would lure Rune down, then that would be the end of it for him . . . and the end of life as she knew it for her.





5



BROKEN SONGBIRDS


“In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the silence.”

Robert Lynd

He strode past his neglected violin and the pipe organ next to the dining nook, pausing when he reached the three bedrooms at the back of his home. The one on the left belonged to him, and the one on the right was reserved for her . . . once she lived again.

But it was the black door in the center where Ange waited that held his interest now. Even after all these years, the gargoyle door knocker held him in the thrall of its hideous snarl because what it guarded within was equally grotesque, powerful, and fascinating.

Choosing not to use the knocker, his knuckles thrummed the door lightly. “It’s Thorn. Are you decent?” He waited for a response.

Eleven years before, at the age of eight, he’d busted inside, eager to show off the ortolan songbird he had rescued from a cat. His guardian was standing at the mirror—bared of the fitted mask that usually hid the top three-quarters of his face.

Thorn had stared in stupefied horror at the exposed reflection: the jaundiced skin, crinkled and waxy . . . stretched so thin that every vein and frayed capillary manifested itself like a gruesome road map, revealing large hematomas, red and pulsing underneath; the cavernous indentions above his eyebrows, making his eyes appear sunken; and most horrifying of all, the bridge of a nose stopping almost before it started, leaving no cartilage to cover the two large, black holes from which he breathed. A missing upper lip opened to a row of teeth, so perfect and straight, that like the strong and flawless chin below, they mocked the jigsaw-puzzle face above.

Thorn had never seen anything like it—a corpse’s rotting head atop a man’s living form. He’d screamed and clenched his hands in a knee-jerk reaction, crushing the tiny bird cupped between his fingers.

The ortolan’s agonized chitters broke through his trancelike state, and he dropped her to the floor. His careless mistreatment of the bird earned him a cuff to the ear from his guardian, a reprimand so sharp and instantaneous, Thorn almost blacked out from the resulting dizziness.