RoseBlood(48)
I stare at her, slack-jawed.
Without another word, she leaves, shutting the doors behind her with a vicious thud.
Seated inside his room, with only the soft blue glow of his aquarium to guide him, Thorn lost himself to his music—a dark and gloomy nocturne movement by Shostakovich.
He cradled the neck of his violin, the chin rest tucked under his jaw like a mother’s loving hand, and let the strings speak, coaxing out notes with a mastered repositioning of his left fingers and the liquid glide of the bow. They shared a familiar dance, founded on trust and sensation, perfected after hours, days, and years of performing together. Just like the spiritual dance he’d shared with Rune in the theater only an hour ago, while his body hid within the darkness of the orchestra pit.
His gaze caught on the black glove at his feet, remembering how it felt to hold her soft curves against him, how her sweet orange-vanilla scent embodied the purity of her magnificent voice . . . how gravely he’d betrayed Father Erik.
It was a miracle he’d avoided exposing the glow in his chest when he returned home after Rune’s triumph. Their triumph. It belonged to him, too. Now that he and Rune had connected, physically as well as spiritually, her strongest emotions and most potent energy surges would feed his own, and vice versa, once she learned to control the power.
When she’d conquered the music, her radiant happiness had filled him to the brim. It had been so long since he’d felt such joy; he thought he’d forgotten how to form a genuine smile.
Thankfully, his father was so engrossed in his personal side of the planning, he didn’t even spare Thorn a passing glance upon his return. Erik had been in too much of a hurry, headed to the cellar lab, to ask about progress.
But it was only a matter of time. Soon, he would come seeking news about his “pigeon,” and the truth wouldn’t be well received.
Tightening his chin, Thorn brought the violin’s voice to a wailing fervor, an appeal for forgiveness, altering the instrument’s center of balance and the bow pressure, angling his body forward in a humble pose. The piece was no longer Shostakovich’s. It was his . . . a newly inspired piece born of guilt . . . a prayer for absolution.
Bringing the song to a heartrending close, he laid his violin in its case gently. His fingers traced the lines, the perfect imitation of a woman’s curves, then moved to the scroll at the fingerboard’s tip, which arced like the graceful spiral of a seashell.
The Stradivarius was the most precious gift he’d ever received from Erik, worth even more than his freedom. For this violin was his and Rune’s beginning, and now, since they’d at last made physical contact, she would be able to conjure those visions while awake just as he could; she no longer had to rely on her subconscious to make his spirit manifest as a reality. They could touch each other, taste each other, hear each other on some level, regardless of the distance between them.
Thorn hadn’t yet decided whether to be thrilled or grief stricken over this turn of events.
“You have indeed mastered the voice.” Erik’s statement from the doorway shook Thorn from his thoughts. “No one else could own that instrument now. It is an extension of you.”
“Thank you, Father.” He closed the violin’s case. “Maybe later this evening, you can harmonize with me on the pipe organ.” He relayed the request in an effort to quiet his inner qualms. He used to live for their duets, but Erik had become so distracted once the academy opened that he’d abandoned all other pursuits.
“I’ve missed playing,” Erik admitted, his timbre quavering with a poignant din of longing. “But only when she’s at last with us, fully complete, can I resurrect our music once more.” He was pencil thin in an untucked white shirt, gray slacks, and flesh-colored mask. So deceptively frail to the untrained eye, but his mind was a lethal trap for anyone who dared judge him by appearance alone.
Still, it was unsettling to see him in disarray. All the years Thorn had lived here, Erik was never less than meticulous with his clothes and surroundings. Lately, he’d been letting such things go, too preoccupied to notice.
“After such a long silence, to hear you composing again this past week has been divine.” Erik’s smile bloomed at the lower edge of his mask—wide and perfect. Many had fallen prey to the stunning charm of that partially hidden expression; even Thorn couldn’t resist feeling soothed, in spite of his storm-tossed mood.
Erik padded across the black marble that stretched from end to end and up the walls. Ange waddled at his feet. Dust dulled her feathers, an indication she’d been in the laboratory, too. The swan rarely left his side, and was only with Thorn earlier because she’d followed when he’d slipped from the apartment—activated the trapdoor in the baptismal with her bill and swam her way into the chapel.
Being Erik’s familiar, she was able to sense when Thorn was doing something to help him reach his goal. She’d trailed Thorn to assure he didn’t mess things up. And then he had after all, except she and Diable had a hand in that . . . or more like a wing and a paw.
He was lucky the bird couldn’t talk, or Erik would already know.
Thorn pulled a gray, long-sleeve shirt into place over his arms and shoulders and fastened the buttons. The soft fabric absorbed residual droplets of water from his shower. He’d come into his room still dripping and dropped directly into his chair to play without putting on anything more than pants. When he was younger, he’d often be overtaken by his muse in such a way, stopping to compose half-naked, barefoot and shirtless. Erik would tease that he couldn’t escape his upbringing, that he was a peasant violinist if ever there was one.