A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel #1)(101)

“Yeah,” he mumbles in a voice that means absolutely not.

She gives him a brisk, Quartey hug and then puts her hands on his shoulders. “It’s been inevitable, Auden, they’ve been mooning after each other since the day she got here. You would have had to have been blind not to see it. And you’ve been engaged up until last night.”

“I know. I know. I just thought . . .”

He doesn’t even know. He doesn’t even know what he just thought.

He suddenly feels like the worst of everything, not just stupid but also selfish, and not just selfish, but also toxic. Like his father but worse because he’d known better and he’d still let this place infect him. He’d still let it sweep him away, he’d still chased after its secret ways and hidden stories as if they mattered in real life. As if they could erase all the ways he was slowly failing everyone around him.

I don’t kneel for selfish men. Isn’t that what Poe said to him last night?

And what could be more selfish than the craven, grasping man he is now?

But looking down into his best friend’s concerned face, there is still one thing that makes sense. One thing that doesn’t feel tainted or ruined or unworthy.

“I want to learn,” he says abruptly.

Her eyebrows pull together. “Learn what?”

“I want to learn how to be like you.”

“I’m guessing you don’t mean a Ghanaian landscape architect,” she says slowly.

He shakes his head. “Kink. How to do it right. How to play. How to keep everyone safe.”

She searches his face, as if trying to decide how much of this is genuine and how much of this is about the couple still moaning down the hall—but whatever she sees there seems to satisfy her, because after a long minute, she finally gives him a short, businesslike nod.

“Okay then, Guest,” she says. “I’ll teach you.”

“Thank you,” he says fervently. “Thank you.”

She touches his cheek, shaking her head a little. “You need it as badly as Poe and Delphine do. I’m not sure how you’ve gone this long, but we’ll get you all fixed up, and within a week or two, all of this—” she waves back at Poe’s door “—will be a distant memory.”

“God. Do you promise?”

He gets the definitive Rebecca nod for an answer.

“I promise.”





Chapter 28





For the second day in a row, I wake up to my phone ringing.

“Hello?” I mumble, sitting up and then shielding my face against the blaze of sunlight. The rain must be gone, I think. Maybe we really did bring in spring.

“Poe,” comes St. Sebastian’s voice. “You need to come to the chapel. Like right now.”

I yawn, stretching my shoulders and pointing my toes and feeling deep, deep parts of my body twinge with delicious soreness. I vaguely remember St. Sebastian kissing me on the lips and telling me he was going to the ruins to chop up the tree, but it was an event that immediately fell into the black hole of narcolepsy sleep.

“Are you calling from the ruins?” I ask. “Can you even get good service out there?”

“No. I’m calling from the edge of the woods. Please, Poe. Get dressed and meet me.”

His voice is grim when he adds, “It’s important.”





Within thirty minutes, I’m at the edge of the woods, where St. Sebastian is pacing. Without a coat, predictably.

“How are you not cold?” I ask, as we start mounting the path up to the clearing.

“Been chopping wood,” is the short reply.

“Why again?”

He runs his hand through his hair in a jerky movement that reminds me of Auden. “Because it needed doing. You know. If we wanted to use the chapel again.”

Again.

Last night was perfect, perfect and magical and everything I’d hoped it would be, and so why should we stop? Why shouldn’t we do another one?

Maybe for May Day, like Delphine had suggested. My heart tightens with excitement when I think about it.

“That was thoughtful of you,” I tell him. “Thank you.”

He bites his lip ring. “Please don’t thank me.”

“Okay?”

But he won’t elaborate, and eventually I don’t have enough breath to talk anyway, because he’s walking so fast that I practically have to jog to keep up.

“Slow down,” I puff as we reach the clearing’s edge. “I’m too short to keep up with you.”

He glances back at me without answering, and then keeps striding forward. I narrow my eyes at his well-defined back, deciding to be irritated no matter how good that back looks through the worn cotton of his T-shirt. I fail to see what could be so important that it’s worth dragging me out of bed and then jogging across half the estate—

Oh.

Holy shit.

St. Sebastian has clearly been hard at work this morning, and the entire length of the fallen tree is now stacked in charred, even chunks off to the side of the platform, which he’s left intact—presumably for future use.

Chopping all that wood is an impressive feat, but that’s not what has me stunned. It’s the altar itself. It’s what’s left of the serene, grass-covered hummock that we used just last night.