A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel #1)(66)

I want to worship him for it.

Here’s the thing about me:

Most people are programmed to move away from hurt, but I’m not. And it’s not for any bathetic, mother-abandonment issues either—I’ve just always been a girl who likes it to ache. As a child, I would bite my own forearm to see the marks it would leave, I would wrap a length of scratchy rope around my wrist and tug on it for hours to feel the chafing, pretending every kind of child’s game imaginable around it. I was a captive, a pirate held by an enemy crew, a princess kidnapped by an evil wizard. The pain made the games real . . . or maybe the games gave me an excuse for the pain. Either way, the bruises and marks and chafes gave me power somehow, some kind of strength, like they sharpened the rest of the world into a thing of fearful, breath-taking beauty, a beauty that could only be perceived through the power of hurting.

So when Saint hurts me, I don’t slap his hand away, I don’t leap back. Sizzle-fast agony burns through my nervous system and then vanishes in a flash; by the time I cry out and buckle against him, the pain is gone and there’s only breathless, endorphin-fed eagerness in its place.

St. Sebastian winds his fingers through my hair and pulls my head back, just enough so he can search my face with dark, troubled eyes.

“Maybe you’re not his,” he says finally. “But you want to be.”

I don’t know what to say to that. Because it’s true.

It’s also true that I want to be Saint’s.

With a sigh, he slides his hand free from my hair and takes a step back, the cool air of the hall rushing in to fill the space between us. My hand tingles with the remembered feel of his erection stiff and thick against it, my nipple aches for more cruelty, and I think I could sing hymns to the memory of his lip piercing as he browsed over my face with needy, greedy kisses.

“What’s going on between us?” I ask, all of me keening for his touch again. “The other night with your hand on my shoulder, and now this . . . ?”

He scrubs his hands over his face. “I don’t know,” he admits, looking miserable. “I don’t know. I just—I feel like I keep telling myself what I should do and then it doesn’t matter. There’s only what I want.”

“What do you want?” I ask.

Me? Auden?

Both?

But he doesn’t answer. Those dark eyes grow cold, that perfect mouth pulls into a pretty sulk.

“Saint,” I say, reaching for his hand. He lets me take it, but he’s completely still and unresponsive when I do. “I’m waiting for you. I’m waiting for you to say screw Thorncombe and choose me instead.”

“Don’t you get it?” he asks. “I am choosing you. And you don’t even know it.”

“That doesn’t make any sense—”

He gives a short, bitten-off noise of fury, and I take a step back.

“I can’t be what you need!” he says. “I can’t be anything you need. I’m choosing you by choosing to see the fucking truth.”

“I don’t believe that,” I say. Grouchily.

“Well, I do. You know when I told you that I didn’t believe all the shit the village does? I lied.” He starts walking backward to the front door, lacing his hands behind his neck before stooping to grab the coat he’d thrown over the metal folding chair earlier. “I lied, Poe. I do believe it. I don’t want to, I don’t like it—it fucking kills me that you’re so obviously meant for someone else. It kills me that you’re this beautiful dream and I’m a nightmare to anyone who tries to love me.”

“Stop it.”

“I’m poison to certain people, Poe. Auden learned that the hard way. I’m not going to do the same to you.”

And in the bare second it takes me to fumble for a response, he’s yanked open the door and stormed out into the wet night.





I wander up to my room, stunned. There’s no erasing all the mixed signals Saint’s been giving; I don’t feel like I’ve imagined something that’s not there. No, it’s more like I haven’t been seeing something that I should have seen before. Something about the way St. Sebastian and Auden are around each other; something about how their history has scarred the both of them.

I’m poison.

Auden learned that the hard way.

It’s uncomfortably like what my father said about learning how dangerous Thornchapel was with my mother, and I have a real moment where my angry, hurt feelings about Saint slide into all the angry and hurt feelings I still have about Mom. Poison and danger, daughter and mother. Alive and dead.

There’s a knock at the door, and given that I’ve only just entered, I’m close enough to pop open the knob without taking another step.

Delphine stands there in pajamas, two colorful packets in her hand. “I want to do face masks,” she declares, and then without waiting for me to answer, she comes inside my room and deposits herself on my bed.

“Um,” I say.

She’s already opening the first packet. “Don’t you want to have clear, dewy skin for the ritual tomorrow?”

“It hadn’t occurred to me,” I answer honestly.

She tugs the slimy mask free and unfolds it into its horrific fake-face shape. “Here. You need it.” She narrows her eyes at me as I approach and take it from her. “Have you been crying?”