Chapter 12 — Dorian?
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He had moved away from her.
Not slowly. Not with deliberation. With the particular urgency of a man removing himself from something before it removed him from himself.
He stood now at the edge of the barn, his back to her, one hand pressed flat against the wood of the door frame. The night air came in cold and he let it — let it find the heat that had risen in him without permission and do what cold does to things that have burned too hot.
What had just happened?
She had taken one step.
One.
And something in him had answered it like a command.
He had been close.
Closer than he had allowed himself to be since the night of the wedding, since the chamber, since every careful distance he had constructed between them and maintained with the discipline of a man who understood what he was capable of when that discipline failed.
She was human.
He had known that from the first moment. Had filed it away as fact, as boundary, as the one thing that required no further examination.
She was human and he was what he was and the distance between those two things was not negotiable.
And yet.
He thought of the last time something in him had wanted like this.
Not the wanting of hunger — he knew hunger, had lived beside it his entire existence and knew its shape and its voice and how to deny it without losing himself in the denial.
This was different. This had no shape he recognised. It had risen in him the moment she moved closer and it had not cared at all about what he knew or what he had decided.
The last time something like this had taken hold of him he had nearly drained the person standing before him entirely.
He had not forgiven himself for that.
He would not forgive himself for this.
"What is wrong."
Her voice behind him.
Quiet and careful the way it always was.
She never demanded, never pushed, just set the question down and waited to see what came back.
He heard her take a step.
"Do not come close." It came out harder than he intended.
Almost -
Not quite, but almost —
A thing that raised its voice.
He felt her stop.
He did not turn around.
The silence held them both for a moment, him at the door frame and her somewhere behind him and the barn and the moonlight and the night doing nothing to help either of them.
Then her footsteps moved away.
Toward the palace.
He knew how heartbroken she would be. How would he explain to her what he was facing that moment.
Or a need to do that?
He stood at the door frame and listened to them go and did not call her back and did not explain and told himself that was the right thing.
That the distance was the right thing. That a man who understood what he carried had an obligation to keep it away from the people who did not.
He pressed his hand harder against the wood.
And stood there long after her footsteps had gone.
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I hated myself for it.
For waiting. For the cold stones beneath my feet and the moonlight and the almost-sleeping and all of it — every patient foolish minute of it. I had told myself he had changed. That the man who had calmed my nightmare without being asked, who had promised not to hurt me, who had looked at my knee with something in his face that was not nothing —
I had told myself those things meant something.
He had moved away from me like I had reached for him with dirty hands.
I walked back through the palace without looking at anyone and went into the chamber and sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the window and told my eyes to behave themselves.
They did not entirely listen.
Tears fell out
I pressed the back of my hand to one of them. Then the other.
Then I looked at the ceiling and breathed and told myself I was not going to sit here and weep over a man who had made it very clear from the first night what this arrangement was and what it was not.
I had known. I had always known.
I just — had forgotten, somewhere between the nightmare and the breakfast and the brush and the barn, I had forgotten to keep knowing it.
I stood. Reached behind myself for the lacing of my corset.
I chose to dress myself tonight.
I do not need help — I had instructed.
My fingers found the first knot and then the second and then lost the third entirely, too far back, too tight, That it required either patience or assistance and I had run out of the first and refused to ask for the second.
The door opened.
I did not turn around.
His footsteps crossed the room. I felt him stop behind me.
"Don't you need a hand?" He asked.
"No, I don't". I refused immediately.
We both didn't say anything.
"I only asked why your eyes were changing," I managed to say. "In the barn."
Because he wouldn't explain or talk about it himself.
Something moved in his jaw.
"I had to move away," he said. "I was — unclean. I did not wish to make you so."
I looked at him for a long moment.
He was unclean. Or I was unclean.
Or neither of us was and he simply had no other word for whatever had been happening to him in the dark of the barn and had chosen the nearest one that gave nothing away.
He stepped back.
"Will you be all right," he said. "Alone."
I looked at him again , At his face, at whatever lived behind it tonight that he had no intention of explaining.
I turned.
I nodded.
"I will not be sleeping here tonight," he said.
Then his hands — cool and unhurried, finding the lacing without being asked and the last knot came loose in a single motion and the corset gave and I exhaled without meaning to.
Then he was gone.
I stood in the center of the room with the loosened corset and the quiet and the window and the night outside it.
Just like that, he left.
I had imagined his cold hands finding the lace without even asking, his cold hands on my skin, he had just helped me with my corset which made me have a great relief.
And I thought —
Imagine —
Lost in thoughts -
Something moved outside the window.
On the grounds below. In the dark beyond the stream where the tree line began and the moonlight stopped reaching.
I moved closer to the glass.
Pressed my fingers to it.
Something walked at the edge of the tree line into the barn.
And then it went in.
Dorian?