Page 107 of Feast of Sparks (Thornchapel 2)
He stares down at me, the slowly falling sun catching gold on his long lashes while the Beltane fire is reflected in his eyes. “Good.”
I try to press up to kiss him again, and he stops me with that hand still laced in my hair. “No,” he breathes. “When I kiss you next, it’ll be because I’m enjoying what I’ve earned. What I love. You understand me?”
I nod, my breath catching as he leans down once more—not to kiss me—but to run the tip of his nose along my jaw and then to the curve of my throat, as if to breathe me in.
Then he’s on to Rebecca, and she meets him as he comes close, her hand cupping his jaw from underneath as his hands slide around her waist. The kiss is as fierce and lustful as it was the night they flogged me, but Rebecca pushes back against him, holds him where she wants him. They struggle against each other inside the embrace, they arch and grab and pull and bite, and Rebecca kisses him like she’s a god too, and she’ll rip down the heavens to get exactly what she wants.
But they’re all grins and laughs when they separate, like the battle was all in good fun, and the god is still smiling when he turns to Delphine.
With her, and with her alone, does he ask permission, murmuring something low while he takes her hand. He lifts it to his lips, keeping his eyes on her the entire time he does, and she responds with something I can’t quite make out, but it sounds like shy agreement.
He’s more Auden than god now, cradling Delphine’s hand with both of his own and bringing it to his chest as he leans down to give her a careful kiss. I think it’s the first time they’ve truly touched since their engagement ended, and there are all sorts of emotions running through Auden, evident in the clench of his jaw and the short stutters of his breath as he kisses the woman who should have been his bride in truth. A woman he might still love.
There’s a tug of jealousy somewhere in my chest as I watch them, especially after Delphine breaks the kiss and says something teasing to Auden, who responds with something teasing of his own. And then Rebecca says, “I’d expect better from you, Sir Guest,” and Auden’s laughter fades. He turns back to Delphine with a serious expression on his face, and then he kisses her for real this time, the same way he kissed Becket. Searching and searing, but not, as my jealous heart helpfully notes, with the same possession and demand as with me and Saint. The two of us alone belong utterly to the god and to the man the god dwells in.
St. Sebastian must be thinking something similar, because I feel his hand slip into mine, and when I tear my eyes away from Auden and Delphine, Saint kisses the top of my head and then squeezes my hand. Once, twice, three times, in a rhythmic clench like a heartbeat.
Our heartbeat.
This is us, he’s saying to me. This is us as a three.
Reassured, I can watch Auden finish kissing Delphine, can watch how tenderly he studies her face afterward, as if to make sure he wasn’t too rough or needy with her. She is smiling and shaking her head in response to something he’s asked, and I’m suddenly reminded of our game of Spin the Bottle all those months ago. The first time we wandered past the boundary of what ordinary friends did with each other. We’d been so uncertain during that game, awkward and aroused, unsure what came after sharing a kiss in the service of a game.
And now look at us. Setting the world record for fastest fall from innocence—Spin the Bottle to pagan orgy in less than four months.
It’s here. It’s us. It’s Thornchapel.
I’m aware of the drums again, and then Becket has his own drum back, and before I can even question what we’re doing, we’re circling around the fire again. I’m holding Saint’s hand, and then I’m holding Delphine’s, and then Rebecca is leading me, and I’m aware of Auden—the flickering firelight changing him back into the god once more—gazing at me with glittering eyes. We’re singing again, dancing again, hearing music from some other place again, and as we round the fire with steps and stomps that feel like they shake the earth, I swear I catch something at the edge of my vision.
Something that should not be there. Something behind the altar. A door.
When I turn again to look for real, it’s gone. There’s only the green grass swelling up to the altar, and the gray stone where the altar had been excavated—along with my mother’s bones. I stop moving for a second, simply staring at it, wondering if it was a trick of the light, some glimmer of the setting sun through the trees. Or maybe some kind of grief-induced hallucination? Although I don’t feel particularly waterlogged with grief now. And I’ve already seen the door prior to this moment—and that was before we found the bones.
“Bubbles!” Delphine says, swirling past me and handing me a glass flute of cold, fizzy glory. Only here would there be ancient rituals of sex and death, of antlers and mud and fire, and then piles of fresh, clean pillows and chilled wine and also hampers of charcuterie and fruit and caviar and bone china to serve the feast on. It’s like heaven—all the best parts of being alive brought together in one place—and we even have our own god.
At least for tonight.
I toss back the champagne, and then I drink some more, and twilight settles in at the edges of the clearing, fogging the far spaces with shadows. And then I’m aware that Sir James is running around the fire with us, jumping happily until he spots something small and food-like hopping between the trees and darts off to chase it.
“That’s probably fine,” Becket declares, with champagne-infused solemnity. “I think dogs can go in and out of the circle. Dogs,” and he sounds very serious here, like he’s about to impart an important theological point, “are not people.”
It’s dark enough that the fire is the brightest thing in the world, and as we sing and dance and swirl dizzy dizzy around it, I gradually become aware that I’m being stalked. That for every jump and leap and spin, my progress is matched by the antlered god, and that for every turn around the fire I make, the god is getting closer and closer. He has eyes for no one else, and soon he stops the pretense of dancing altogether and simply walks toward me with purposeful but unhurried steps.
I’m not being hunted. I’m already caught.
No one else seems to notice as the wild god approaches me and I move backwards and away from the fire. They’re caught up in the flames and the song, and the platform is under the blanket of approaching night, a place of half-shadow. The backs of my calves hit the platform, and I can’t move back any farther, I’m trapped.
It’s exactly where I want to be.
The god stops just out of reach. “Proserpina,” he says.
With the fire at his back, he’s beautiful, he’s so beautiful, and I realize with a breathless rush of rightness that this is it. There are no more maybes after this, no more half-measures, no more half-love. This is us—after grief, after anger, after too many hurts to name—finally taking something that’s earned. “Yes?” I ask.
“I want to hear you say you love me.” There’s Auden’s voice under the god’s, and although it sounds like a king demanding worship, I hear the vulnerability in it. The need. “I want you to say that you’re mine to love.”
I’m the one who steps forward. The one who kisses the spot over his heart and then at the base of his throat.
“You know this already,” I tell him with my mouth against his neck. He smells like soap and trees and wood smoke and sweat.
