Page 98 of Feast of Sparks (Thornchapel 2)
Assured, Auden nods, and then squints up at the sky. “When should we start? We said five, but if Becket and Delphine aren’t here yet—”
“They’re down by the river,” Rebecca says. “There’s some spot down there where Delphine wanted a picture of herself, and Becket allowed himself to be pressed into service. They should be back any moment now.” She pauses and then looks at Auden and me. “Do you know where you’ll run?”
Auden nods. “We’ll start there—” he points at the place in the woods directly across from the entrance to the stone row, “—and then arc back toward the river. If I haven’t caught my quarry before then, we’ll aim back for the ruins.”
Quarry. I’m to be prey today. Auden’s prey.
Dear God, I know I’ve been a very bad and fussy agnostic, but please let me be Auden’s prey forever.
Rebecca eyes me. “I hope you’re ready for this,” she says. “I think your hunter is eager to hunt.”
I look over at Auden, who grins. A wide, imperfect grin that makes my heart beat faster.
“I’ve been ready for years,” I say. And it’s the truth.
Chapter 29
St. Sebastian
Present Day
* * *
I’m to have a head start.
Stripped to the waist, I’m facing the forest and holding my headdress in my hand. Delphine made it earlier this week with a surprising and hitherto unrevealed ability for crafting, and Auden helped by gleefully unscrewing and sawing into the old velvet mounts they’d been attached to. Watching the two of them work together at the library table, Auden making low, witty remarks that had Delphine erupting in peals of laughter, I could see why they’d been engaged. They made each other happy in an easy, friendly kind of way. They knew the same people, the same places, the same jokes.
I knew then, with as much jealousy and relief as anyone can know something, that if Delphine hadn’t ended things with Auden, they’d still be together. It’s hard not to feel strange about that.
Insecure.
Tonight, after the hunt, all of us are supposed to come together by the fire, and I wonder what jealousy and relief I’ll feel then. It’s hard enough to think of Poe and Auden together without me, but watching them with the handsome, lemonade-dispensing priest who believes all the same things they do? With Rebecca, the Domme-genius? Or Delphine, who has literally millions of people who want to have sex with her? The one I can still see Auden marrying?
People think it’s easy, loving more than one person. They think it’s an excuse to avoid fidelity and deprivation, that it’s a way to absolve cheating, but really, the truth is much more miserable than that. Loving more than one person is fucking hard.
Maybe this is normal, I reassure myself. Maybe the jealousy and the relief are normal. The selfishness. Maybe it’s what everyone in this position feels.
I blink at the antlers in my hands and snort.
Jesus Christ, what the hell about any of this is normal?
Delphine had screwed the antlers to a sturdy strip of leather, and then sewn ties to the ends of the strip so that the whole thing could be tied securely. The antlers are not large, only about ten inches long, but they still rest heavy on my head when I set them there.
Warm, slender fingers brush my neck, and I know without looking that it’s Proserpina.
She slides her hands around my naked chest and pulls me close, her palm over my heart and her cheek resting against my back. I want to drop my head down and close my eyes and melt into the girl behind me, but I have to hold still to keep the antlers in place. So instead I cover the hand over my heart with one of my own.
“I’ve been having dreams about the hunt,” she says. Her voice is light and melodious enough to sound like it comes from the trees themselves, or maybe over the wind from the village, more music on the air. “I don’t know if it’s you and Auden I dream of, because sometimes it feels older. Like I’m seeing something from so long ago that all the forest remembers is the running itself. But no matter who’s doing the running, they’re all afraid at first.”
“And at the end?”
She kisses my shoulder blade and slides her hand free. “I never get to see the end.”
“You could do this, you know. You could take my place.”
I don’t really mean it, it’s just nervous talk—but also maybe this shouldn’t be me, maybe it should be someone else. Someone who hasn’t already betrayed Auden once by running away from him.
“Is that what you really want?” asks Poe as she starts working on my headdress.
