Currency in Flesh

Chapter 27

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

R eality came into focus slowly. Light played over my eyelids and I struggled to lift them, unsure if I was dreaming or not. I rolled onto my side and felt plush velvet against my cheek. When at last I opened my eyes, I was in Lady Cora’s bed, alone.

I didn’t remember how I got here, and it took a few moments for the events at the springs to filter back into my thoughts. She fucked me unconscious.

Sitting up, I glanced around the room, but I appeared to be alone. I was still nude, but I was clean and my hair was dry and soft. A black dressing robe was flung over the back of a chair, and I grabbed it and slipped my arms into it as I stomped through toward the door.

But it wasn’t there.

“What the fuck?” I shouted, hoping she was paying attention. “Let me out!” I waited, but nothing changed, the room was still cool and silent and I was still alone.

Lady Cora didn’t appear for hours. The wall shimmered, and she stepped through. I got to my feet with a sound like a snarl. “What the fuck?”

She continued through the room breezily, not pausing as she passed. Her charcoal blouse was tucked into a fitted black pencil skirt that came to her calves, and a black line ran up the back of her nylons. Her arms were streaked with blood and a few tendrils of her hair had come loose from her high, tight ponytail to hang limp beside her face. Running her palms down her arms, a couple inches from her skin, she made the red smears vanish as though they were never there. Rather than fixing her hair, she pulled it down, shaking her head to dry and smooth the pale ivory strands. Her clean fingers wrapped around a wine glass, and she poured herself some sparkling red Coteaux Champenois. It was only after she had finished the glass and poured another that she turned my direction.

“Hello, pet.”

Incensed, I exploded. “What the fuck Cora? You literally suffocate me and then lock me in your room? What the fuck did I do to you?”

One of her brows raised as though she was surprised by my candor. “Did I misunderstand our arrangement?” She took a step toward me, running the tip of her nail across my tattoo. They were sharp again and my skin tingled from the contact. “You are my pretty pet, and you do as I say.”

My lips parted, but I didn’t know what to say. Had I imagined the change between us? Or was she simply following my lead? I had told her that I wanted Her Highness, and that’s certainly who stood before me.

Thick silence hung around us, pressing down on my resolve and urging me to be honest. It felt like too much at once.

I had finally felt ready to be done with Sean, had let myself punish him for all my pain. Lady Cora had crossed the invisible line that had separated us, pleasing me with no force or dominance, giving without asking for anything in return. She had held me when I cried, comforted me when I was overwhelmed, called me her treasure and told me she would do anything to keep me. She’d apologized for snapping at me when I asked about Tera and Anna.

Despite the appearance of cruelty, and the moments at the beginning when she had treated me like a possession, had she ever really been cruel? She stole my life from me, but then again, she had said that the moment Sean’s car pulled into Pluto’s parking lot, we were already gone from the earth. She’d caused me physical pain, but she knew I wanted it even before I was able to admit it. I told her I saw her soul, saw the compassion and care inside of her, and then I’d looked her in the eye and told her to her face I didn’t want her, I wanted Her Highness.

My shoulders slumped, giving in to the heavy quiet and my loud mind. I went to her bed and sat, curling one leg underneath myself and resting my elbows on my thighs. She had one arm crossed over her chest, still sipping her sparkling red Champagne, and every muscle in her body was tense. I wasn’t even sure if she was aware of the way she seemed to be physically guarding her heart. Or maybe this was all in my head, and I was overthinking and overanalyzing someone who really did just want me as a sentient sex toy.

“Can we spend the evening together?” I asked, voice tentative.

Her nails drummed against the wine glass, and she took another long sip. “You haven’t become too frightened and resentful of me?”

The smell of her surrounded me. This room felt infinitely personal, as I looked around and saw casually strewn bits of her life. A shoe that had fallen beside its mate, a jacket on the back of the wardrobe, the soap she used beside the sink. “I don’t resent you at all. And I’m not frightened. I was angry, and I think you wanted me to be. ”

She huffed a breath out her nose. “And why would you think that, Grace?”

“Because I hurt you.”

Rolling her eyes, she set down her glass and turned away from me, pulling off her heels and placing them beside her massive wardrobe. I waited for her to reply, but instead, she sat in the chair and looked past me with unfocused eyes.

“I don’t know who I am anymore,” I continued. “I don’t know what my future will be, if I’ll even have one. I don’t have friends or anyone to talk to, I haven’t had anyone in a long time. I don’t know what I’m doing, and I’m in a place I don’t understand, trying to figure out where I fit into the life of someone who I can’t even really comprehend.”

Her head tilted, but she didn’t speak.

“I don’t know what I like to do, I never had any opportunity to figure it out. When I went to the meadows and spoke with Tera the second time, I was trying to find… I don’t know, something that could be mine.”

“You can have anything you want here, I thought I had made that clear,” she said.

“You have! But I don’t know what that is.”

“And you think I am somehow hurt by your inability to know your desires?”

I looked at her face, the line of her jaw, and up to her eyes. “I think you were hurt that I didn’t say I desired you .”

“I am well aware that you want me, pet,” she said with a little wave of her hand. “I knew that before you did.”

“That isn’t what I mean.”

“Then speak plainly!” she snapped. Her eyes looked wide and afraid, and I wondered if she was just as scared as I was.

“You asked me if I wanted Lady Cora or Your Highness?—”

“I wanted to know how you wanted me to fuck you,” she interjected.

“I don’t think that’s true. I think you wanted to know if I just wanted you to fuck me. It doesn’t matter, you don’t have to admit anything to me, I don’t need you to acknowledge it. I’m telling you I’m sorry. I’m sorry I told you I wanted to be used instead of treasured. I‘m scared of what it means if I want you to be soft, and I’m terrified every time you kiss me and touch me like you love me!”

I didn’t intend to say any of it, and I certainly didn’t intend to shout. Fuck, until the words were out of my mouth, I didn’t even know I thought them. No, that wasn’t true. I didn’t want to think them, because it meant I cared, and that was the scariest part of all of it.

I stared at my toes, the pale skin of my foot silhouetted against the black floor like a Halloween ghost. And then there was another foot beside mine with a thin black seam running across it. She lifted my chin with the knuckle of her right hand, raising my eyes to hers. Her cheeks were highlighted by the glow of her eyes, and her mouth was soft—all of the harsh angles somehow less severe.

“I do not want you to be afraid,” she said. “I told you, you are my only weakness. Do you think that comes without a measure of fear? I have feared nothing in centuries, millennia. I have also had nothing save for this realm and the souls contained within. You wanted to know why Tera has no recollection of who she is? I will tell you, and I can only hope it does not make me abhorrent in your eyes.”

My brows pulled together. She had said she couldn’t tell me.

“Tera was the first soul to enter the Underworld under my reign,” she said, throat bobbing as she swallowed. “She was once my friend, but when it came time for her to move on, after her children and grandchildren had long since passed, I couldn’t let her. So I took her memory, I reset the clock, so to speak, and I gave her the cafe to keep her occupied. She didn’t remember me anymore, but she also didn’t wish to leave me, and so it was enough for me to sit amidst the scents of bread and coffee and feel as though I still had someone.”

I reached out and took her hand in mine, and she flinched. “What about the brothers? They’ve been here a long time too, are?—”

She shook her head. “I created the brothers to keep myself in line. They are all—I suppose they are all facets of myself. Charis is duty, he does what should be done. Christos observes, watching the Underworld for…” Her face contorted in a pained grimace. “Cyril keeps them all at arm’s length. He ensures the souls move past the Underworld when it is time. He keeps them from forming bonds that could bring unrest in the meadows. He makes sure they stay away from me.”

“That’s why he was so rude.”

She nodded.

“But you said he wanted to warm your bed, isn’t that, I don’t know, incestuous?”

With a chuckle that didn’t reach her eyes, she shook her head again. “They have been in existence so long that they have become more than what I made them to be. They are their own people now, or as close to people as they could be. But who they are is fundamentally rooted in why I created them, and that can never change.”

“I’m so sorry, Cora.” It was the second time today I had called her by her name, without a title or honorific, and I wondered if she liked it or if she found it patronizing. I didn’t want another thing between us, not even a single word. I wanted her to know I understood.

“You are not disgusted by this? The depths of my selfishness? I have stolen eternity from that woman, and in doing so, stolen all she ever was.”

“I don’t know what your life was like before this,” I said, “but I know people cannot exist in complete loneliness. I was dying, being with Sean. I thought his death would be the only freedom I’d ever find. I have never felt free, Cora, not a single day in my life. All I’ve ever wanted is freedom.”

“I want to give that to you,” she replied. Her fingers trembled slightly in mine. “I took you because I wanted you, and I thought perhaps you might want me eventually, in turn. I recognized that desperate longing in your soul. It’s what I am made from.”

Something in her words snagged on the edges of my mind. I searched my thoughts, trying to figure out what it was, why I felt like she was saying more than she said. But her hand was warm, and her heart was exposed, and I couldn’t stop to ponder what might mean nothing. So I stood, pulled her hand around my waist, and kissed her.