“You’re a monster,” I tell him, too tired to give the words any heat. He stoppers the tiny bottle and slips it into his pocket. “What did you do to me?”
“Just now, with your gift? Ah, have you not felt that before, deliciae?” He puts his hands around my waist and gets to his feet, pulling me up with him. He doesn’t let me go, instead wrapping his arms around me, one hand behind my head, cradling me against his chest.
One of my ears is pressed against him. I can’t hear his heart beating. And then, finally, I hear a slow thump. There’s a long pause, alarmingly long, and then another thump.
“Why did you mark me when I was a child?” I whisper.
I feel him look down at me. “You were dying, and you were so afraid to be bled. I could have forced you, but…” I look up at him and he grimaces. “It is not in my nature to force people into pain so I took the sickness with my mouth. I was happy to. You begged so sweetly and so bravely for death.”
A faint smile curves his lips as if he’s preening over the memory. I didn’t mean I wanted him. I was in so much pain. I just wanted to die so it would all be over. “But that’s not what I wanted when I asked for death.”
I shouldn’t be looking up at him like this when he’s standing so close but I realize my mistake too late. He presses his mouth against mine and his lips are as cold as his arms around me. But he still kisses like a man, or how I have imagined a man would kiss, soft and good, and gentle at first before growing bolder. His tongue flicks against my lips and surprise makes me part them, inviting him in. He’s like fresh mountain air, a bite of spearmint and a blast of sleet all at once. A consuming kiss, and as his flesh cools, my fire is stoked.
He breaks the kiss and lifts my left palm to his lips. His words are like winter against my flesh. “And yet here you are.” He kisses the mark as tenderly as he kissed me. “My bride.”
With a wave of his hand he scoops up the slime and puts it into a fresh jar and presents it to me. “It will do the same to you again whenever you wish, deliciae. No need to lie so unsatisfied in your bed.”
Meremon presses his cold lips against my cheek and then turns and walks out of the room, leaving me alone with strange sensations running through my body.
His bride.
So, this is what he wants from me, to keep me in his house as his little pet, his deliciae, and do things to my body while I assist in his work. Is this what he’s been waiting for all these years, alone, with only a lich for company? What if I’d married someone else? I’m old enough to be married. Didn’t he ever consider the passing years and worry that I might not come to him?
But no, he knew no man would want a woman branded by darkness.
I’ve envisioned my life as a lonely spinster many times and I accepted my fate as wholly as I once accepted death. But now a different future presents itself to me: a life as the necromancer’s bride.
In bed that night my mind paints pictures for me. Lying in Meremon’s arms, in Meremon’s bed. Being pleasured by him the way he used the slime to pleasure me. It’s a terrible, frightening image but there’s a pounding between my legs as I imagine his cold fingers stroking me like the dead hand did in my dreams. I wonder if Meremon’s dead, or nearly so, and if that’s why he’s so cold and his heart beats barely three times a minute.
This is how lonely I am, that I can entertain thoughts of Meremon even as I fear him.
If I hadn’t come to him perhaps he would have gone down into the village for me. I imagine how the villagers would have gawped at him as he walked among them, his striking looks thrown into stark relief by the mundanity of the surroundings. I picture him finding me in the market square, the coldly handsome sorcerer, and taking my hand to kiss my palm in front of everyone. And then leading me away with him, forever, because I’m chosen. Because I’m special. Because I’m his.
I turn over in bed, despairing. Am I so starved for touch and affection that I can take pleasure in the thought of this bizarre man saving me from my own home?
The truth finds me easily in the dark. Yes.
Meremon and I speak little over the next few days, working together in his laboratory in silence. I clean and tidy the benches and bookshelves in between slicing this, grinding that. He seems to have a lot to do. I have no idea what he’s up to.