“Relax,” I whisper.
“Go to hell,” she whispers back.
I’ll forgive her that. It’s where I belong for this act alone.
Santiago opens the folder and holds it out to me. Inside is the stencil sketch. The twin dragons that are the emblem of the St. James house. Created by Draca St. James, they represent power, might and in some cases, chaos. Wickedness.
I think about the mangled mess that is my mother’s neck but only momentarily because as I press the stencil onto Isabelle’s back, I know what I’ll make is something beautiful. Twin dragons to overwrite the scar her brother put on her back. Maybe not with his own hands but it may as well have been. Twin dragons to match my own tattoo albeit smaller.
Twin dragons to make her mine.
I take off my jacket and roll up my sleeves. A moment later, the tattoo machine buzzes and I begin.
28
Isabelle
Humiliation comes first. Then pain.
Crap.
The tattoo gun buzzes as needles press into my neck, down along my spine. It hurts.
I grit my teeth so as not to cry out, but I can’t help it, not at first, and I’m glad I can’t see their faces. Can’t see them watching me, watching this. My submission. My very public humiliation.
I don’t know for how long this goes on. I’m cold and hot at once and watch as a droplet of sweat falls from my forehead onto the stone until finally, an eternity later, I’m lulled into a sort of dream like state, a quiet at the needle’s point. I feel Jericho at my back. He whispers to me telling me I’m doing well. I want to tell him to go fuck himself but as soon as I open my mouth, he starts again, the needles drilling art on my back.
Art? No. Not art. Ownership. His mark on me. His fucking mark.
And it’s not just my neck. I remember vague talk of this when Julia would tell me the dark secrets of The Society. I’m not sure I believed her then. It was all too archaic. Too impossible.
They’re supposed to mark the back of the neck. Fire or ink. Julia always got a glint in her eye at the fire. I wonder how she’d feel at the receiving end of that brand, bound like this in a pillory. I don’t think she’d be grinning then.
But what he’s doing, it spans to my lower back and farther. And it’s when I think it will never end that finally, what feels like hours later, he stops. The sound of buzzing is gone. And I think he must be exhausted. I am.
The men gather around me, Hildebrand standing, his brother and the others coming to see the mark. To congratulate my husband.
“Let’s finish this,” Hildebrand says. “I’m sure we’re all tired.”
Finish it? There’s more?
But I can’t lift my head to see their faces, to know what more is coming. I see them part though, the shoes of the others moving away as Jericho comes to stand before me. He crouches down but I still don’t look up. He pets my head, running his hand gently over my skull with the very hand that wielded the terrible machine. How is it a comfort to me?
“The words, Isabelle,” he says as he cups my cheek and tilts my face up a little, just enough so I can look at him.
I wonder what I look like, makeup smeared. Eye liner now black streaks down my cheeks. I probably need my nose wiped too. But I don’t care.
“Let me out of this,” I manage.
He studies me, smears his thumb across my cheekbone, then brings his ring to my mouth and I remember. The insignia is on his ring. The dual dragons. His mark. His fucking mark.
“The words.”
Dominus et Deus. My lord and my god. Just like Leontine instructed me.
“The words?” I ask, rage giving me strength. “You want the words?”
His eyes narrow.