CARRY ON
Iwoke, buried under greedy limbs, surrounded by hot skin and soft bedding, and glared up at the ceiling. Had I always slept like the dead? How were these men always managing to transport me about and slide me into bed without my noticing?
Perhaps you're just having an especially exhausting spring, my mind suggested.
I closed my eyes again. I was in Hunter's bed, cluttered with lovers, and Constantine was—
I sat up, mismatched arms sliding off my chest. I was dressed only in my shift, a bloodstain turned brown on my side. And on either side of me, two men dozed.
I frowned. Only four other bodies were on the mattress. And poor Nireas barely fit. We needed to find a different bed. But none of the four were Constantine. Hunter woke as I started to slide out from under the sheets, his hand stroking my back. He had new scars from the battle, but they were healing already, just as my own bruises and cuts were.
"I'll come back to bed," I whispered, bending to kiss his brow. "Just want to know where my demon slipped off to."
Hunter grunted and nodded, his eyelids heavy. "He has a great adjustment ahead of him."
I licked my lips, staring back at Hunter as I considered that. It was true. Constantine had been entrapped by the warlock—Sir Gabriel Anson, he'd repeated, the name like a curse on his tongue—for a century. I slid off the end of the bed and winced at my tender feet, still healing from the gravel, then found Hunter's robe, wrapping it around myself. I needed a bath and a fresh shift, and another day's worth of sleep, considering my sore muscles and my vague recollection of the sunrise's glow turning the wreckage of the Seven Veils rosy as we finally turned away.
But I needed to see Constantine more. Just to reassure myself he was here, still safe. The talisman was tied around my neck by a thin ribbon. It would need a chain, preferably today, and it would be remaining on my person from now on, a promise to keep the demon safe from any further influence.
I tiptoed out of the bedroom, glanced into the rooms I passed, but I found Constantine quickly. He was at the front windows of Hunter's receiving room, staring out to the busy street of Mayfair, watching traffic and passersby. He was fully dressed, and the sight of him caused an immediate pang in my chest, almost as if Con had grazed his finger over my breast. He wore his own ragged and stained pair of trousers and what I was fairly certain was Nireas's large white dress shirt, a collection of cuffs stuffed into the sleeves of one of Hunter's velvet dinner jackets. Wrapped around his neck and shoulders was one of my hand-knit shawls.
"You're leaving," I said, standing at the top of the stairs, my breath catching unevenly in my chest.
He turned slowly, eyes reluctantly dragged from the world outside, rising up to meet mine. "Can you understand why?"
Not a refusal. I wanted to fall down onto this step and weep, but his question rang in my head. Of course I could. He'd been held captive, made into Birsha's toy, tortured and commanded. He hadn't been permitted to live under his own willpower for decades.
I knew a little—a tiny fraction—of what that felt like. My father's death had been a sorrowful liberation, but an escape all the same, terrifying and exciting. And I'd never known a life before him, so it'd all been new. Constantine had been aware this past century of what was robbed from him.
Still, the words squeezed their way out of my lips. "Would I be such a terrible cage?"
"Come here."
Constantine reached up toward the stairs, but he didn't move from the window. I wanted to refuse, to run back to the shelter of the others. Constantine was leaving. Guest acts always leave. Whether I fell in love with them or not. Why should he be any different?
They were bitter, petty, self-indulgent thoughts. I walked slowly down the stairs, the tile cold and comforting under my sore feet as I crossed to him. Tears cut at my eyes as Constantine pulled me into his chest, arms wrapped firmly around me.
"You will never be a cage, sweet creature," he whispered, his breath cascading over my hair. "You were the key that set me free. I'll return to you."
I winced into the soft wool of my own shawl. They never return.
"I'll keep the talisman safe, no matter what—you know that, right? You don't have to come back," I said, although the words were like knives on their way up my throat.
Constantine was quiet for a moment, holding me, and I wondered if I'd just guaranteed he would remain absent from my life.
I fell in love with you. Somewhere between the stage and your dressing room. Somewhere between sex and you staring at me like I'm a puzzle, I thought. I couldn't tell him. I didn't want to burden him with my own feelings, as if they might be a weight to drag him back to me or hold him in place, a new set of bars.
"I would like to return. If you'll all have me," he said, that languid voice so careful in its choice of words.
I nodded, rubbing my head against his chest and releasing a warbling sigh. "We will. When you're ready."
Please be ready soon.
Constantine leaned back, lifted my face gently up to stare back at him. And there was that look, the one where he frowned at me and tipped his head and my heart decided to beat just a hint faster. The danger of being seen, possibly even understood.
"I don't understand why you saved me," he said. "I don't understand why you let me touch you, want me to touch you. I don't understand why the others would help, would want to share you with me."
"You deserve your freedom," I said, shrugging. And I love you.
"I enjoy hurting you."
I smiled a little at that. "I enjoy being hurt, Constantine." I wet my lips, stroked his back through Nireas's stolen shirt. "It will hurt me more to watch you walk out that door than any touch from Con ever could."
Constantine's frown deepened, and a flash of blue rushed over his cheeks.
"I'm not saying you shouldn't leave. I just… There's a difference between action and sensation, is all. You've never hurt me with your actions," I said.
Constantine's head dipped and I rose to my toes, meeting that soft and curious kiss with a gentle whimper.
Don't leave me.
"I'll hurt you when I leave?" he asked, still frowning, brow furrowed.
I nodded, trying to keep my voice calm, even. "The pain will pass when you return."
I reached up and smoothed my fingers over the lines of his face, making it as impassive and cool as it was when I'd first met him. I pressed another quick kiss to his lips, offered him a weak and limping smile.
"You'll come back," I said, more for my own sake, forcing my hands to not clench around him.
"I will," he answered, the plain nature of the words a surprising comfort. He was certain of the fact, even if I wasn't.
I took the kiss he offered and clung to his shoulders—not too tightly, even when I wanted to strangle him to me. And in spite of Constantine's claims of leaving, we remained in the embrace through the chiming hour mark of the grandfather clock, lips grazing, tongues caressing, simply breathing one another in for long stretches of minutes.
Please don't leave me. I love you, my mind chanted. But the words felt like a bribe or a leash. So I pressed the meaning from my mouth to his without the structure of the letters. Spelled out affection with my hands running up and down his back, my need described in the press of my hips to his.