“You won’t be able to handle me, moonshine,” he says, brows knitting together. “I can’t even handle myself.”
“Tell me what happened,” I say, leaning in to kiss him, but he keeps his hand around my hair, holding me back.
“You’ll not look at me the same way again,” he says gruffly, a muscle in his jaw twitching. “More than that, you might see it for yourself.”
I’m puzzled for a moment until I remember what he said about drinking his blood and sharing his memories. Also makes me wonder if he has my memories since he drank from me. I hope not, though none are very exciting.
“Amethyst told me already,” I admit.
His nostrils flare with anger, pupils turning to black pin pricks. “What the fuck did she tell you?” The darkness coming off of him is palpable.
I try to sit up straighter, placing my hands on his shoulders, determined to not let his rage scare me off. “She told me that you were in love once. And that you killed her. And her boy.” His eyes close, forehead furrowed. “But I want to hear it from you. I want to know what happened.”
He shakes his head, swallowing audibly. “No.”
“Why did you kill her?”
He remains silent, breathing in and out through his nose, his chest rising and falling. I can feel his heartbeat through his skin, it’s climbing.
I put my hand at his cool cheek. “Solon. Why did you kill her? If I’m going to be living in this house with you, I need to know.” I pause. “Did she deserve it?” I ask quietly.
“No,” he blurts out. “She didn’t deserve it.”
I run my fingers under his chin, tipping it up until he meets my eyes. Just like when I did the same the other day, I’m met with a snarl, but I don’t back down, I don’t look away. “Please, tell me what happened.”
His eyes blaze, fighting it, searching my face for a way out.
I don’t give him a way.
“Tell me,” I say, staring at him so deeply that I feel like the room fades to black. A blankness comes across his face for a moment, a sense of surrender.
Holy shit. Am I compelling him?
“Was it an accident?” I ask, prompting him, trying to see.
He sets his teeth together, taking in a deep breath.
Then closes his eyes.
“Her name was Esmerelda,” he says, his voice quiet, heavy. “And I was in love with her before I was ready to be in love with anyone.”
I’m about to ask what that means, but I decide to wait and hope he continues. The fact that he just told me he was in love with someone else already makes my heart feel heavy, no matter how long ago it was and that it ended in death.
He exhales loudly, liquor on his breath. Still, his eyes are closed.
“She didn’t belong to me. She was married to another man, they had a little boy, Thomas. The man she married…was a bastard. Abusive. Beat her. The son too. She fell for me and I for her and we both thought I could take her away from all of it, as if I wasn’t just as bad as he was. But we were wrong.”
And just like that, I can see the images in my head, coming alive like a movie. A man with a long mustache, coal black eyes, a collar with exaggerated frills, and a woman, dark hair parted tightly in the middle, a dark green dress with a wide square neckline, voluminous half-sleeves. They stand on the side of a city street, cobblestone, people passing, centuries ago.
A little boy runs to them, throwing his arms around the woman’s legs, and she smiles at him, her whole face lighting up.
“Where were you?” I ask in a hush, afraid to break the spell of what I’m seeing.
“London,” he says, his voice monotone. “Just outside the city.”
“What happened?”
He lets out a soft exhale. “I…I was with her. In the stable. I had avoided temptation with her so far, and I knew, I knew that there was a chance I wouldn’t be able to control myself. That I would become something else. I wasn’t ready. Wasn’t…strong enough. But I had loved her so much, nothing else seemed to matter.”
My own heart starts to break, feeling the love he had for her, feeling the pain he knows is coming.
He doesn’t even have to tell me what happens.
I smell the stable, hear the snuffle of the horses restless in their stalls. There’s Solon, I can’t see him, but I feel him, feel his confusion, his lust, desire and madness. Because there’s madness here, darkness. Something evil and awful lurking beneath his surface, trying to break through his skin.
And then it happens. I see the two of them together, the back of him fucking her up against the wall, their muffled cries which then turn to screams. Blackness blots out my view, like clouds over the sun, and then what I see is blood spilled across the straw floor, and the woman’s body torn into many pieces.