Page 77 of A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel 1)
“Kink?” he asks.
“You know what she does?”
“I was there for the spanking, too, Delphine, given that it happened on my lap. Yes, I know what she does. I’ve known it since I designed her loft with hooks in the ceiling and racks for flogging.”
Delphine’s been to the loft once, but she doesn’t remember any rings or racks. She’s disappointed in herself for not noticing.
“I can be kinky,” Auden says. “I want to be, but I didn’t want to frighten you.”
Delphine weighs this, just like she weighed it last night when she argued with herself about whether or not to break things off. She could ask Auden to be kinky with her, she really could, but . . .
“No,” she says. “I want to be someone else and that can only happen with someone else. I was with you because I was grateful for all you’ve done, but I can’t do it anymore. I just can’t.”
Auden flinches.
“If we decide it’s me tonight, I’m going to do it,” Delphine says. “And if we decide it’s you, you should do it too. And maybe it will be a nice way for us to say goodbye to each other?”
“You’re saying,” Auden says slowly, “that you don’t want to marry me, but you’d be happy fucking me in a ritual? After you’ve broken up with me?”
“Yes. I’m changing, you know,” she explains, after seeing his incredulous reaction to her answer. “I’m waking up. Except I wasn’t asleep.”
“What are you waking up to, then?”
She shrugs. “What I really want. Pleasure. Pain. Magic in my life.”
“We all want those things,” Auden says. “I want those things. Why can’t we want them together?”
He looks so sad just then, so tired and alone silhouetted with the expanse of Thornchapel behind him, that Delphine goes up and hugs him. She hugs him like she used to hug him when they were children, when they were both adolescents in the same stuffy and luxurious world. She hugs him like someone hugs their best friend.
He takes in a deep breath, his muscles tight under her arms, but after a long moment, he carefully hugs her in return.
“I’ll always love you,” she whispers. “Always.”
“I know,” he sighs, and she can hear the rumble of his voice with her face against his chest. She can feel the breath entering and leaving his body.
“And if it’s us tonight, I want you to know that I’ll be glad, because even if I can’t marry you, I still trust you with my body. I still love you.”
He holds her tighter but doesn’t say anything.
“And if it’s you and someone else, then I’ll be excited for you.” He doesn’t respond to that either, and eventually the hug ends.
He breaks the awkward silence as they step apart. “I hope you stay here at the house,” he says gruffly. “We’ll get you your own room and everything. But I like having all of us together too much to see you go. Even if it’s hard.”
“I think I’d like that,” Delphine says, feeling lighter. She’d been worried about that, anxious that Auden would excommunicate her from the group for the crime of not marrying him, but she should have known better. Whatever he likes to say, he is good, and she’ll be allowed to stay. They’ll be all together, and that’s what matters.
It’s fully dark now, and Becket should be arriving any minute, but Auden decides to go out to the chapel one last time before they go there as a group. He uses the excuse of bringing some blankets out to use later, but really he just wants to see it by himself, see it in the cold beam of his flashlight before it’s lit in the glow of lanterns and fires. He wants to lay down his feelings about Delphine and everything else before he picks up a lantern and pretends to care about this ceremony.
He skips the maze and hops easily onto the path as it emerges from the maze’s tunnel and meanders into the trees. The clever topography of the grounds means the route can’t be seen from the house or from the lawn, and only someone who knows Thornchapel’s every last secret knows about the deep-sliced trail at the border of the woods. Being its lord, he knows every last secret—or at least he’s pretty sure he does.
He eats up the walk with long, impatient strides, very aware that the others will soon be waiting on him, waiting for a ritual that might rip apart the perfect little world they’ve built. The tiny, perfect kingdom of his favorite people—well, his favorite people and St. Sebastian—nestled in the heart of Thornchapel, protected and happy and his.
And maybe they’re about to throw that all away.
Christ.
His chest hurts with Delphine’s decision, but it hurts even more knowing that he’s not as crushed as he should be. He aches with his own selfishness, the selfishness that tells him he can finally stop hating himself for wanting Proserpina, the gross relief that he can finally release all the perverse needs inside him.
How fucking miserly is he? How callow? That he feels owed somehow for all the years he’s held back?
