To Steal a Weeping Widow

Chapter Fifty-One: Condemn the Dead, as We Lay Dying

"Love and Pain" by Edvard Munch (1893), also called "Vampire", one of several versions of the painting, stolen in 1988, recovered 1988 - value of an 1894 version was $38.2 million

Chapter Fifty-One

My name was a whisper on his lips. Haunting and delicate.

He tried again, "Eleanor, are you—"

Yet he broke off, again. What he wanted to ask was broken glass around me; again. I was a frequent flier at crime scenes I'd never been prepared to be found at. Besides, we both knew the answer. I didn't need a mirror to know what I looked like. I didn't need a heart to know what I felt like. I didn't need a soul to know what I'd done, what I'd taken, and what I had to admit to.

I had the Widows surrounding me, a field of poppies beside me, and hands soaked in red.

It was time to tell him the truth.

It was time to tell Simon how every kiss had been poisoned. How every touch had been corrosive; how every heartbeat had been untruthful. There were always pyrite truths embedded in stone: fool's gold, at best. There were verities in my ribs and lies in my teeth. Every inch of me loved him—and every inch of him had been hurt because of it, carved with ghoulish wounds. Perhaps he didn't feel it yet.

He would.

Because I was the best definition of a traitor. I'd damned the keeper of my heart and the bearer of my sins. And I wished I could say I'd done it kicking and screaming. I wished I could swear I'd clung those sins to my chest until I couldn't hold on any longer, that he'd shared the burden against my wishes, that I was a traitor because he'd made me be. I wished I could promise he'd pried them from my stiff fingers and clenched arms; that I'd guarded him from the perils until he'd claimed them as his own, despite my shrill objections. Had I? Or had I welcomed him with an open embrace and eager lips? Had I tried to correct his unexpected presence, or had I made room for him on my canvas?

I realized it all, I realized everything. I'd betrayed the one person I never should have betrayed. And I'd betrayed her, too.

She'd kicked the weak, so I'd leapt for her throat. Now it's my own I offer the guillotine, boot crushing the necks of the ones I love.

His eyes flicked down to the red on my skin. His expression twisted, giving him the push he needed to cross the threshold and approach.

"Your hand," he murmured, already reaching. I tried to pull away, shying from the touch that'd make this real, but he was faster. He caught my wrist in a gentle grip. His hold was soft, yet unrelenting; he wasn't letting me go.

He has to let me go.

"Simon—"

"C'mon," he said, taking the knife from me.

He wasn't looking at the paintings. He wasn't looking at anything but me as his feet carried him on a path to the kitchen, pulling me in tow. He was ignoring everything: every red sign I'd ever given him, every warning I'd silently uttered between my touches, every hiss and scrape of scales I'd hid under moans and flustered wails. He was ignoring the spear in his chest because of the droplets of crimson on mine.

His grip held my hand under cold water. I closed my eyes. He was so close. Tension lulled and lapped at our edges, mellow tickles of waves bubbling at our feet, the longing of tsunamis yet to come. His body brushed my side as we stood by the sink; my shoulders ached with the weight of his world as it leaned on mine. I could feel him pulling me in, tempting me, wanting me, but I could no longer feel my heart in my body. It'd ached and ached and ached—it always had. Except, now, I knew I'd only ever felt phantom pains in the space where my heart used to be. He'd had it the entire time.