Hemlock Veils

“Henry,” she said, and he wished she wouldn’t call him that. When she called him Henry, he felt like Henry. His name in her voice was a beckoning, a call to come home—a home where he wanted desperately to be, but couldn’t believe in.

He tried to stand, again in a hurry, while holding the blanket around his waist, but instead he closed his eyes tightly as the marble felt pulled from beneath him, like the floor of a gyrating plane.

“You might not want to do that,” she warned.

Between nauseating breaths he stood anyway, ignoring her advice. With a croaky throat he managed, “What are you doing here, Ms. Ashton?”

She didn’t answer, rushing to him while keeping her own blanket high, and she steadied him, placing her free hand on his chest. Was the familiarity of her hand just a dreamlike sensation, or had she really done that last night, too—steadied him? And how he loved the way it felt, her touching him. “You need to take it easy,” she said. “Lie down, please. But not on the floor. The couch maybe, or—”

He removed her from him, backing away, and grasped the back of the couch. “Why…why are you here?” The room still spun and he brought his hand to his forehead. He thought maybe he should do as she requested, or at least sit down, but he couldn’t.

“She saved your life,” Arne said, entering the room and looking more tired than Henry had seen him in years. “That’s what she’s doing here.”

“You…” Henry started, the betrayal turning his stomach. “You let her in?”

“Henry, you would have died out there,” Elizabeth said.

His eyes shot to her before he scrunched them closed again, trying desperately to remember. But saving her, fighting Diableron, and getting stabbed was the last thing he remembered with any clarity. “Don’t call me that.”

He felt her question in the air.

“Henry,” he clarified. “Don’t call me that.”

Her face fell and she swallowed deeply, but held her chin high.

“What happened?” He didn’t know what else to say.

“It’s all right,” she said in the soothing voice he hated, because of just how much he wanted to believe her. Because really, he did believe her—that maybe it could be all right.

“What’s all right, Ms. Ashton? That I’m a monster?” He looked to Arne, and heat flushed his face, more than just the warmth of the fever. “How could you betray me like that?”

“She already knew.” Arne looked upset too, since his face appeared darker than usual and he stepped toward him in the passionate way he rarely did. “She came to me last night, came to the gate—desperate to save you. And you’re delusional if you think I would turn her away. If she hadn’t come, you’d be dead.”

Henry ignored Arne’s words, scrunching his eyes. His chest was heavy, and if he let himself, he could have cried. He didn’t know why and it didn’t make sense, but he felt it, building up inside.

She knew who he was.

She knew what he was. It wasn’t just Arne who had betrayed him. “How long have you known?” he asked quietly, keeping his eyes closed, still clutching the blanket around his waist while grasping the edge of the sofa.

Her voice was small, even scared. “Weeks.”

His eyelids shot open. One of her hands kept the blanket over herself, not to keep herself shielded like him, since she was clothed—perhaps she was cold?—and her other tucked her hair behind her ear. She looked tired, too.

“It was hard to miss,” she went on after a swallow. “Really, it was obvious. I’m surprised I didn’t know the first time I met you.”

None of it made sense—mostly, why she would know and continue to meet him every night, continue to walk with him every morning as though he was a normal person, instead of ru

His head spun and again he closed his eyes. “I…You knew…”

“Hen—” She cut herself off, and the sound was an unpleasant one, his name getting caught in her throat. It seemed as painful to her as it was to him. “Mr. Clayton,” she corrected after a light throat clearing, “you need to lie down. You’re coming off both the poison and the mor—”

“The poison?” he asked, his eyes again shooting to her, then to Arne. How much had his only confidant told her? “How did you know about the poison?”

Folding her arms, she threw him an exasperated glare. “What do you take me for? We do have the same book, Mr. Clayton.”

He stood on the deck of a ship, rolling over a choppy, stormy sea. He wondered how long he could fight the desire to throw up. She touched his arm and the sensation made him jerk, since she felt cold against his feverish skin.

“You’re burning up,” she said. She tried making him sit, but he didn’t.

“How can you touch me?” he blurted, his voice bitter and eyes narrow. “How can you even look at me, Ms. Ashton, knowing what I am?”

She recoiled, and her own face darkened a shade. With her free hand on her hip, her eyes smoldered with a damp passion. “You’re not a monster, Henry. And yes, I’m calling you that, because Henry’s your name and I think we’re past the point of formal regards.”

“Are you blind!” he shouted, his eyes bulging. “I am a monster. That’s what I am! You’ve seen what I can do, what instincts I have to fight.”

“But you do fight them.” Her eyes appeared sadder than he’d ever seen, and it was just enough to lower his shoulders, just enough to lower his heart rate ever so slightly. She shook her head, her voice soft. “I wish you could see, for just a second, what I see when I look into your eyes. Yours and his.”

“Yeah?” he asked tiredly. “And what do you see?”

“I see a man who carries the weight of the world on his shoulders, a man who lives every day under the pressure of his past mistakes. I see a man who, for longer than a lifetime, has suffered for something he doesn’t deserve. I see a man, not a monster.” She neared. “I see a beautiful soul. You deserve happiness, Henry.”

He huffed and looked away, even through the heavy heat in his heart—the kind that clashed with the rage he now had to dig inside himself to find. “You couldn’t possibly know…”

“I don’t have to know. But your past doesn’t make you who you are.”

His short laugh of disbelief made another wave of nausea take his breath. “On the contrary. My past has made me exactly what I am.”

“I said it doesn’t make you who you are.”

“Sorry,” he sarcastically retorted. “My past has made me exactly who I am.”

“Then why don’t I see it?”

“Because you’re someone who can find beauty in a dandelion.” Even he heard the offense in his voice, despite the fact that it was one of the very things he loved about her.

“And I see it in you, too. I will always see it, no matter how much you try to hate me.”

“Ms. Ashton,” he said, bringing a hand to his eyes while leaning against the back of the couch. He didn’t know how much longer he could stand. “What do you want from me?”

“I want you to stop hiding from me. Stop viewing me as a threat.” Her voice was so desperate that he opened his eyes. Hers welled with the desire of her words, and he wanted so badly to give her what she wanted. “I want you. The real you—the one I know at nighttime and the one who kissed me. The one who really sees me. Because that side of you isn’t afraid of me. That side of you knows me.” She paused. “Let me love you, Henry.”

He sank to the couch, his legs still trembling, and all he could do was shake his head at the way his heart felt pierced by numerous hooks, then pulled in every direction. It was a pain unlike the rest, and he didn’t understand. How badly he wanted to be the man she spoke of—how badly he ached for it—but he was saving her, and him, from the day when she would finally wake up and realize what he was.