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of lava and longing and raw new stars and whatever is left over when you
divide the light from the dark. A kiss for the end of the world. “Because I
love you and you do not deserve what that man and his Father have
prepared for you,” he whispers into the place their mouths joined only a
moment before. “You all find your way here in the end. To this green place.
To this tree and to me. I always offer you the truth. The simplest and
deepest of temptations. And I hope against hope you will say no. Say no,
Sophia. Say no and run, past the gardens and the pools and the silent
streetlamps, out of the gate and into the far hot sands that stretch on beyond
the length of the sky. Into the world. Without him. Without guilt. But you
won’t. You never do. Except her. And whatever they ever say about her,
Sophia, she lived. So, she won.”
“Her?”
“The one whose hair you found in your dresser drawer. The one whose
name he whispers into your neck as he uses your body. The one Mrs.
Palfrey tried to show you in the pantomime, putting the brush there for you
to find, to help you, to show you the truth before I could get to you.
Semengelof went after her, to execute the terms of the same contract you
signed. That you all sign. But she is beautiful and she is convincing and he
let her live, if she agreed to leave you alone and give you a chance. Of
course she didn’t tell him what she’d done. She was always the cleverest of
the lot. She found a way to speak to you, though she can never pass through
the gate again. Solidarity is a hell of a thing. And it did not exist before a
few months ago. Because there were never two of you here at once. Like a
new flower in the wall.”
Cascavel pulls her to him again, and Sophia is so deep in the dark she
wants him to do it, to hold her and make her safe and kiss her again because
he is not her husband and she knows, the way she knows the sun and the
moon, that her husband is going to hurt her somehow, and soon. So anyone
else is better.
But anyone else is not better. Anyone else is not him. Anyone else is not
the great broad man who fills her up and makes her warm and tells her who
she is with every breath he takes. She cannot escape her purpose.
I was made for him.
I was made for him.
Cascavel lets her go. He offers her the apple.