I walked toward the pool, unconscious of my nak*dness. The water glinted in the torchlight where the petals separated. Welcoming me.
I took one step in. I could feel Eliot's breath on my neck, urging me forward. He did not touch me, but his presence was calming. My feet were warmed by the hot water of the springs. I took another step forward, and when I looked down I gasped.
The white rose petals were turning red, the color spreading outward from my feet.
"Forward," Eliot whispered, his voice faint. I stepped in farther, the water now up to my waist. My hand trailed through the rose petals and everywhere I touched the white petals turned a dark, dark red. Ripples of color spread outward from my body.
I could hear the soft murmurs of water behind me as Eliot followed me down into the baths.
"Don't look back," he said. "Whatever you do, don't look back."
One more step, and my chest was submerged. This was as deep as the baths went, but as I looked forward and saw the white petals transforming, turning red, panic seized me. My chest seemed compressed, unable to draw enough air. My feet slid across the bottom of the pool, the tile slippery, and for a moment I was so dizzy that I fell forward, losing my balance. I thought that I would drown.
"Eliot!" I caught my balance, my arms spread out in the rose petals which were now almost all red.
"It's alright," I heard him say, but his voice was farther away than before.
"Eliot!" His name echoed off of the walls of the baths, ringing again in my ears, calling out. I couldn't stay in the water without him. I needed him, I needed him there—
"ELIOT!"
My hands splashed the rose petals as I spun around to hold onto him. My prince. My protector.
He was gone. The light of the torches grew dim, and I could hear a whisper of his voice trailing away through the cavernous baths.
"Farewell," he said.
I raised my hands up to reach out, and saw that they were covered in blood. I looked down. The bathwater around me had turned to blood, the rose petals awash in dark scarlet. I screamed. Hands thrashing, I tried to move backwards, to get out of the baths, but the steps seemed no nearer as I splashed through the red petals.
"Don't look back," I heard the whisper say, and then the bottom of the baths fell away from under my feet. I was drowning, drowning—
I woke up panting, my fingers clutching the sheets damply. Beside me, Eliot slept on. I rolled to his side and held on to him, and he put his arm around me sleepily, drawing me close.
"Don't leave me," I whispered, so softly that he couldn't hear it even in his dreams.
It's easy to slay dragons. It's harder when they're in your mind. If I was living in a fairy tale, why were my nights filled with terror?
Eliot held me every night as though he wanted to make love to me. I reached out to him but pulled back always before temptation could overcome me, although I was not sure what I was afraid of. We had slept together already, many times. The first time after the attack was my first time, and Eliot made it gentle. The time after, I thought things would be different, but still he held me delicately, as though I were a rare orchid he had transported from its warm environment. Opening my petals softly.
When I retreated away from him, though, he made no attempt to keep me in his bed. His tenderness both comforted and alarmed me. Could the passion between us have been taken away so easily? I grew frightened to tempt him, for fear that he would not even notice me. I still had secrets and so did he, and those secrets, ugly and worming, slipped into the space between us.
Now every night in this Hungarian castle was filled with nightmares of my mother's death, of Clare's death, of my own. Filled with blood and pain. Even Eliot's arms could not keep away the bad dreams. I was living like a princess. An enchanted castle. A handsome prince. How could I not be grateful? And yet, I knew in my heart that I was no princess, that if Eliot tried to fit a glass slipper onto my foot it would be the wrong size, that I was only pretending. I was holding a mask up to my face that was beginning to slip, and soon everyone would know the truth, if they didn't know already. Eliot would know the truth, and he would cast me aside like any other young stupid girl who wanted more than she deserved.
So I held my secrets close to my heart, and when the dragons breathed fire down my neck I clenched my teeth and tried to forget that I wasn't happy.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Eliot
“Let us grant that the pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit.”
Alfred North Whitehead
Eliot was in his study, struggling. The proof was impossible.
No. Not impossible. That would be better. If it were impossible, if he could prove that it was impossible, then he would be done. But every avenue he tried, every method he used, led only to uncertainty. He'd tried manipulating the equations in every way he could think of, and nothing worked.
"Meow!"
Lucky jumped up onto his desk.
"Shoo, cat," Eliot said absentmindedly, running his finger over the one line of the proof that had broken down under scrutiny and scratching absentmindedly at the scar running down his face.
"Meow." Lucky walked across the papers and sat squarely on top of Eliot's notebook. He licked his chops, his whiskers twitching, and waited to be petted.
Eliot sighed and leaned back in his chair. He stroked Lucky on the head and the little gray cat rubbed against his fingers eagerly.
"Good morning." Brynn stood in the doorway. Her eyes looked red around the rims. He knew she hadn't been sleeping well. While she slept, she whimpered and moaned. Eliot sometimes rubbed her back until she stopped making noises, but still she would toss and turn until he wrapped his arm around her tightly. Then she would wake with a frown on her face.
This morning her hair was mussed up on one side, strands of wavy red hair falling forward onto her cheeks. Her green flannel pajama shirt was hanging off of one of her shoulders, exposing her collarbone slightly under the mass of hair. She yawned, covering her mouth with the back of her fist.
"You look stunning," Eliot said, beaming.
"Right. I don't know if I would use the word stunning. Maybe shocking. Terror-inducing. Is that what you were going for?"
"Come here, beautiful." Eliot tugged her arm and pulled her onto his lap. "Distract me from this horrible proof."
"Is Lucky helping you with your work?" Brynn scratched Lucky under the chin until he started purring, then leaned back into Eliot.
"He's helping me forget how badly this is coming along," he said. "Cats don't seem to care too much about mathematical theorems."
"That's why they're so happy," Brynn said. She pulled the paper out from under Lucky's paw. Lucky licked at the pads of his paw, irritated at having been displaced. Brynn studied the page. "Linear algebra?"
"I'm working with matrices as my transformation function," he said. "It's a pretty straightforward translation from the equations to the matrix. I was hoping that it would help."
"Let me guess, it didn't?" Brynn let the paper fall back to the desk. Near the bottom were a number of substitutions, all of them scribbled out with increasingly frustrated pen marks.
Eliot laughed bitterly.
"If I was a younger man, I'd turn away from this career and take up gardening."
"Don't beat yourself up over it," Brynn said.
"The Academy board has asked to speak with me," Eliot said. It was hard to meet Brynn's inquisitive eyes. "To see if they'll let me stay on."
"Why wouldn't they?"
"The problem isn't solved, and my reputation here is causing more of a stir than they had expected."
"But you didn't do anything!" Brynn flushed in anger.
"They don't know that," Eliot said, defending the board despite himself. "They're risking a lot, and if I don't produce any results, they'll drop me."
"Do you really care? You don't need the money, right?" Her voice had a strange tone to it.
"No, it's not that. It's just..." How could he explain? "Brynn, when I was younger, I was brilliant. Every problem I touched...the solution came easily to me. Like I was wading through water. Now I'm stuck in mud."
"You'll get it," she said.
"Maybe."
She had so much faith in him. He found it hard to find the same faith in himself.
Brynn stood, leaning forward to pet Lucky. The tiny ball of light gray fur rolled onto his back and closed his eyes contentedly. She yawned again, this time against her shoulder, and sighed deeply, still scratching the kitten's belly.
She was so tired. Poor Brynn. He had been so mired in his own issues that he hadn't reached out to her. Guilt washed over him.
"What's wrong? More nightmares?"
"No. I mean yes, but no. That's not the problem." Brynn's brows pinched together above her nose. "I tried to tell you earlier."
"What is it?"
Brynn swallowed, looking unsure about whether or not to speak.
"My grandmother. She just lost her insurance for the medication she needs, and she doesn't have the money to pay for it."
"How much does she need?"
Brynn looked up at him, her eyes glazed with tears.
"It's a lot. Thousands of dollars. I didn't want to ask you—"
Eliot stood and swept Brynn into his arms, kissing her on the top of the head.
"Brynn, don't ever hesitate to ask for that."
"But it's so much!" She fidgeted in his arms and he buried his face in her beautiful hair.
"Money's no good sitting in the bank doing nothing. If I had known that was what was worrying you..."
"I don't want to be a burden. I don't want you to think that I'm just here for that."
"For what?"
"Because you're rich. I don't want to owe you."
Eliot laughed. He kissed her nose, her cheek, her ear.
"I owe you more than I can say," he said.
"You know what I mean," Brynn said quietly.
"And you know that I love you," he said. "Anything you want, anything I can give, I give it gladly."
Brynn didn't say anything, but when Eliot looked down at her face, he saw that she was choked up. Embarrassed at making her embarrassed, he pulled her in closely for another hug.
"Now I have to get back to being stuck on this problem. Can you get Lucky off of my papers?"
"Lucky, come here." Brynn picked up the tiny cat, who promptly nestled into her arms and began a loud purr.
"I'll teach him some math," Brynn said. She crossed the study in a few steps and stopped in front of the window. The early morning chill had left a fog on the glass, and she used one finger to draw shapes on the windowpane.
"This is a circle. This is a square. This is a triangle." Eliot pulled his chair back up to his work, but the sight of Brynn's silhouette against the pale light coming in through the window gave him pause. He let his eyes travel over the line of her body, over the sensual curves of her h*ps that could be seen only faintly through the robe.
"Let's add some smaller triangles to the sides," she said, using her pinky finger to draw the lines in. Her voice grew fainter, more absentminded, as she drew. "Then some more smaller triangles, and more, infinitely many."