It’s Saturday, though, with no classes to distract anyone from the noise, and I think it’s Claudius who’ll break the stalemate. He grits his teeth even as he sips his tea, and every time a fresh peal comes through the speakers, his grip tightens so on the delicate porcelain cup that it trembles from the strain.
If Dane threw in a hyena laugh just to mix things up, I think the handle of the cup would break.
The fact that I wish he’d do it is proof enough to me that I shouldn’t skip my pills twice in a row, and I dutifully swallow them one by one under Father’s approving gaze.
Someone, probably Reynaldo, got him started on the aspirin last night. He has a headache, but he isn’t actually hung over.
After breakfast, Father and Reynaldo retreat to Father’s study. I drift after them for lack of anything better to do; it’s a vague thought that perhaps I’ll ask permission to use the computer. I don’t have any papers that require it, but perhaps Father will let me search maps of Paris to see my brother’s new haunts—not that I have any letters to tell me where those haunts might be.
Father has left the door open; neither man sits in the well-worn leather chairs around the broad desk. Reynaldo stands on the visitor’s side of the wood, the edge level with his chest. He wears lifts in his shoes to try and disguise how short he is, but he doesn’t know how to walk in them so he ends up hunched and waddling like a duck. That might be part of why he always looks like he’s scowling even when he smiles.
After digging through the massive stacks of paper on the desk, Father hands him a large manila envelope. “There’s money in there, in addition to what I’ve added to his card; make sure he gets those letters please. Perhaps our previous ones have gone astray.”
He’s sending Reynaldo to Paris?
I can’t help but smile. Reynaldo has been Father’s stooge nearly all my life, but I cannot be comfortable around the leering man. He is more careful in his expression when Laertes is here to glower at him, but these two months have been filled with lascivious looks and wicked smiles that make me very glad I have no skill at reading men’s thoughts.
“Before you meet with my son, Reynaldo, I would have you do a few other things first.”
“Sir?”
“I need you to inquire after his behavior,” Father tells him, a sigh heavy in his voice. “Find out what other exchange students are there, where they tend to spend time outside of classes. He’ll more likely spend time with them than with his French classmates. When you question them, you can freely say that you know his father and family, and thus know him. Am I making myself clear?”
“Perfectly.”
I lean against the doorframe, mostly lost to the shadows of the hall.
“I want you to tell them wild stories, Reynaldo. Say that he’s wild and half drunk, and whatever stories and lies you wish to add there. None, if you please, that will permanently tar his reputation or damage any useful contacts he may be making—nothing that will dishonor the Castellan name or the one who will be responsible for it when I am gone. We both know he is young and his hormones … in any case, assign to him whatever wild tumbles are popular to teenagers of his type.”
Reynaldo shakes his head; he doesn’t entirely see where Father is going with this. “Like gambling? Or …”
“If you wish, or fighting or drinking, swearing inappropriately, you may even go so far as to say he goes whoring if you wish.”
“Sir!” A blush spreads across Reynaldo’s olive skin. “Surely whoring would damage his reputation!”
“I think you misjudge the French.” Father adjusts the rimless glasses on his nose. “At any rate, to say merely that he works his way through women is not such a scandal as to say he is addicted to it in some way or to imply that there is some perversion in his tastes. To have a healthy appetite for sex is a hallmark of youth. What you must do, Reynaldo, is spin these stories in such a way that they seem only a reflection of his sudden independence, not a general flaw of his character.”
“Sir—”
“Why do I ask you to do this?”
Reynaldo sighs with relief. He doesn’t like appearing stupid, doesn’t like having to ask for explanations that Father is only too willing to give.
At length.
Interminable length.
“Yes, sir, I would know that, please. What you ask seems rather extraordinary.”
“I want to know the truth of what my son is doing in Paris, Reynaldo.” Father adjusts the glasses again, though they can hardly need it so soon, and sinks down into his chair. The leather bears worn patches on the back and arms where his weight has rubbed away the darker color. “Asking him for a report on his behaviors is unlikely to yield that result, but he must be doing quite a bit that he cannot manage even a single line of e-mail in all this time. So. Ask those he spends time with, but not in such a way that invites dishonesty. If you paint him with all these vices, and they agree with you—surely it must be true. But if they protest your descriptions, then they know him for a good boy. We will have the truth of it with Laertes none the wiser.”
It isn’t hard to imagine Reynaldo stalking along Parisian cafés in search of any friends Laertes may have made. The fact that he’ll look ridiculous won’t occur to him—he takes himself far too seriously for that—and for whatever tact he may employ, he has no idea that the other students will just tell my brother when next they see him. It’s impossible not to relate that a strange American man, barely five feet tall, came to them and made all sorts of horrendous accusations against Laertes’ character.
I press a hand against my mouth to hold back a giggle. He seriously expects to go up to a table of American teenagers and talk about “whoring”?
Father knows his duties as an administrator very well, but he knows far more about paper than people. Such a plan can’t possibly work. It might even amuse them to string him along with even worse stories.
Dane would do that.
If even just one of those exchange students is like Dane, the others will follow his lead as he spins horror stories of sexual diseases and drugs and absinthe, as he tells a spellbound stooge of gambling dens where Laertes loses all his money to brawls. Add in a few rumors about unexplained corpses and Reynaldo might just die of joy at the prospect of sharing such awful tales.
I have to tell Dane and Horatio.
I’m actually at the front door before I catch myself. Whatever grace I gave myself yesterday, whatever gift of disobedience I gave myself to celebrate my birthday, ended when Dane left my room still with that look of wonder and joy in his eyes. It’s one thing not to push him away when he comes to me; it’s another thing entirely to seek him out away from Gertrude and Father.
Even when one is thousands of miles away, Father still feels like he has to know every detail about his children’s lives. He has to take away the locks, the chances for privacy, for secrets, and yet …
I trace my hand along the curved pattern of teeth in the side of my neck, shiver at even this slight pressure against the bruised, fragile skin.
Father wants to know so much.
Or rather, he thinks he does.
Because if he actually knew, if he knew how Laertes spends his days and nights, knew that this semicircle of pain keeps the sun burning in my chest, there wouldn’t be enough whiskey in the world to dull the pain.
CHAPTER 22
The rest of the morning and afternoon passes by as I lie on my bed, my hand over the bruise on my neck. I can feel my heartbeat through my fingertips with each rush of blood to the damaged skin. It throbs and stings beneath my touch like something alive in its own right.
When he finally managed to get to his feet again in the shower, Dane kissed me so sweetly the star scalded my breath, but then he wrapped himself in one of my towels and walked away. This morning he stood up on the widow’s walk with a microphone and crowed for hours like a demented Peter Pan.
Peace doesn’t last.
My door flies open and I flinch, start to sit up on
the bed, but then Dane is there, pinning me to the mattress. Half the buttons of his black silk shirt are undone, the other half matched to the wrong hole, and his black slacks are unfastened and barely clinging to his narrow hips. His hair stands about his pale face in every direction. Wildness lives in his eyes, a frantic, manic gleam that’s supposed to go away with the medication he probably hasn’t been taking.
His chest rises and falls in short, sharp pants; his bleeding lips tremble with the force of each breath. He looks as though he’s been loosed from Hell. His fingers dig into my wrists where he pins them to the bed. Pain blooms beneath his touch, sleepy and familiar.
He shifts his grip, still hard and strong, to hold my wrists with one hand. The other moves to my face.
“Dane …”
A finger presses softly against my lips, and I fall silent. His eyes follow the path of his fingers as he traces every line and curve of my face, like he would memorize it, or draw it, somehow immortalize it beyond his means. His touch carries down to my throat. He lingers at the bite, his breath warm and sharp against my ear. He pushes a thumb against the mark, and I bite my cheek against a cry of pain; his hips dig into mine, and the cry turns into a silent gasp.
He yanks my turtleneck up until he can press his lips where his class ring belongs and isn’t. His cheek rests against my breast, my heart, the sun that spins and burns with his name written into the flares. His face softens, but his fingers close even harder against my wrists. A sudden, damp warmth trickles through the silk and lace of my bra, and I realize he must be crying. Silently, subtly, with nothing else but this kiss of tears to give it away.
He lifts his eyes to mine, the thin corona of grey nearly drowned by the pupils. “You took your pills this morning.” His voice, rough and low, sends shivers down my spine.
“Yes.”
“But you’ll let me do this anyway.” His hand moves down and I gasp, a too soft sound swallowed by his harsh kiss.
In the moment of death, or perhaps the moment of awakening, Hamlet’s soul splintered. Three Hamlets: one the Headmaster that was, one that is sorrow, one that is rage.
Dane isn’t dead, but he’s splintered as well, fractured and shattered into so many different pieces that I never know which of them I’ll see. There’s a knot between my lungs, a solid force that allows no air to pass, and I writhe against his touch until the knot explodes with a breath that shapes his name.
Just as suddenly the breath is gone again, lost to the hand that closes now around my throat and squeezes gently. His fingers trace warm smears against my skin, readjust themselves over and over again as he slowly increases the pressure. “You’ll let me do anything to you, Ophelia, even this. Why? Why do you let me do this?”
Black lights burst before my eyes with unexpected, dazzling colors. They’re beautiful, but too soon they disappear into a growing darkness that spreads inward from the edges of my vision. It sweeps me away, floating on an endless ocean of weightlessness.
There’s nothing here.
Not the salt of his tears against open wounds, not the way he carves his name into my body, not even the echo of the wonder. Laughter rushes in to fill the void, some of it my mother’s, a euphoric cacophony that would cut and bleed if there was anything real.
The hands snatch away, and there’s pressure on my mouth, air forced into my lungs. The darkness fades into a spill of light and color that makes no sense, and I mourn its loss as the world races to reclaim what was nearly stolen. His eyes wide, his face horror-struck, Dane stares at me. His hands tremble against the mattress on either side of my head.
“Ophelia,” he chokes out, as though the hands had been a collar around his throat.
But I let him collar me now as I let him collar me with his ring, because sometimes it’s a choice.
I take a deep breath and feel the muscles protest, feel the bruises that will form.
This is the Dane who made a reckless promise, who burns with the need to keep his word.
This is the Ophelia who broke her promises, who clings to a sputtering star to keep from drowning.
He rolls off the bed and backs away, still staring at me like I’m something new and terrifying, like I’m the ghost that plagues his promises. When I simply lie there and watch him, he risks a single step forward, brushes a fingertip against my swollen lips. “Doubt that the stars are fire,” he whispers brokenly, “doubt that the sun moves, doubt Truth to be a liar, but never doubt that I love you.”
With a hoarse, panicked cry, he hurls himself against the locked window.
A shriek rips from my throat as he collides painfully with the unyielding glass. He stands, shakes himself out, and starts to laugh hysterically. “Rapunzel in her tower,” he gasps, backing towards the door. One foot in the hall, he strikes a dramatic pose, declaiming loudly for the entire house to hear. “Danae in her prison, Ariadne on her island, Jephthah’s daughter in his stupid vow! Your father will protect you straight into misery and Hell!”
He darts back into the room, yanking my sweater back into place and cradling my face in trembling hands. “But what happens when the walls are breached?” he asks in a voice little more than a breath shared between us. Startled shouts and footsteps hammer up the first flight of stairs. “What happens when Zeus comes, when Theseus leaves? What happens …” He swallows hard, closes his eyes as his forehead leans against mine. “Ophelia, what happens when the promise is made?”
His face swims in a sheen of tears. When I try to answer, my voice is as shattered as the boy on his knees before me.
When a promise is made, it must be kept.
Or broken.
The footsteps reach the third floor, and Dane springs into the hall, crashing into Father and Reynaldo. Through the door, all I can see is a tangle of limbs. “Thank you for the string, dear lady!” Dane yells as he extricates himself. “When I leave you on that stinking rock, think well of me until your Dionysus finds you!”
Curled in the center of my bed, I bury my face in my knees and laugh until the tears come.
“Ophelia, are you—” Father struggles to gain his feet, one hand braced against the wall. “Reynaldo, quickly, go to the Headmaster and tell him—Ophelia, are you all right?”
I scrub my face with my hands and sit up. “I’m fine,” I whisper, my throat tight and painful. “He scared me, that’s all. I don’t know—I just …”
Which role does Dane want me to play this? I’m not part of his game, not really, but by staging this scene in the house, by dragging Father and his stooge up the stairs, he’s hauled me into the center ring. What is he trying to do?
I cross my arms against my stomach, clutch my elbows against the need to fly apart, to shatter. “He burst in and grabbed me, and he was just … spouting nonsense.”
“We’ll have to tell Claudius,” murmurs Father. “This is … I knew he was out of balance with grief over his father, but I had no idea you meant so much to him. This cannot be anything less than the madness of love!”
Love is its own madness?
But then, I suppose it is, sweet and painful and consuming, a way to drown so deliciously that it doesn’t even occur to you to gasp for air. I open my eyes and stare at the broken lock on the window.
“Passion can, at times, break our reason.” Our? I look up at him, but he sees something impossibly far away. “I am sorry for it, Ophelia.” He hesitates before touching my shoulder. “Are you all right? Did he hurt you?”
Even as we speak, bruises bloom in violent bursts of color against my skin.
But I let him do anything.
“No,” I whisper. “He just scared me.”
“Have you two argued recently? Any hard words?”
“You told me not to be around him without you or Gertrude present,” I remind him. “I told him that before classes resumed. He was angry then and has been angry since, when he has not been sullen and silent or … about his antics,” I continue carefully. “He’s interrupted my classes a few times, but other t
han that, we’ve barely spoken in two months. Though …” I take a deep breath and pray again that I’m making the right choice. “He has left notes outside my door, which I’ve never answered.”
“Which must have contributed to this …” He rubs a hand against his beard. “I thought this was just a passing attraction, that he was just trifling with you. God curse my jealousy! I thought him too young to form any sort of proper attachment.” This time he doesn’t hesitate before pulling me to him in a gentle and all too brief hug. “I need you to come with me to see Claudius. If there is a solution to Dane’s behavior, he needs to be told before keeping this secret causes some greater harm.”
The idea is enough to make me bite my swollen lip to keep from laughing. Claudius, the master of harmful secrets, will somehow amend this problem? He can’t take away Dane’s pain without losing everything he’s won since the summer.
But Father’s hand flattens against my back and gently propels me away from the window. “Come, Ophelia. And bring one of those notes.”
And because I try to be a good daughter, despite all my failings, I follow.
CHAPTER 23
The Headmaster’s office has a small waiting room attached to it, a place for parents to sit in comfort until the Headmaster is ready, and it’s here Father leads me. I sink down into a chair by the door and flick off the lights while Father enters the office to arrange for a moment or two of Claudius’ time. There are other voices inside, and I know Father won’t interrupt them, but he’ll hover until he’s had his say.
Moonlight floods the room from the tall windows that march along one side. It casts shadows of purples and blues against the carpet and walls, stretches the furniture out of proportion, gleams against the metal curve of sconces and statuettes.
Without Father standing over me, I push back the sleeves of the dark violet sweater and inspect my wrists. I can see his fingers, his hands. Already the angry red fades to a soft purple. As time passes, the color will deepen, the pooled blood collected under the skin in damaged cells, individual microcosms whose walls have been breached by a storm of fury and drowned in a tide of blood.
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