“I—” He cut himself off, out of mere irritation it seemed. He sighed again, running a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. But remember what I said about protecting you? Well, that’s what I’m doing, and if it takes pissing you off to get you to stay inside, then I’ll sure as hell do it.”
His face darkened, his features stunning in anger, and she grasped his arms, looking into his chocolate caramel eyes. She wanted to tell him to have faith in her…in them. But the soaring of her own doubts left her speechless. Instead she asked, with fluttering anticipation, “Why is it she doesn’t want us together? How can your curse be broken, Henry?”
He shifted his jaw, but then pulled her to the couch and sat her down. He took the large book from the coffee table and opened to the section about Aglaé, his finger toying with the page’s edge. “I’m sure you know this, but only some are cursed as monsters.” He told her all of it, told her—with a hint of shame—more about his frequent escapades to the Heathman Hotel and the night Aglaé first came to him, how she tested him and he failed, a woman’s murder on his hands.
“Henry, surely you can’t blame yourself for that.” She raised her voice when he shook his head. “You were under a spell! No man would have been able to fight it.”
“Some can. I could have. I was aware of my logical side while it was happening, and all I had to do was listen to it. But it was beyond me. I didn’t want to, Elizabeth. Because of me, she died.”
Elizabeth took the book from his lap and searched the page, then pointed to the paragraph explaining Aglaé’s irrational and unpredictable nature. “See, right here. She’s unjust. It was an unfair test, Henry. She targets men like the one you were, and she will do anything to take complete control. That’s what she’s done. And everything that’s happened since then has been because of her, because of what she did to you.”
Still, he shook his head. “Now it’s you who’s being blind.”
“Not blind. Just refusing to look at it the way you do.” Her hand found his, hot and moist. “But none of that matters anyway.”
He gave a single nod, staring at their hands. “What’s done is done.”
“What’s done may be done, but there has to be a way out of every curse she inflicts. And it has to be something doable.”
Though his head remained bowed, he lifted his eyes. “Just because something is physically possible doesn’t make it doable.”
Her swallow was rough, her heart afraid of where this would go. “The Cursed and the Curse Breaker: can you…?”
“I can never have a Curse Breaker.”
Just as she thought. An antidote only he could provide. “Tell me what it is you have to do.”
He raised an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth lifting in a subtle, cynical curve. “Give into my instincts.” At the puzzled look she gave him, he exhaled through his nose, his temples flexing. “We all hear stories that teach a man to love: a man cursed as a monster, the only escape being the love of another—someone who can love him despite what he is. Ones like Absolon and Elvire. If they really existed. But…that wasn’t enough for her.” He paused, staring at nothing. “My curse requires a woman, yes. But instead of her love it requires her…death.” He met her eyes. “A beauty for the beast, a sacrifice.”
“You…have to kill someone in order to be free?”
He nodded. “What starts with a death ends with a death.”
“The women you took…Nicole. Your instinct…?”
His eyes shifted away from hers. “I never would have done it, Elizabeth. There were times I was…” He sighed, straightening. “I’ve been tempted before. In fact, it happens often. And the urge is difficult to tame. Sometimes, the only thing that helps is taking it out on an animal.” His eyes fell in shame, and she recalled the night he’d pinned her to a tree. The blood in his fangs. The deer carcasses Eustace had mentioned. The bear he’d nearly torn in half before her eyes. “But I never would have killed the women,” he added. “I could never allow myself to accept that nature. I could never allow myself to give into it.”
His eyes wore a shield, much like the one he used to wear. “So that’s it. You know everything. Now do you see why I’m the monster I am?”
“No,” she argued, desperate for him to believe it. “If you were, you would have done it a long time ago. You would have given in to that instinct.”
“There are different kinds of monsters. I’m just not the killing kind.”
“Is that what she told you?”
He recoiled. “I did take them, the women. I did think about it.”
“But you didn’t do it,” she said, not missing a beat. “That’s what’s important. Henry, you’ve been placed in the most unfair position, and thinking those thoughts isn’t just normal for a beast, but for any human being. Even following through with those thoughts would be normal for some.”
Keeping his hand in hers, he looked down. “Whatever it says or doesn’t say about me, it doesn’t matter. Because I’ll always be cursed. That’s her intention.”
“I know,” Elizabeth murmured, reading the pages before her. They explained how Aglaé gains more power the longer she keeps her cursed ones cursed, and loses it for a time if the curse is broken. “Because if you broke your curse,” Elizabeth went on, “she would have to leave this area—and you—alone forever.”
“She knew I would never do what’s necessary to break it, and so…she’s won.”
“I refuse to believe that.”
He smiled crookedly. “You think I should kill someone, is that what you’re saying?”
“No, but…everything has a loophole.”
He looked to the side, shaking off her response as though it was ridiculous. Perhaps it was. “I just don’t understand,” he said instead. “Why is she back? The night she cursed me, she said she would come back if I ever came close to breaking my curse. She would stop me. But I’ve never been further from it. If ever I was going to break the curse, it would never be through you.”
A thought struck her and she looked to the book, hurrying to find the place she sought. She flipped to the next page, her eyes scanning frantically over the words. They got in the way of her search, all these typeset, irrelevant hurdles. Finally, she found it: the part mentioning the lengths Aglaé would go to, to keep her cursed ones cursed. Her eyes shot to Henry. “I don’t know why she thinks you’re close to breaking it, but Henry, I don’t think I’m her target.”
He furrowed his brow then took the book from her, reading. While he did, she said, “It says if she ends the life of one of her cursed, it takes some of her power. But not as much as breaking the curse would. Sometimes they do that: kill their cursed when they sense the curse is close to being broken.”
His eyes lifted to hers, unreadable.
“She wants to kill you. If she could get away with it, she wouldn’t have to worry about you breaking your curse.” She lifted a hand to her hanging mouth. Her exhalation hurt, but she shot to her feet anyway, looking around the room. She began scooting the coffee table aside. “If I make room, you can stay here at night—”
“Elizabeth,” he said, stopping her. He grabbed her arms and she looked at him, reluctantly since her eyes were afire with tears. Damn tears. Her heart beat wildly with fear, with desperation to keep him from Aglaé. “Nothing will happen to me.” He forced a smile. “I won’t fit in here, so I’m not even going to try. Believe it or not, I can be pretty fierce. I can take care of myself out there. You just have to trust me. Think about it: it’s best this way, having you stay inside at night. If I’m out there alone, as far away from you as possible, maybe she won’t feel the need to stay.”
She stared at him in disbelief, knowing he knew as well as she did how wrong that assumption was. He was grappling for something that didn’t exist: a solution. Yet all she could do was nod. And all she wanted was to be free of this knowledge, to be back in the place they were that morning, with carefree love in their veins—the place where making love was a powerful enough force to conquer any demon.