9/ The Promise

"A year," Ciel said.

"What's that?" Julie asked. She was sitting by the window, gazing up at the clouds that rolled across the blackened sky.

"I can kill you after a year, if you like. If a set time would ease your mind."

"Oh," Julie said, and she frowned, as though she wasn't sure what to think of this. "Why are you saying this now?"

"I don't know," Ciel replied. "I just thought… I thought it might be something one would appreciate, knowing when."

"After my birthday," she said. "The day after. Maybe you'll manage to make me happy before then, anyway. Who knows?"

"All right," Ciel said.

She turned around, and faced him, pensively. "How are you going to do it?"

"What do you mean?"

"Take it. You know…"

For a moment, Ciel imagined dragging Julie across the Atlantic, having her meet Sebastian—like that hadn't gone so badly the last time. He couldn't imagine that meeting; and part of him, selfishly, rebelled against it. He had always meant Julie to be a present for his butler, but something in him said mine! —He didn't want to part from her. It was for just that selfish reason that he'd decided to lay out a time: he was afraid that if he didn't, he would put her death off indefinitely, until he'd run out of every excuse.

Sebastian would like her, wouldn't he? Like this? A child's soul, brought to the brink of despair, and then out again, still with a last, wavering thread of innocence? Surely her soul couldn't help but bring to mind comparison with his own. It felt like a cheap substitute for both of them—she would never be whatever Ciel had been. And she shouldn't have to be, when she was so vital and herself. And yet that was the deal they were in, that was the game they were playing.

"How do you want me to take it?"

"There are options?" Julie said. The sardonic lilt in her voice hadn't been there before; Ciel was sure of it. She must have stolen it, sometime when he wasn't looking. "All right. I don't know. Then… tell me before you do it. Give me a moment. To, you know… I want to write to Paul and Marsha, and I want to change into my best dress and brush my hair. Is that what you wanted?"

"Should it hurt?" Ciel asked.

Julie laughed slightly. "I suppose if it must…" she said. But then she bit her lip, and turned away. She spoke with careful bravery, as though it really didn't matter one way or the other. "But, if it's all the same to you, maybe you could try to make it not. I don't want to die in pain."

Ciel nodded, meeting her eyes.

"I promise I'll try."

What is it like to fear pain, to shy away from it? he thought. And then, with some amusement—perhaps that's my problem. I've never been sensible.

When Julie finally fell asleep, that night, he went on the first of many journeys to find a worthy setting in which to place her soul. It took months of learning, and looking, and at last a theft; but when he brought the delicate ring back to her and slipped it on her finger, explaining what he meant by it, she laughed.

"You went to all this trouble, just for a container?" she said. But she held the ring before her face, and smiled a little. "It's pretty," she said. It was worth more money than the whole orphanage she lived in altogether, but she didn't know that. It could have been a trinket made of glass.

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