Notes:

Hello again! It's suffering time, lovelies.

Mary

My knees knock together in shame, as I steal away to my nursery, trying to stifle my sobs. I have made Big Brother sad with my selfishness. But the Doctor is wrong: I love the secrets of the natural world not for any secret passion, but because Riff loved them. And by studying them, I take a piece of him back from the emptiness.

Like a seashell.

The medical book, with all of his annotations in faded pencil, hides behind A Little Princess and Black Beauty on my shelf. And in my hands, I have the only part of him that I salvaged before his room was cleared out. A battered leather cover, rough under my touch, and yet so dear to me.

And in that moment I choose between Riff and Big Brother.

I pull back the fire screen, and move to toss the book into the gaping flames—in the moment that it sprawls onto the embers, opening to meet the flares, my heart cries that I have chosen wrongly. Its pages flicker against the sudden heat, unfurling, unraveling, undone.

I slam the screen back in place. My tears reducing the bedroom to an underwater scene. Tears to erase the years on Big Brother's face. And just like that, Riff is dead again, reduced to a little pile of ashes and regret.

Cain

I try to compose myself, as my throat tightens in fear. I have been so careless. So foolishly careless in my grief. Of course, the rest of the family would not take kindly to the illegitimate son, and yet, I cannot accept the plan Uncle Neil has outlined to address the problem. I must see the evidence myself, and so I wait until Uncle Neil has left to oversee some trifle, before stealing into his study. Undoing the desk lock with a twist of a hairpin (a trick Mary showed me, a mischievous sparkle in her eye). At the letters, nestled under some spare parchment, my heart stills. "Bastard son" and "the calamity child" leap at me from my first glance; even as my hands shake, I force myself to read on:

"Were you not aware of the consequences of having A_'s bastard son live with C_? You and I both know what A_ was capable of, and if you had just taken the family's advice, we would not be in this predicament."

"If he fights the entail, the estate will be broken and the title lost. And you, dear cousin, will be remembered as the one who dropped the torch."

"How is it that you cannot keep a tighter rein over C_? K_ sent me the Times..."

"I wonder, why you thought it fit to allow C_ to parade himself in the papers as if he were a dog-and-pony show? You assured me that you had him under control..."

"...positively horrified at C_'s display in the recent murders... sordid affairs for a sordid child. He was born under an ill star..."

"...carrying on as if they lived in a penny dreadful. Do you have any inkling of how mortified I was to explain that my nephew had lowered himself to playing a second-rate Sherlock Holmes? The indignity of it all?"

"...and then what are you going to do about J_? You told me he had taken a post in the village, but you forget that he has A_'s blood in his veins. That man never stayed quiet for long, and his bastard's no different..."

"Please don't tell me you intend to adopt J_ as you did with M_. It was an indulgence with the girl, but you'll jeopardize the title if you allow the illegitimate son, let alone a doctor, to inherit. Between you and C_, I can hardly tell who wants to ruin the family more..."

"That boy is dangerous, Neil. You and I both know what runs in his veins..."

Dangerous burrows into my skin, an old insult, an old companion. An old reminder of my inhumanity.

In Father's study, on the mantle is a moth enclosed in glass. An unholy blue that neither time or death has stolen from it. Syntomeida epilais. An insect from the tropics, it fed on oleander leaves, and when I asked Father how it could do such a thing and live, he dipped his pen in ink and continued to write. "Because it's poisonous, like you," he replied, without averting his gaze from his work. "God made all His poisonous creatures alike."

(Dangerous like me.)

And in that moment, poisonous boy met poisonous insect, and Syntomeida epilais lodged in my chest: a kinship and a warning. Both in a cage to keep our poison contained.

Once I sought refuge in that damning judgement of dangerous, finding a certain solace in my distance from humanity, but even with my resolve, I could not—and cannot—keep that judgement from filtering into my daily life; I found myself adjusting my actions and my self-perception for it, ever so slightly. As dangerous split my world into good and poisonous. Soiled and innocent. And dangerous slowly stripped me of the humanity I refused and clung to. In all my angry isolation, I pretended to care little for the family opinion of me. Adding to the family collection of poisons out of spite—and out of an acknowledgment of my poisonous nature. But I am alone now, against the family that wanted me smothered in the cradle. (A little coffin and a little secret and a little solution.)

At first, I considered ignoring the gossip circulating about us, and ignoring the question it returned to my mind. But as I sought the pleasures of the flesh as a distraction from the worry in my head and the weight in my heart, that question returned, standing in the doorway. Unacknowledged, but unwilling to depart. As she sighed under me, as limbs met limbs, and our skins were set alight, I could not help but wonder about my brother. Would his hair lay as heavy as hers against my arm? Would his limbs against mine be as pleasant? Would his moans stir the same low heat within me as hers?

Although it was merely a wandering thought, I knew then what I had tried to erase: my blood calls out for its own. I have Father within me, hiding behind my eyes. My capacity for such evil horrified me, and disgust burned my throat at such contemplation, for then I knew why Father took a mistress. A harmless substitute for the object of desire. But even now, I do not know if it is desire that moves me so, because I have lain next to him without such stirrings. What else, then, could it be? Ever since Uncle Neil told me about that horrid rumor, nothing else has occupied my thoughts. I have been afraid to leave my bed at night, if only for the reason that I might find myself at his door.

(Dangerous lifts its downy head, a thousand promises refracting in its eyes. Dividing the world into victim and seducer.)

And even if I spend the rest of my cursed existence in this Sisyphean task, that alone will not put the rumors to rest. There will be worse ones to come, even nastier ones, and one day, they will stumble upon the truth. No, I must end this, for both of us. I might wear Father's face, but I can escape his fate. How long can I hold out, before I ruin him the way that Father ruined Mother? (The way Father ruined us?)

It's easy to make resolutions, but more difficult to sustain them. Jezabel is so difficult to reach, still so suspicious of me and my intentions, as if he knows how easily I can satisfy the poisonous moth within me. And that frightens me beyond any terror I have known. I cannot outrun my nature, and I swore to him that I would never reenact such a sin with him.

To fight this urge for the remainder of my life is all I have left, and yet, I am acutely aware of the impossible weight of it all. and Jezabel does not make my task any lighter, with his half-seduction that opened the door to sin. And his distrustful words. And his desire to push everyone away, to sulk in his unhappiness.

And I have made my decision now, having seen the evidence of my family's hatred. This is only the beginning of their crusade against us. They will drive us apart, if only to quell a fear that runs deep. And so, I will give in, because I am not enough to deal with Jezabel's hostility; once I thought I could reach him, but I was wrong. Riff would be ashamed of me, but I will never possess his gentle hand nor a fraction of his kindness. I have come to the end of my resources. Is my decision, then, a kind of love, or is it selfishness? Is it kinder to force Jezabel to exist in a world that will be hostile to him, the cruel world of the aristocracy—ruled by words and reputation and birth—or find one softer and more suitable? (And shut him away from the rest of the world, my mind adds, with a cruel assurance. No more ugly questions, no more rumors to put to rest.)

And is it not better for him to live apart, but free, than anything else the family will decide for him? He can manage apart from me, with a little guidance. He'll have a housekeeper to see to his needs, and a cook, and a small place of his own, cozy and safe with the dog—and isn't that all one needs in the end?

(And even as I try to convince myself, I know better. Underneath it all, I cannot relinquish my fear of him, nor can I escape the knowledge that I would not take this route with Mary. Perhaps even still, there are degrees of kinship, sharp, little divides that mark what happens to whom.)

I find him in one of the studies, sunlight—still soft from the recent rain—draped around him, as he composes yet another letter. (With whom is he in correspondence? Surely not Delilah? But who else, then?) The light catches in the curve of his lashes. He frowns at the paper before him, crossing out a line. I watch him, unable to bring myself to end this, struck by the sudden awareness that this moment can never be again. But just as I relish its fragility, the moment breaks: he glances up, no doubt alerted to my presence by my footfall. Regarding me quietly, though slightly guarded from our recent quarrel. And as he tilts his head to get a better look at me, I am overcome by his delicate beauty—not that of one of Mary's dolls, no. The effervescent beauty of a winter night, all sharp, thin lines.

And in that awe lies terror.

This cannot be. I cannot allow it. This will end in ruin for both of us, should this continue unchecked. And yet, my resolution pains me, even as it promises me relief from the quiet fears I have lived under this past year. Whose happiness am I sacrificing here?

"You must be so bored with the country hospital," I begin. When he shrugs, having cut my words apart and found no threat in them, I press on. "Have you considered the hospital at Manchester? They're have a post open for a skilled physician."

Frowning, he looks as though he wants to say something, but settles for silence, instead twisting his pen. A slight suspicion across his face.

"You could take the dog—Cassian—and you'd be very happy there."

He gives me a questioning look, as if he has deduced why I cannot have him around. "Why should I? The village is happy with me."

"I just want what's best for you," I reply, slightly defensive. And what's best for him is to put as many miles as possible between us. "I already made arrangements for you to meet with the hospital director. It will be good for you." Uneasy, I shift slightly."I talked it over with Uncle Neil, and he agrees."

A coldness comes over him. "Oh," he says in a low, dangerous tone. "That's what this is about."

"You'll be happy," I insist, hardly believing my own words, and slightly irritated by his implication that I am easily swayed by Uncle Neil's opinion.

Jezabel stares hard at the window, tense and breathing shallowly. As if he is trying to make sense of it all. Of what has been decided behind his back. His teacup rattles against its saucer, as he struggles with peacefully setting the cup down, before seizing it with a wild abandon. And before I am fully cognizant of the situation, the tea cup shatters next to me. A chip of bone china hits my sleeve, leaving a splatter of undrunk tea. Half a rabbit, frozen mid-leap, knocks against my shoe.

I nearly bolt at this old show of violence, half hoping his next move will be to end the cause of my pain. Isn't this what you want?" I ask, half-baffled by his unsightly display. I had not thought that he would react so strongly. A sharp word or two, certainly. If he wanted something else, then why push me away?

But his regression is reassuring, in that we can circle back to how we used be. Our old ways. A struggle of fear and hatred. (But can that be, I wonder? Can I undo everything between us? Or are we different for it?)

And in the remnants of the day, the light changes the broken china into unmelting shards of ice.

I half expect him to start throwing the rest of the china, or to shout at me and blame me for the sins of Father and his own, but to my surprise, he just stares at whatever he was composing, as if attempting to lose himself in it. And then, without taking his gaze from it, he starts to cry, as if I have broken something deep inside. As if his heart is broken. Remorse leaps to my lips, but resolve keeps me silent. My limbs weaken in shame, and I cannot tear myself from the sight. Even now, there is an element of the surreal in his tears, a signifier of humanity, and yet, I was convinced for so long that he could not be human.

He crumpled his unfinished letter, shaking his head. "Go," he orders, hoarsely. "Leave me alone."

I am afraid of what I have done, but what did I expect from him? That he would, overnight, mend his ways and we would become the family we never were, in Father's absence? Life is not given to such neat endings; rather, they are messy and unresolved and deeply ugly. Already, relief tugs at me, that this affair is finally finished, that I can put aside all the fears borne of his presence. I am done with his unpredictability and the terror that comes with it.

Separation is the price that both of us must pay, but one of us will pay the greater share.

Father named me well.

I finally understand Jezabel's first words to me, that he loved me so much that he wanted me dead: neither of us can untangle this mixture of love and resentment and fear that we are heir to. It all exists in a Gordian knot that I cannot unmake, because I do not know what I will find pale and shuddering at its heart. We can tuck it away on the shelf for a while, but in the end, it will have its due.

Dangerous settles in my chest, its soft wings furling. Poison on its mouth, and a burning in its heart. And Father laughs in my ear, laughs that he won after all.

Jezabel

I make my final rounds in the village hospital, hardly pretending to care about what ailment presents itself to me. An air of finality present. The end of my little reprieve here. After all we had been through.

(But the land east of Eden was Cain's, after all. Always Cain's—and his alone.)

My usefulness has met its end, as it tends to do. I am strangely devoid of feeling, for having my suspicions confirmed. I pushed him away, pushed everyone away, and no one pushed back. Not even Cassian returns when I push him away, even though I desperately want him to see through my prove that I am wanted.

It is a terrible existence to be unwanted. If my only living relative, the one who knows me almost as well as Father did, can see just how much of a waste I am, what else can I expect from the rest of humanity? More than anything, I am aware of how all my efforts were in vain. I am the only unchanging thing in this world—and I know what fate awaits those that cannot change. What awaits dead things.

Back in my office, the light straggles past the clouds, past the curtains, past the sand dollar propped onto the windowsill. I frown, for I did not put it there. It must have been Mary's doing. The sand dollar is as smooth as bone, save for the daisy pattern on one side that marks where its jaw used to be. Once, it was brimming with life in its alien world so far from this one, its spines fluttering against the water, and now, the only proof of its existence is its endoskeleton.

The inescapable march of time.

I remember how Mary pressed it into my hand, when we visited the seashore. A hesitant shyness so foreign to her cheerful demeanor. And then she ran away, into the onslaught of the waves. Laughing away her ever-present fear of me. Was her gift borne of some semblance of sisterly love for me, or a need to prove to herself that her fears do not govern her life, as she did with the flowers she left in my room so long ago? Her present evoked an uncertainty in me, that she might still put aside her fears, and then I might have what? A little sister to dote upon? But I cannot feign any affection for her. On a good day, she is tolerable; on a bad one, a boundless source of hatred and envy.

I want to break her gift, like I did with the teacup—oh, how wonderfully thrilling it was, to evoke Cain's wide eyes of fear. To remind him that I am not his helpless child, at his mercy and his will. And yet, as I threw it, I was ashamed of myself for giving into the urges I had repressed for almost a year now. The sand dollar lies light in my hand, easily broken, and yet, I cannot bring myself to ruin its perfect symmetry. (Perhaps because it is the remains of an innocent.)

I look at this voiceless creature, and unable to destroy it, set it back to face the setting sun. It will not go with me, of that I am certain; I do not want what could have been to haunt me, for in a week, I'll be watching the sunset from a new place, a new office. But still alone.

Always alone.

(With no one to push back.)

Cassian will follow me to my death, but the adoration in his eyes sickens and repulses me; I fear his unconditional love, for one day he'll realize my true, unchanging nature, and abandon me. It's only a matter of time, so I must abandon him before he abandons me. Father's knowing disdain and disappointment in his eyes. But that's how I am, in the end. A stagnant, ugly thing in a world that is ever out of my reach.

There is blood on my hands, again. It beads around the hole I have unconsciously dug into my finger, before sliding away and away and away. Carrying my awareness with emptiness is almost comforting.

And in the blissful nothingness that lies between me and my being, Cassandra returns. ("You can't distinguish between love and fear, can you?") They were not his own, but rather Father's. Cassandra relished parroting back Father's words to me, as if to prove to me that he now shared my mind. Or perhaps he thought he would win my devotion if he filled his mouth with the observations of the only person I ever loved.

But these words were Father's.

(His lips twisted at a corner into a smirk. Half-proud of his handiwork, and half-mocking.)

I frown, as I try to remember. Digging my way to remembrance. I can hold all the little facets of his face—his mocking eyes, his skin as cold as porcelain—but the whole of his face, I cannot remember any longer. I try to reassure myself that I have not forgotten his face—the face of my God—and it will return. It must, or I will be no better than Cain. My only claim to Father is one of devotion, for I have nothing else he wanted.

My thoughts are rudely interrupted by one of the nurses, notes in hand. I hide the evidence of my unfaithfulness and my madness in the wide pockets of my physician's coat. There are ways to keep others away, steep, cobblestone-pitted walls of titles and degrees and silence. Built up, one stone at a time. A white coat can be just as insurmountable as a title and an estate.

Unaware of my deceit, she leads me over to a new patient. I cannot hold onto any of her words, as she rambles on. It hardly matters what she says anyhow, for the initial symptoms are usually misreported. She draws back the white curtain, and my breath stills.

How?

("You'll find, I fear, that you can never leave me.")

Cassandra's sea-grey eyes watch me. Before I can delegate this task to my assistant, the nurse has left. I glance around the room: only the groans of patients reach me. Desperately wishing for the fog to envelope me, I return to the task at hand. Searching his face for anything that does not remind me of Cassandra. Not his eyes, nor his thin lips. But the shape of the face is faintly wrong, and so I cling to that as I begin my examination. As I take his pulse, trying to drown my fears in the steady toll of his heart, he puts his hand—

Cassandra leans down to stroke my hand. In anyone else, this might be taken for a gesture of tenderness, but the way he presses his fingers against mine, interlacing them in a promise, dispels that idea. This is about power—albeit a crude display. "How does it feel to have a new master, love? I won the bet."

I almost spit in his face, in front of his footmen all in a row, but I resist the urge in favor of a coldly seductive smile. "So it seems," I reply, as I remove his hand from mine.

"Doctor," the man begins, his hand on my arm. "I've been having a pain in my left arm ever since—"

I cannot hear the rest of his words over the sea of my heart. The blood drains from my face, and I pray he does not notice me. I nod, my throat closed, as I roll up his sleeve. His tendons tighten under my light touch, as I search for any sign of a broken bone.

But the past carries on, unable to be stopped. As it always has.

The servants leave us alone, and I mask the trembling of my legs with a cold self-assurance. The worst parts always come when we are alone, with no one to see and no one to report. Cassandra surveys me over his wineglass, a faint smile on his lips. I stare back, sullenly, unwilling to play the hapless victim of his fantasies.

Without warning, the contents of Cassandra's wineglass darkens the wallpaper, and I am watching that stranger offer no resistance, as Cassandra seizes him by his shoulders, screaming Father's words at him. And then, just as soon as it began, a feverish kiss—desperate and possessive.

Cassandra relinquishes his hold on me; I nearly collapse onto the floor.

"Why must you be so difficult, love?"

And I know that this has never been about the physical acts between us. The beatings and the bloodshed. In that moment, I almost pity him, this sad, arrogant fool forever in search for someone permanent—someone who will be his entirely.

My semblance of sympathy, however, vanishes when he strikes me so hard that I regain consciousness on the floor, with a charming view of the carved table leg. It's a minor miracle that I haven't sustained damage from a concussion yet. What a pity: if his blow had landed a bit more to the left, he would have fractured one of the weaker parts of my skull and killed me for certain.

But I suppose he didn't want to mar my pretty face.

"You're enjoying this," he accuses, in between pants. "You get all bothered by violence, don't you?"

"A sprain," I hear someone say. "Get some rest, and no heavy lifting for a month."

Relief shows on Not-Cassandra's face, and I retreat, leaving him with a slip of paper he can barely read for the nurse.

Once the door closes behind me, my resolve unravels as the past demands its due. I have never left the ornate room Cassandra kept me in. Its velvet curtains as heavy as the secrets he left me with. Even now, the red walls surround me. He swore I would never escape him.

And I never will.

When he left me, after the first time I ate of the tree of good and evil, after the fog lifted, after I become aware of just what we had done, a wild fear seized me—the vision of the hell that awaited me for my transgressions. I threw myself onto the bed, feverishly praying for God to forgive me, as Leviticus ran through my mind like a wildfire and Cassandra's seed seared the back of my thigh. I could justify what occurred between Father and me as part of my duty to honor him, as Father told me the first night he showed me how to win his affections, but what happened between Cassandra and me was entirely of the flesh. If only God could overlook this sin—and all the others that I could not refrain from. No, that is an impossibility, for true forgiveness requires repentance, and for those sins—the sins of life-taking—I am not.

But where was He when I needed him? Where was He when Snark died? Where was He when Father showed me how to win his affection, no matter how brief? Was He watching and laughing with Father? I suppose He, too, must know how dirty and sinful I am.

And in that moment, Cassandra leans down, blackberry-red stains on his lips to match the blackberry-red mark on my wrist. ("Whores are bought, love. You were given freely.")

It all tangles together, a blend of warmth and sex and pain; for the longest time, none of it meant anything, save the first night back. The night when my fingers could no longer undo the buttons, and the bath water waited, the steam promising an ineffective exorcism. And I was suddenly aware of the divide between me and the rest of the world. Another wall, another sin, all equally insurmountable.

None of it bothered me the way that it does here, with Cain. At Delilah, there was always a project to slowly destroy myself over for the faintest of praise or a silent dismissal. But here, there is only the quiet, the endless, judging quiet. And in that quiet, I remember too much, and my memories turn on me, taking a new form, a new horror, when they come forth. The commonplace becomes an explainable horror.

Shadows stretch on the wall, and overwhelming paranoia seizes me, the strange certainty that Cassandra is here, alive, and about to walk into the room. Rationally, I know it is an impossibility and an illogical notion, but that fails to lodge my wild fear. In my mind's eye, he strolls up to the door, blood against his starched shirt, his fingers curled around the cat o'nine tails. If he's already there, then it's too late to flee; I should hide—but where? The adjourning closet with the medical supplies? The desk? Or should I just remain here and hope that God delivers me from him?

I hide under the desk, eyes shut against the words I cannot escape, and yet alert to all the little sounds that announce someone's arrival. Praying that he does not open the door, and above all, afraid of my terror that drives me even as I recognize how illogical it is.

And to my horror, the door opens.

He is here. He's here, and I'm trapped. He's here, and he will take me back to the red room that smelled of oranges and iron. Oranges with cloves jutting out like quills. (All the better to hide the smell of spilt iron.) A warning and a promise: this is a place for kept things, trapped things.

Should I fight him, with my last resolve, fight him for the freedom that frightens me, or do I give in? Hope for mercy from the man who broke his horse's ankles just to savor my misery?

"Doctor?" A woman's voice, I realize, my heart jostling in fear. The head nurse, whose name eludes me. When she receives no reply, she mutters something to herself, and turning on her heel, leaves me to my quivering shame.

It is night before I move from my hiding place. This will never end.

Notes:

The suffering continues. The moth mentioned in this chapter is very real and very beautiful. Go look it up.