Rapture's Edge

she’d come to some bleak, unwanted conclusion.

“Do you remember the day we met?”

This startled Eliana, it was so out of left field. She tried to think back, but couldn’t precisely recall. “Um…”

“It was two days after the Christmas Purgare,” Mel continued, gazing around the room. “My twenty-first birthday.”

“Birthday? I…I didn’t know it was your birthday.”

She shrugged. “Why would you? You were the king’s daughter. I was a servant. A lowly handmaiden. It wasn’t important.”

They sat in silence for a moment, both feeling the resounding truth of that simple statement. It wasn’t important. How things had changed.

“I was terrified.” Mel laughed softly. “You were like this alien creature, so perfect and pampered”—she shot Ana an apologetic look—“and unlike anyone I knew. Six years apart in age, and worlds apart in every other way.”

“You were very skinny,” Eliana gently teased, poking a finger into the firm, well-developed muscles of Mel’s thigh. “All knees and elbows.”

“We were both skinny,” she agreed, nodding. “Skinny and innocent. Little skinny ducklings with our heads shoved so far up our asses we thought our shit was the stars.”

Eliana laughed, a sound that seemed jarring in the cold, dusty room. “You really have a way with words, Mel.”

She smiled. “It’s a gift.” She glanced sideways at Eliana, and her face grew serious again. “But I remember that day more for something else.”

“What?”

Mel looked at Eliana for a long, searching moment and then turned away, swallowing. She took a breath and in a low voice said, “It was the day my husband died.”

Eliana started, shocked. “Husband? What—Mel, I never knew you were married! Why didn’t you ever tell me—”

“No one knew. He was a half-Blood. Handsome as hell, with a great laugh and dimples you could get lost in. We weren’t supposed to be together, of course. I was a servant, and he was one of the best of the Legiones, being personally groomed by your father to enter the Bellatorum if he survived…” She trailed off into silence.

“Oh no,” said Eliana quietly. “Oh, Mel. I’m so sorry.”

“We had the same birthday. We never talked about it, the fact that I was full-Blooded and didn’t have to worry about the Transition, and he had a gnat’s chance in hell of making it through. We went ahead and got secretly married, both of us knowing we didn’t have long.” Melliane looked down at her lap. “I prayed so hard my Fever would come so I might get pregnant. So I’d have something to remember him by…” She swallowed and bit her lower lip. “But it never happened. At least we were together at the end, though. He said he wanted me to be holding his hand when…when…”

She suddenly covered her face with both hands, and Eliana wrapped her arms around her shoulders. They sat like that for a moment, silent, still.

“I never knew,” whispered Eliana. “You were so…composed when we met. You didn’t even cry. I never guessed you were going through that.” After a moment, Mel sat straighter and swiped at her eyes while Eliana crossed her arms over her chest and stared at her. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

Her face, always so lovely, hardened. She looked away. “Because your father ordered me not to.”

Eliana gaped at her, astonished, but Mel just went on in this dead tone, avoiding her eyes. “He found out we’d gotten married. Of course he would, wouldn’t he? Never missed a thing, your father.” An edge of bitterness snuck into her voice, which Eliana didn’t miss. “He found me with Emil—that was his name, Emiliano—and made us swear to never tell a soul. He said we could stay together until…until the day came when Fate would decide if we should stay together or not. Afterward, only one thing kept me from killing myself.”

Eliana’s voice trembled. “What?”

Mel turned and regarded Eliana with haunted eyes. “Demetrius.”

The blood drained from her face. She stood abruptly from the bed.

“Not like that,” said Mel, guessing what her shocked expression meant; D was known to be a womanizer of the first order. Back in their old colony, he’d chewed through women like a termite chews through wood: relentlessly. “We were only ever friends. I know Emil never told anyone we’d gotten married because he knew the trouble it would cause, but somehow Demetrius got wind of it, or figured it out…I really don’t know. But after Emil died, he came to me every single day and held me while I cried. Just…held me. He never said a word the entire time, but knowing someone else knew how I’d felt about Emil helped in a way I can’t explain. He’d come to my chamber, and I’d cry on his shoulder, and when I calmed down a little, he’d leave. After weeks and weeks of that, I began to feel like I owed it to him to keep on living, like he’d invested so much time and effort in me it would be the lowest kind of selfishness if I repaid his kindness by slitting my wrists.

“So I lived. And once he saw I was past the worst of it, Demetrius stopped his visits and never said a word about any of it, just nodded as he passed me in the corridors, like nothing had ever happened. But every year on the anniversary of Emil’s death I’d find a single white rose on my pillow, and I knew it was from him.”

Eliana shook her head slowly back and forth. There seemed to be a weight on her chest, crushing her lungs, stealing her breath.

“What I’m trying to tell you, Ana, is that man who handled me with such care, that man I barely knew who sat with me so patiently, that man who gave me so much comfort at the worst hour of my life is not the kind of man who would plot to kill the father of the woman he loved.”

“He didn’t love me,” said Eliana instantly. “He used me. And you weren’t there. I saw him with the gun in his hand, Mel. I saw him.”

“You saw him shoot your father?” Mel said quietly, looking up at her.

Eliana’s jaw clenched. “I didn’t have to see that.” Color came flooding back to stain her cheeks. “I’m perfectly capable of putting two and two together when I see a…a body on the floor and someone holding a smoking gun. And don’t forget, Silas discovered his plot to take over my father’s reign—”

“Yes,” said Mel bitingly. “Silas. That paragon of virtue.”

“I know you’ve never liked him, but he’s been nothing but helpful, supportive. Even if he is a little”—she paused, remembering his calculated marriage proposal, the way he’d argued for her hand, all logic and no love —“astringent.”

Mel shrugged, but her face was hard as granite. “Maybe you’re right. I don’t know. I do know how he helps your brother with his little…problems, though. And I do know how he looks at you, E.”

Eliana stared at her.

“Like you’re dinner,” she said darkly. “A roasted pig, all trussed up and ready to eat.”

Eliana’s skin crawled. Something about that sounded just right. She walked slowly back to the bed, sat down beside Mel once more, and leaned into her shoulder. Looking at the worn stone floor, the bare, shadowed walls, she said, “Why didn’t you tell me any of this before? Why tell me now?”

Mel’s sigh was heavy. “Because you’d never have believed me, and I didn’t want it to come between us. What difference would it have made, anyway? Dredging up the past when nothing could change it? You and I have always been so good at leaving the past behind. But,” her voice faltered, and she glanced at Eliana, “now the past is catching up with us, and I think you should consider, really consider, the possibility that nothing is what it seems. And make your choices going forward accordingly.”

Mel had left her after that, sitting alone in the middle of the empty room with memory and confusion a pair of snarling dark monsters inside her skull, one thing repeating itself over and over, relentlessly.

Nothing is what it seems.

To Eliana, that was the most frightening possibility of them all.