“What?” I ask.
Santiago’s eyes are locked on mine but my gaze shifts between his eyes and the inked, broken canvas of his body.
His expression is hard again, shut down. For a moment, for moments even, he wasn’t closed off to me. He let me look at him. Touch him. And I understand so much more clearly why he lives in shadows.
I knew the damage wasn’t only to his face. But the scars on his body, and the ink with which he has attempted to camouflage them, they tell a story I don’t think he wants told.
“I didn’t mean what I said,” I start, not waiting for his answer. I need to tell him this. It’s been on my mind since the night in his office. Since our blowup.
Since he told me I made him sick.
My stomach twists a little at that.
“What?” he asks flatly with the same tone he used when telling me my life depended on whether or not I become pregnant with his child. It’s strange how unfeeling he can sound when physically, when he touches me, he does so with so much passion. So much rage. So much of himself, even if it is the darkest part.
I force my gaze from a deep groove on his shoulder back to his eyes. When he’s not angry, raging, they lean more toward green.
“You’re not deformed. I never thought that. I just wanted to hurt you.”
He remains studying me that crease still between his eyebrows visible beneath the ink. “My appearance isn’t something I think about. You didn’t hurt me.”
The first part of that may be true, but I’m pretty sure the last part isn’t. I know it in fact. The tattoo on his face, the ink covering his torso, his arms, the giant skull on his back, the candles and dim lights, the constant shadow he—we—live in, it’s all to hide the scars at least to some degree. And I think the saddest part is that he does it to hide them from himself not anyone else.
He shifts me off his lap and stands to cross the room into the bathroom.
“Come,” he calls once he’s inside.
I get up, follow him, hearing the shower switch on. I stop at the door and take it in, the dark walls, the sconces that light the space but barely. He stands naked outside the shower stall, gesturing for me to step in. I take in the wide stone counter, two sinks, the free-standing stone bathtub in the middle of the room.
There’s just one thing missing. A mirror.
He watches me, maybe waiting for my reaction. For me to ask why. I don’t need to ask. I know.
I step into the shower, and he follows. I turn to him, and he brings his hand to my face. He cups my jaw, and I look up at him as he smears the stencil. I grab his wrist.
“Don’t.”
He stops, eyes narrowing in confusion.
“I want to see it.”
“No, you do not.” He smears again.
“I do, Santiago.”
He doesn’t reply right away as if gauging the reason behind my request. But then he nods once and leans closer, forearm against the wall, hand over the top of my head, eyes on my eyes, then my lips and I think he’ll kiss me again, another blood-smeared kiss. But he doesn’t. And I’m strangely disappointed.
“Suit yourself.”
He picks up the soap and begins to lather it, then to wash me. Moments like this, he is so gentle that he’s almost tender. It’s so opposite to how he usually is with me that it’s confusing.
“What did you mean? That it’s a matter of life or death for me that I get pregnant?”
He grits his jaw, his gaze focused on the task of cleaning me.
“It means The Tribunal is sparing your life because they believe you are pregnant with my child.”
“What?”
He finishes washing me before washing himself. I smell like him now. Like he did on the night of our wedding in the confessional. Like he has every night he’s come to me. It’s the scent that clings to his pillow and sheets. Subtle, dark, and deeply masculine.
Once he’s finished washing himself, he opens the shower door and reaches for a towel, also black. He wraps it around my shoulders, and I take it from him, drying myself off before securing it. He takes another for himself and ties it low around his hips.
I watch the muscles of his back work beneath the ink of yet another skull as he walks ahead of me not hiding himself from me anymore.
“Why skulls?” I ask. It’s as if he’s tattooed death on every inch of himself.
He raises his eyebrows as he opens a dresser drawer to retrieve a pair of briefs and trousers and gets dressed.
“On your body. Your face,” I say.
“Our family crest.”
“That’s not it.”
“And you know this how?” He pulls on a sweater, cashmere stretching tight over muscular shoulders and arms.
“I see you, Santiago. I think I’ve always seen you.”
He grins, walks toward me to take the towel and tug it tighter around me, jerking me toward him. “Have you?”
“Yes.”
“Then tell me what you see.”
I bite my lip, glance away, my gaze catching on the tattoo gun he threw to the floor. That gives me courage. A little at least. I shift my gaze up to his.
“You can’t stand to look at yourself. I don’t think it’s because you think you’re ugly. I don’t think you care about ugly or beautiful. That’s too simple for you. I think you see it as a weakness. I think you’re afraid when people see the scars, see what you’ve done to hide them, they’ll know you’re human. Breakable. Like the rest of us.”
His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows and a muscle ticks in his jaw. “I didn’t realize you were studying the human psyche at school.” He secures the towel at my chest and turns away to pick up the slacks he’d been wearing. He feels through his pockets and takes out his phone.
“That’s not all.”
“No?” he asks, using his thumb to unlock it.
“No.” I take a step toward him feeling braver. I put my hand on his arm and push the phone away so he looks at me.
“I’m all ears,” he says with an expression that says he’s humoring me, but I know he’s not. I’m right and he knows it and he doesn’t like it.
“I think you don’t have a mirror in your bathroom or anywhere that I’ve seen in the house outside of maybe the bedrooms you don’t use because when you see yourself, you see that weakness and you can’t stand it.”
He smiles tightly. “You’re clever but not as clever as you think,” he says, tucking wet hair behind my ear, turning my head a little to study the stencil side.
I wonder if it’s washed away at least a little. I am curious to see it for some strange reason I can’t quite explain.
He meets my eyes. “I did this so I would remember.”
I remain silent waiting for more.
“I did it so I would never forget all the lives that were lost, half of my own family wiped out in a matter of moments. I did it so I would always remember that when I walked away, I became indebted to them. I did it so I never forget that I owe them. That vengeance is due them.” His fingers tighten. “And mine will be the hand that deals that vengeance.”
I swallow, feel my shoulders cave a little at that because what I felt just moments ago, what we had when he made love to me—and it was love making—it’s gone. And I’m the one who reminded him of his hate.
“Go to your room, Ivy.”
The phone in his hand buzzes. He shifts his gaze to it but doesn’t pick up.
“You lied for me,” I say, realizing that the only way The Tribunal would think I was pregnant would be if he told them I was. “Why?”
His cheeks hollow out as he draws in a deep breath. “What you did is a crime punishable by death in the eyes of The Society.”
My knees waver, goose bumps rising along my flesh.
“There is the law and there is our law.”
“The Society’s law.”
He nods. “I was offered three choices for your sentence.”
My heartbeat accelerates.
“Death by poison. Fitting.”
“Santia—”
“Death by hanging.”
He catches my arms when my knees give out and walks me backward to sit me in the chair he’d sat in the night I’d slept in his bed.
“And a loyalty test which I’m not sure you would survive.”
“What is that?”
“The Tribunal has fairly archaic methods when it comes to punishing those who betray us. You probably know this.”
I shake my head but remember that scaffold in the small courtyard hidden by the towering walls of The Tribunal’s building.
“Torture. Something medieval. While I bear witness.”
“But...You can’t let them—” the words are barely audible, my palms sweaty, fingernails digging into the leather of the chair I cling to in order to control the trembling.
“The benefit of this final method is threefold when you think about it. It will ensure you provide the name of the person or persons who supplied you with the poison as well as confirm your loyalty—”
“By torturing me.”
“And it will test me as well. My loyalty to The Society as I stand by and watch my wife punished.”
“But…”
“Not that they’d forego the methods necessary to draw a name from your lips if I were to choose either of the other options.”
My face must go very pale. I feel the blood drain and watch him watch me.
“But, as you know, I have standing within The Society.” He gives a dark smile and brushes his knuckles over the stenciled side of my face. “Since your crime was against me, as your husband, I offered an alternative.”
“The tattoo.”
He nods. His phone buzzes again and he silences it. “Considering the fact that you are carrying my heir—”
“But I’m not…”
“I know that.”
“You lied to save my life.”
His eyes narrow again. He takes a moment to answer. “For selfish reasons, Ivy. Do not be fooled.”
“What if I can’t get pregnant?”
“Can’t?” He cocks his head to the side. “Is there something I should know?”
I shake my head quickly. Too quickly. And as I rise to my feet, for the first time in my life, I am grateful for the vertigo, for the dizziness, because when I stumble into his arms, he catches me and I hear the curse he mutters as he easily lifts me off my feet.
For a moment, just one moment, I close my eyes and lean against him and just let him hold me, cradle me, give in to this illusion of safety. I can give myself that, can’t I? I can have just this little stitch in time.
He lays me down on his bed, on the bed in which we just made love. It still smells like us.
“Let me clarify then, if there’s nothing you have to tell me. If there is no baby, their sentence will stand. They will not accept mine.”
“What happens to you if they find out you lied?”
He’s quiet for a moment. “There will be a reckoning, I’m certain, but I will live.”
“And I won’t.” I can't think about that part. “And you’ll be punished because of me. If I can’t get pregnant, I mean.”
He doesn’t reply but I don’t need him to.
“And the tattoo…my face, it still happens. You’re still going to do it.” It’s not a question. The pregnancy, this non-existent, impossible pregnancy, it doesn’t get me or him out of this. Me to take the punishment. Him to deal it.
“Why did you do it?” he asks, looking wretched, sounding even more so.
I can’t control the emotion, the tears that come. I don’t even try. Because I’m doomed. We both are.