Page 11 of Grotesque Love

Weren’t invalids once prescribed a season by the sea to recuperate? The waves of the ocean crash beyond the walls of my prison, but it’s not enough. It will never be enough.

“Come, let’s get you changed into a fresh nightgown and back into bed.” Carver’s words barely penetrate the haze gathering in my head like a swirling sandstorm.

He moves me, carrying me, guiding me, positioning me like I’m a doll. Part of me knows I should care. Knows that if I could hold on to my thoughts for long enough, I would be angry. Instead, all I know is that his hands are too hot on my skin, burning me as he pulls at my clothes.

It’s always the same.

CHAPTER FIVE

JAS

She ate the pancakes.

Mal said it was stupid to make her breakfast, that they would be cold and she wouldn’t eat them. But I knew she’d wake early, she’d been asleep a long time.

It had taken three days for her fever to break. Three nights of caring for her, making sure she drank water, rubbing salve into her torn soles, giving her pain relief…but she doesn’t remember any of that.

Instead, it was his name she whispered in her sleep with her brows pinched together.

Carver.

Lord of the Manor.

I hate him.

If she only knew what he was really like, the things he did. His soul is muddy and bloodstained.

Why did he have to come back?

The sun dips below the horizon, and the tendrils of magic binding me slip away. Our curse wasn’t like anything I’d ever heard of before, we were bound to the manor. It wasour home, our anchor. The heart of our darkness.

During the day, we were weak, merely stone guardians on perches overlooking the lands. But during the night, the bonds weakened and we could move freely.

In theory, we can move during the daylight too, but it requires more magic, more energy, and it has to be away from human eyes.

It means we were useless to protect Arianwen during the day. Trapped on our pedestals, watching from afar as she fights her demons.

She is beautiful, a real fighter, but she’s all alone. She needs us. And we need her. There have been others over the years, but none of them held a candle to her. We can all feel it, the pull. The need. The magic pulsing around her.

Mal was becoming wild.

Restless.

She could save us.

Jumping down from my perch, I climb inside one of the tower windows. This part of the manor house is deserted and derelict, so we’d made it ours over the years, slowly adding furniture and things we liked. It was our home now. There was no way to enter it from below, the bottom of the staircase had crumbled in the late 1800’s after a fire in one of the lower rooms and barricaded the door from the inside.

Sitting on the window ledge, tucking my wings in tight behind me, I watch Mal stomp around the room.

“We can’t donothing!” His long tail swishes from side to side angrily, cracking out every now and again like a whip. Mal’s dark brown eyes swirl with anger and an edge of desire as he glares at Sax, who’s sitting on a large chair in front of the unlit fireplace, his expression unreadable.

Sax leans back and steeples his fingers together calmly. “We wait.”

As the oldest, and wisest of us, Sax is our leader. Our master. We listen to him…most of the time.

“Wait?” Mal hisses, stepping towards Sax and looming overhim. We’re all large, though I’m the smallest, and Mal overshadows Sax in his seat. If Sax were to stand though, it would be a different story. “Waiting is all we fucking do!”

Sax growls out a warning. “Simmer down.”

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