Page 62 of This Vicious Hunger
“What happened to my husband was an accident,” I say with as much courage as I can muster.
“Yes, yes. He was burning things he was embarrassed about, isn’t that the official line?”
My cheeks burn, so hot I wonder if the fever is taking me again. This is all wrong. This is not howanyof this was supposed to go. I regret coming here today, regret thinking that I could twist the doctor into telling me the truth and letting me go.
“But it wasn’thisbooks Aurelio was burning. Was it.”
This isn’t a question, it doesn’t deserve an answer, and yet the tremble in my lips and hands, the sweat at my hairline, beading on my lip—all these amount to guilt.Fuck.
“You’re very quiet for an innocent woman, Mrs. LeVand,” Petaccia says, putting emphasis on my name. Notmyname, not any more. “It’s very clever of you to swing it the way you did, pushing his family for a quick funeral to hide the man’s supposed guilt, but I know…”
“You don’t know anything,” I say.
“No? Oh, I see the way you look at my ward. You think I don’t notice you, sneaking out of her garden at the crack of dawn with your lips all bloody from her kisses?” Petaccia smirks. “You think I didn’t expect as much, when I placed you in those rooms overlooking her paradise?”
Another fresh chill snakes down my spine.I’m done, I think. It doesn’t matter what I want, not after this.
“I have some very interesting dirt on you.Murderer.Which is why,” Petaccia continues, finally stepping back to her desk andretrieving her most recent book of notes, “you’ll do exactly as I say. You will continue to visit Olea in the garden and keep detailed notes of her health. And you will report directly to me. Do you understand?”
All along, Petaccia has held the ace. I should have listened to Leo. And now I might as well be trapped in Olea’s golden, poison cage with her.
Chapter Thirty
The library is burning.
In my dreams my breath is the hot smoke of a dragon’s, golden fire and blue incense. The blaze started at my husband’s desk—it was never meant to grow. But I never dream of the little flame, the moment that Aurelio’s taper touched the dusty skin of my books inside their metal storage trunk.Mine.My collection, begged and stolen and hidden away for my pleasure alone. Not hidden well enough.
No, in my dreams it is always the blaze I see, so big and wild there is no hope for its end. My books are already gone. The feeling, watching their pages blacken and curl, is deep within me, an anger so big it fills every pore, every artery. The books are gone. But there is Aurelio, his face contorted in victory, even as the flames grow out of control.
“Do you see the sins you have facilitated?” he booms. He is so large he could swallow me whole. “Do you see what you have made me do?”
Oh, I see. I see my only possessions in this prison of his making turning to ash beneath his touch. I see his intrinsic hatred foreverything I hold dear. I’m not hurting anybody, gaining small pleasures from my collection, content to walk in my husband’s shadow against my very nature—but that is not enough for men like him.
He needs more. More money, more power. More of me than I can give. And I have tried so, so hard to be the dutiful obedient wife. I have worn his dresses and attended his galas. I have pretended to love him for capturing me and decorating the cage he has put me in.
It is never enough.
“Please,” I beg, although it’s no good. The books are already gone, ash and fire, the stench of scorched leather, my own musky sweat.
“This is not the worst I will do.” Aurelio leaves the books burning in their trunk, his evening Scotch in a crystal glass next to it, and strides towards me. It is his second mistake, though he doesn’t know it yet. The first, of course, was burning the books to begin with. “Look at you, cowering like a dog. You stink of it.”
I shrink lower as he lifts his arm, raising it high above his head. My dream mind knows I must run, but it is stuck in the reality. I did not run. And I do not run now.
“Please,” I beg again, this time quieter. “I won’t do it again—”
“No,” Aurelio growls. “You will not. I won’t have it, Thora. No wife of mine will cuckold me, embarrass me. God, we took you in. Made a lady of you. And this is how you repay me for all I have done? It’s a wonder I didn’t find you in here rutting with the maid like a common whore.”
“I wouldn’t!” I protest. It was just reading. Just touching. Dreaming and imagining what it would be like to feel the touch of a woman. “I would never act on it.”
“You already have.” He brings his fist down, striking me directly across the mouth. It isn’t the first time he has hit me, but it’s the first time he’s done it where it will leave a mark. Even in my dreams I feel the roil of anger, that rising tide of red. How dare he? After all I have given up for him?
Aurelio hasn’t noticed, but with my head spinning and the stars in my eyes I see that the flames are growing. Already the blaze is becoming an inferno. If he doesn’t extinguish it soon it will—
Too late. The curtains near the desk are the first thing to catch. And this is where the dreams divert. In real life I screamed, attempting to duck under Aurelio’s arm to tamp down the fire; in real life he spun, too fast, stumbling into the scorching, heavy trunk atop the desk, sending his Scotch flying. The curtains went up like rags soaked in turpentine.
In the dreams it happens like this: I point at the curtains, already ablaze. Aurelio turns to me and his eyes are dark, black slits from side to side, his lips curving in a vicious smile. In my dreams I am the one who pushes Aurelio—I shove him with all my might. And as he sprawls his skull makes contact with the corner of the desk. The trunk careens against the curtains, pulling their excess deeper into the flames. The room is thick with smoke.
Aurelio is on the floor. Is he breathing? The heavy crystal glass lies not far from his head. It is only a thought, a split second of rage, but in my dreams it is notonlya thought. I grab the glass and breathe—in and out, soot in my lungs, the taste of burning on my tongue. Then I slam it directly against his already-wounded temple.
