Page 65 of Spiders in the Grove

But I’m not going to beg him, either. I will never beg a man not to leave me. Not even Victor Faust. I love him, more than anything. But I. Will. Not. Beg.

“No—this is about the things I said to you the night you asked me to marry you, isn’t it?” I step right up to him, gritting my teeth, and I grab his arm and turn him around to face me. “I meant every word of it. I needed—I still need—time to live on my own; I need to be my own person; I want to be independent—none of that changes just because you’re threatening to…walk away from me. But I still love you, and I want to be with you, Victor. That’ll never change, either.” I’m scrambling to find the reason for why he’s doing this. And I’ll be damned if I let him use what happened in Mexico as an excuse for facing the truth.

When he still doesn’t say anything—(fight with me, dammit!)—I switch gears. “You betrayed me, too!” I shout into his face. “You gutted me when you tried to pass me off to Niklas! You destroyed that part of me that never could’ve—.” My eyes find his chest; my mouth is incredibly dry. Then I look back at his face, and face my own truth; I tell him what I’ve wanted to tell him since that night. “You destroyed that part of me that never could’ve allowed myself to sleep with someone else, even for the sake of a job.” I said it. I can’t believe I said it. No, I can’t believe I admitted it to myself.

Look at me, Victor! I clench my fists at my sides.

But he doesn’t look at me.

After a moment: “But I didn’t do it for revenge—you need to know that.” I calm myself, and just try to make him understand. “Yes, it’s what I tried to tell myself every time it happened; letting myself believe it was for revenge, that you deserved it because of what you did; it was the only thing that got me through it. But deep down, I only did it because I had to. I did it because there was no other way; I never would’ve made it out of there alive if I didn’t play the role. And I went there for a reason—to find Vonnegut. Because I remember what you said that night, too, Victor, and you were right. About the fate of your Order; about the fate of us all—about the fate of you and me.”

“It is only a matter of time that all of this freedom, this life, will come to an end. I have told you, since the beginning, that until Vonnegut is dead and I am in control of his Order, none of us are free; we are but a breath away from the end of everything. And no walls or secrets or disguises can hide us forever. Vonnegut must be identified, and eliminated, before he eliminates us.”

Feeling defeated, I step away from him and look at the floor. “We are a breath away from the end of everything…” I recall his words aloud. But in my heart, they mean something different this time, and I can’t bear it.

“Do not carry that weight on your shoulders, Izabel,” he says, and I raise my head. “It is part of the job. I do not fault you for it. But let me ask you something.”

“Ask me.”

“If it had been me, would you be able to forgive me for sleeping with another woman?”

I swallow.

“Yes,” I answer with truth. “I’d hate it, of course—it would make me crazy. But I’d forgive you because…well, because I knew going into this that things would never be like they are out there in the world of the oblivious.”

Victor nods.

“Then I did not destroy any part of you, Izabel,” he says. “I only made you stronger.”

I start to speak, but he doesn’t let me.

“If I had not done what I did with you and Niklas, do you think you still would have allowed yourself to sleep with Cesara?”

“No,” I answer right away. “I wouldn’t have. But like I said, I didn’t do it for revenge; it only made it that I could do it at all.”

“Then I made you stronger,” he repeats. “So, do not let it weigh on your mind.”

Reluctantly, I nod. But it’ll always weigh on my mind.

“Our relationship has never been conventional,” he says. “It was never going to be. And the sooner you learned that, the better.”

I swallow again, pause, and nervously ask, “So, does that mean you…?” Hell, I can’t even say it out loud.

“No,” he answers. “I have never, but that is not to say I would not have if, for the sake of a job, I had no other choice. Just like you.”

Oh my God, my throat feels like I swallowed a handful of bees, but I suck it up, and fight down the jealousy. Because he’s not wrong in admitting it, and I wasn’t wrong in doing it.

“And did you find Vonnegut?” he asks a second later, already knowing that I didn’t, or he’d know by now.

“No,” I answer with regret. “He wasn’t there. I thought he was a Russian man named Iosif Veselov, but it wasn’t him.” I lower my head momentarily. “But before I killed Javier, he gave me information. Lysandra Hollis. He said this woman works closely with Vonnegut; I’m going after her next.”

“No,” he says. “There will be no more hunting Vonnegut. There will be no more…anything.”

“What do you mean…?”

He turns with pain-filled movements; he can’t look me in the eyes.

“I am…tired, Izabel,” he says, and my heart sinks deeper. “I tried. I tried with everything in me to live this life, to mold and shape the man I have always been, into a man unfamiliar to me—I even asked you to be my wife, a gesture I never thought I would consider in my lifetime being what I am. But I am not that man. I will never be that man.”

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