The Darkly Luminous Fight for Persephone Parker (23 page)

Peering inside the chest, Percy noticed her pearl rosary.
Like a long-lost treasure, she picked it up and brought it to her lips, thankful to have something with which to busy her fingers. Then she returned to Alexi at his desk and sat upon his knee.

He perused a diary. “My first thoughts of you,” he murmured, staring at the pages.

Percy smiled. “And?”

“Clinical. I wrote clinical thoughts. I couldn’t admit how much I loved you until you were nearly dead in my arms. And you hang on the precipice of danger now, Percy, making me realize it all the more. I…” He looked away, strangled by emotion. “I swear, if you take chances with your life, I’ll never…”

Percy kissed his face.

He jumped up, setting her on her feet before him. “Let me go instead,” he said desperately. “Let me set this in motion. Let me go rather than you, Percy. I’m meant to protect you! I cannot simply let you go; it’s against every principle I…I cannot bear to lose you.”

“Alexi, my love. My dear champion.” Percy put her hand on his lips. “You’ll go mad if you so much as step across. None of us can take that risk. The Guard, London and I—we all need you whole.”

“And what ensures you
your
mind will fare better?”

She shrugged. “Because I am not like you. Because they tell me it was once home.”

Alexi pounded his desk, tears in his eyes. “Your home is here with me!”

“I’ve never doubted that, and I never will, husband,” she said. “Please be sure to never doubt my love.”

“I don’t. I simply cannot bear that something might happen. I cannot…” His voice broke again.

“When The Guard convinced you fate was not on our side, you parted ways with me and saw fit to make me suffer,” she stated. The pain on Alexi’s face worsened, and he
opened his mouth to refute her. She put her hands lovingly to his cheeks. “We survived. Our love survived. And we shall again.”

He stared at her in wonder. “How did my dear girl grow so brave?”

Percy grinned. “Didn’t you hear? The meek shall inherit the earth.” Alexi couldn’t help but chuckle, a tear rolling down his cheek. She kissed him passionately and retreated. “But now I need Michael. I’d like him to pray with me.”

As Percy suspected, she found the vicar not far from Rebecca’s office. Around them, the school was emptying, obedient and dazed students following The Guard’s instruction. Elijah slumped near the main door, clearly exhausted. Josephine stood beside him, shifting on her feet. Michael sat on a bench nearby, reading. Percy fiddled with the beads in her hand.

The vicar looked up and unleashed one of those winning smiles that could brighten any day. “Hullo, Mrs. Rychman. Shocked to see Alexi let you out of his sight, but glad we have the honour of your company.”

Percy smiled wanly and sat beside him. She glanced at his book. “
The Castle of Otranto
?”

“It’s positively dreadful.” He nodded and laughed. “I adore it. But you’re not here to discuss literature with me,” he stated, waggling his mustache as she smirked. “I’d say you’re looking pale, but that’s a ridiculous redundancy.”

She nodded, turning the beads in her fingertips, unable to find the words she needed.

She didn’t need any. He glanced at her hands and clasped them in his, lowering his head. “ ‘In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made. That which has been made was life in him and the life was the light of mankind. The Light shines in the Darkness and the Darkness has not overcome it.’”

Percy’s hands warmed and pulsed with power. Michael sent something soft and wonderful through their fingers, as if a dove of blessed assurance were cupped gently in her hands, as if hope now infused each pearl rosary bead. He moved her hands upward and said, “Keep it close to you.”

She nodded. Reaching under the ribbon trim of her dress, Percy tucked the rosary inside her corset, directly against her bosom. The beads seemed to pick up her heartbeat and magnify it. “Thank you, Vicar, for knowing just what I needed.”

“Of course.”

Percy rose and walked away, but she bit her lip, realizing there was something else. She rushed back and fell to her knees before him, their hands again clasped. “There are times when we must make sure all things left unsaid might be said. If something should happen to me, please impress my unfailing love upon Alexi, my greatest treasure, his love worth a thousand deaths. And you’d best make sure you leave nothing unsaid either. None of us should.”

Michael stared up at her. “I should tell her,” he murmured. The concept was clearly more terrifying to him than spiritual warfare.

“Yes.” Percy smiled meekly. “I think you should.”

Michael nodded, blushed and returned to his book.

The day had darkened swiftly. Percy was about to wander back to Alexi’s office when he jumped out from behind a pillar and startled the very wits out of her. Gasping, she batted a hand at him as he scooped her up into his arms.

“W-why on earth?” she stammered.

“You’ve seen ghosts and Gorgons. You’re willing to stare down the whole of the Whisper-world. I thought nothing could frighten you.” His tone was teasing, but a mournful truth lay beneath.

She reached a hand to his face. “Losing you. That is a terror from which I could never recover.”

Alexi pursed his lips. Percy thought she saw a glimmer of a tear. He set her on her feet and swept her up the grand staircase.

“Alexi, what are you—?”

“Recalling my fondest memory,” he murmured, taking her hand and spinning her across Promethe Hall’s upper floor. They were in a stately foyer bathed in a soft purple dusk shifting toward moonlight—similar to when Alexi once discovered Percy when she thought no one would miss her if she stole away at the academy ball, awkward and unloved, to this very floor. But her dear professor had found her, had waltzed her through starlight and shadows that became chaperone to burgeoning adoration.

Percy heard a bow strike a string, and a note of music rose like steam into the air. She turned to see Jane with her fiddle, winking. Another note came, then another, a lilting little waltz to recall them to that moment they first dared dream.

“May I have this dance, Persephone?”

Percy beamed. “Oh, please, Professor.”

He lifted her gracefully into the dance he’d once taught her in his office. She now seamlessly followed Alexi’s lead, and they spun in and out of widening silver moonlit shafts, the sparkle in his dark eyes and the press of his hand giving her thrills that would keep her forever blushing for love of him.

She giggled as he spun her beneath his arm and snapped her back in an artful turn. “Ah, for more innocent times, Alexi.”

He almost smiled. “I hate to ruin your reminiscence, but I abandoned you that night to deal with our canine friend who almost cleaved poor Jane in two. Hardly more innocent. And not long ago.”

Percy winced. “How funny the mind, and memory. I feel ages older!”

“We all are, I suppose. Responsibilities weight wisdom.”

“I was so eager for answers to my strange portents.”

“After a longer life than yours, I’d say to be careful what you wish.”

Percy chuckled. “Yes, yes, I should’ve never left the convent.”

Alexi clutched her passionately, hands roaming free. “I daresay you can’t go back.” She squealed and laughed, feeling blessedly at ease.

They danced, and Jane played. Breaking every rule the Whisper-world sought to impose upon him, Aodhan appeared at Jane’s side, his love its own portal. He didn’t stay long, nodding to Percy as he disappeared, but his solemn gaze was a promise that he didn’t take his responsibility for granted, his raised hand a reassurance that her friend still lived.

The trio’s mood grew lighter as the moon rose higher. More of The Guard appeared, and Percy was delighted as Elijah and Josephine joined them in their impromptu ball. Michael stood beaming, leaning against the balustrade and taking in his fellows, offering an occasional, beautifully delivered verse.

For a little while the dread of death lifted from the halls of Athens.

Distant music lured Rebecca from her office. A keening fiddle, she assumed it was Jane’s work.

She crept up the staircase, hearing murmurs and the occasional laugh. Hanging to the shadows a few steps from the landing, she took in the scene. Elijah and Josephine were arm in arm, swaying beside Jane as she played. Michael sang a soft and tender verse. Had she never realized the lovely timbre of his voice? They used their voices all the time. But that was the Work. This was their life. Their life was capable of simple, wondrous delights, perhaps, if she ever let herself enjoy them. He turned to look upon her at the words, “I’ll be your paramour…”

Rebecca’s throat closed and she turned away from Michael to stare at the couple before her. Alexi and Percy waltzed slowly through shafts of moonlight. They clearly delighted in their languorous steps, having lost all unmarried formality and strict upright carriage to press confidently close. A moonlit Percy was nothing short of an angel, graceful and blinding white, radiating love as pure as her skin was pale. Alexi, her stalwart protector, stared as if he couldn’t bear to blink and lose sight of her for a moment. Rebecca silently retreated, letting tears come as they would.

She glided to the corner of the downstairs foyer, looking out over the courtyard awash with bright silver, the starkness of the moonlight matched the dawning realization in her soul: the pain of seeing them together would never lessen. Her little group faced more danger than they’d ever known, and all Rebecca could think about was how much she wished her life were otherwise, that all their lives were otherwise, that Alexi would finally realize she was the only woman for him. She had been with him all along, loving him from the very start, twenty years prior.

Shame on such thoughts. He and Percy were so stirringly beautiful, waltzing together. Only a villain would think otherwise. Pressing her forehead to the window, she welcomed the cool glass on her skin and felt the bright moon on her face, wondering how the creases of worry and loneliness must show like scars of battle.

“I know that certain things do not unfold according to our desires.”

She hadn’t heard the tread behind her, but the soft voice made Rebecca whirl. Michael stood partly in shadow, his bushy grey-peppered hair smoothed from its usual chaos. His entrancing blue eyes danced with an unusually bright light, and he continued. “I know we cannot always choose whom we love. And I know how it hurts to see the one we love looking adoringly at someone else. I
know.
I’ve been watching you watch Alexi for years.”

Rebecca registered his words, gaped, flushed and turned again to face the window, attempting to hide the transparency of her heart from Michael’s unmatched scrutiny.

“I cannot replace him,” Michael began again, and waited patiently for her to turn. She did, and saw the same look on his face that she was sure she gave Alexi when he wasn’t looking, the look that Alexi and Percy shared. Rebecca had never thought to see someone turn such adoring warmth in her direction.

Michael continued with a bravery that surprised them both. “I do not fault you your emotions, though I must admit a certain jealousy as to their bent. I do not expect to change anything with these words. I know I am bold, and perhaps a fool. But I will remain silent no longer.” His fortitude flickered, and he dropped his gaze. “I shall now return to a glass of wine. Or two. But as we’re too old to play games, I felt it my duty to speak. At long last. At long, long last.”

He offered her a smile that could warm the most inhuman of hearts, bowed slightly and retreated, leaving the thunderstruck Miss Thompson to stand alone once more, illuminated.

Percy lay tucked beneath the arm of her husband on the alcove cot in his office. They could’ve danced all evening, forgetting the press of a looming battle and the doors that threatened to burst open to begin it. She wished she could have lost herself forever in music and company, with friends, wine and promises of tomorrow, burrowing finally at the end of the night into her husband’s embrace so deeply that no mythic force could ever pry her free. Instead she found herself staring at Alexi’s face, stern even in the deepest of sleep, shaking with nerves.

Surely Alexi only slumbered out of supreme force of will. Perhaps it was the sherry. She couldn’t have slept if she’d drank the whole bottle, though; the building was alive, as restless as she. Her blood and stomach churned. She thought
she should go study the map to see if it had changed, to see if some miracle had made the red blazing mark fade blessedly away, but she feared the answer would be no.

She thought about the moment, so recent, when she had stared at her wedding dress and been so purely, incredulously happy. She recalled first glimpsing Alexi at the altar, tall and awaiting her with those glowing jet eyes, pledging his love, the burst of heavenly light that exploded from their vows…Where had that simple yet utter happiness gone? Where was that burst of powerful light to ease the sting of darkness?

Silently, at her sleeping husband’s side, Percy wept.

While there were many rooms amid the individual buildings of Athens in which one might sleep, each felt too far removed. Instead, The Guard tossed mattresses on the floor in locations they deemed strategic.

Elijah stationed himself in the small foyer just outside Alexi’s second-floor office, Josephine near the ground-floor entrance of Apollo Hall. Michael was to monitor the chapel. Rebecca wanted to be nowhere else but in the heart of her beloved Promethe Hall, and so she placed herself in the middle of that entrance foyer, staring up at the youthful ghost in the chandelier who kept tinkling the crystals in agitation. Jane was in the hall between Michael and Rebecca, very near to a few new Whisper-world doors that visibly unnerved her.

After fixing his mattress directly in the centre of the chapel aisle, Michael made rounds. Leaving Alexi and Percy their privacy, he first went to Josephine, who had found paper and charcoal and was furiously sketching. He knelt at her side, kissed her temple and placed his hand over her heart, streaming a flood of relaxation and peace through her. “On this night, make sure you say everything best not left unsaid.” Rising, he was surprised to see Elijah enter the room’s low-trimmed gaslight. “Lord Withersby, I was just about to come and give you a bit of a benediction.”