The Curious Case of the Paddington Prowler
Based on story as told in
The Curious Case of the Paddington Prowler
For a direct first person perspective, check out "Constant Prudery and Petticoats"
Chapter 7
Constance stumbled out into the night air, her skin pricking, corset and skirts too tight, smells too rich, too poor, too…simply too much. The weight of the deal she had made, coupled with the confirmation - the true confirmation, now, that she was not her father’s daughter threatened to crush her. She ran, ran to escape the smells, the sounds, the smirk one sister - not sister, not anymore - barely hid, ran to escape the truth, ran to escape the pain that followed and tried to trip her. She ran, for she knew that if she stopped, if she fell, she might never rise again from the weight of the sorrow. She had sold her lover for the guarantee that she would never be happy again. What happiness could there be? She had given up her love to learn the name of a man who had sent her from him, and to a man who had lied to her.
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Shaken from her dysphoria, she heard footsteps behind her.
‘No,’ she thought, ‘stay away. Leave me be.’ But the words wouldn’t come. There was only running, the harrow being torn through the inside of her body, the beast ripping, tearing, crawling out of her.
‘No more!’ she thought, and leapt from the top of a cairn, ‘No more! Please.’
But there was more - there was always more. Even as she fell, her hands ripped at her corset, pulled at her skirts, but fingers turned to paws, the clothes shredding beneath claws. She cried out in pain, horrific, gut wrenching, triumphant pain, and heard a howl pour from her lips.
How good it felt to howl - blissful, ecstatic freedom, the victory of being exactly who she was supposed to be.
And there was Eleanora, her…sister? One of her best friends, at least, telling her that it was all going to be okay - that she didn’t care that the wolf before her was born a goblin, she didn’t care that they weren’t related…reminding the wolf of the world she stood to leave behind if she ran off into the forests of Clava…reminding her of the reason leaping from a cairn could have caused more problems than it solved.
There, in short, was Eleanora, loving her. The weight of the last few days finally overwhelmed the wolf and she sat in front of her sister. For all the comfort this form brought her, she could not let Nora come to harm. And yet, when the sound of another echoed around them, if Constance had known exactly where it came from, she would have gone. She would have kissed her sister’s forehead and gone to join her sire. The longing, impatient, angry tone in his voice did not bode well, and she didn’t like to keep him waiting - no…she was holding a paw out to her sister before she knew it, an unconscious gesture of love between twins.
Twins.
She took the hand and felt a squeeze. The hand was tiny in hers - new and perfectly well known. Another howl from her sire brought her back and she scented the air. Too far to smell, she thought, but not worth risking Nora for. Again, she ran, this time with one sister…
And almost fell over the other, laying in the mud sobbing.
Constance instantly let go of Nora’s hand and loped a little further away. From the dark she listened to Nora try to pull Emily to standing, listened as the young woman didn’t move. The anger in her sire’s voice rang through her mind as she scented the wind again and -
And breathed easily. She almost howled again, this time in relief. Her shoulders raised slightly, sorrow cleared from her vision. Her eyebrows unfurrowed and furrowed once more - this time in confusion. She had hoped she would become used to the weight of her sacrifice eventually, but she didn’t think it would be so sudden or so definite.
Lighter, hopeful, she looked at her sister, still unmoving in the mud and felt a pang of… she didn’t know what, but she didn’t want Emily to hurt anymore. She would get the woman to the ship and they could work things out there. For now, Constance was large and she was strong. It was nothing to pick Emily up and -
Burning, searing pain tore through the girl as she fell, naked, in the mud at her sister’s feet. Her mind cycled dumbly through everything she knew of her young life, searching for the thing she had done to earn this fate. Her mind rested briefly on discussions of love - about how love was devotion, about how others would tell her if she loved in whispers, about how being in love was different to love, about how vulnerability and daring were crucial. And she thought of Wyatt, about the hounds he tended while he thought her on holiday.
As the searing faded to an ache and her eyes opened, they came to rest on Emily, and she wondered again why she hadn’t run away with Wyatt when she could.
Instead of laying in the mud bleeding and naked with the expectation that she drag herself up and keep going.
“Put the gun down!” Constance’s mind snapped back to the present and she suddenly noticed the weapon in Emily’s hand as the woman shook her head. Emily…Emily had shot her? She watched in silence, her mouth opening to stop her sisters arguing over her until she heard one phrase: “That thing wants me dead.” Her mouth closed. There were no words. She had no words to say, no words to think, no words to hope, no words to give. All she could do was leave and hope she wasn’t shot as she retreated. Or maybe she would be shot as she did, but perhaps that would be better. Smelling her own blood and viscera in the mud as she rolled to her knees, she vomited from pain exhaustion. Swiping a mud caked hand across her mouth and spitting into the bushes, the accomplished musician, linguist and crown princess of the goblins turned her back on her sisters and walked, naked, into the forest.
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As the darkness swallowed her up, she wondered what would happen now, wretched creature as she was. She didn’t have a home to go to - she couldn’t return to London, with the outcry she would cause by being there. She knew she would never feel safe around Emily - could never feel safe around Emily - not as she was. She couldn’t remain around Nora - Nora so desperately wanted her family to be together that even now she could hear them stumbling through the forest, but Constance knew she was too dangerous to be around people. She knew. She would never love again, that had been taken by the hag - though she didn’t understand the sensation she felt there.
Truly, Constance just wanted someone to make everything go away. End it all so she didn’t need to struggle any longer.
A little orange light glowed in the distance. Sighing, Constance moved toward it, knowing her sisters would catch up eventually.
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Chapter 8
Constance sat. For what seemed an eternity, she sat inside her mind. She had run out of tears. Her voice had gone hoarse what felt like hours ago. Her skin was torn and bruised from throwing herself against the thorns and brambles and thick bark of her cage. Her throat stabbed from screaming, but her neck...around her neck was a wrathful red mark. The mark the beast had left as it hoisted her and threw her here.
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Into this cage. In her mind.
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They had talked, the four of them. Finally talked. Truly talked. Emily had warned her of the cage in her mind and she, Constance, had grown irritable and snapped at her. She wondered now if that had been the beast, influencing her thoughts. She wondered, idly, whether this would be the end of her, whether her sister would shoot her again. She wondered whether Emily's aim would be true, whether this time she would rest.
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Her wondering was short lived and lasted forever. In her mind's eye she saw Nora - beautiful, wonderful, protective Nora - preparing to climb on top of an airship - her airship - her Helios - at top altitude - to get to the beast. Constance knew that if Nora stepped onto the roof of the Helios she would be dead. She watched the beast - watched herself - take a step forward, could feel claws crushing into and puncturing through metal, gouging it the way a hand crunched through snow in the wintertime.
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Yet Nora didn't move. She could hear, almost smell the blood pumping through Nora's body - could almost see the pulse jump in her neck -
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Yet she didn't move.
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Again, Constance was wrong, for there were more tears. Always more tears.
'Run,' she croaked from that cage in her mind. 'Please, Nora, please, oh god - Get away from me.'
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Nora flinched as Constance heard, felt a growl, a snap, a snarl come from her own mouth and slammed a hand over it. But it had worked. Nora backed away.
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Before Constance could try to communicate more, the horrific beast leapt toward a propeller. She felt only the slightest strain, though it made her cry out in pain as the beast tore away the prop, throwing it almost delightfully from the ship.
Suddenly knowing what would happen but unable to stop it, Constance watched dumbstruck as the beast, she, tore the other prop and hurled it into the air.
Then, with a final glance at Nora, the beast did what Constance had be wishing to do for days but could not: It leapt from the ship into nothing.
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'Good.' Constance thought from her cage, feeling the pit of her stomach fall as if she cared, as if there was still the instinct to live somewhere in this creature. She lay back, certain the creature had gone insane, waited for oblivion and prayed she would be allowed to join her mother - or the woman she was raised to believe was her mother - in heaven.
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The fall was long, and the beast revelled in it. For all its anger, all the purpose and certainty, it seemed almost puppylike in its glee.
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As she fell, Constance thought of Wyatt, about the hounds he tended, would tend. She thought about Weyland, about how perhaps he could beg the hag for his eye back, if only she would give Wyatt happiness with another. She thought of elves and alfar, and how perhaps one day her sisters and Weyland might take back their kingdoms and rule. She thought of the one who had fathered her, and whether his haughty face ever showed love. And she thought of her daddy - the only father she had known, the one who had shown her love. She considered the twenty short years of life she had lived, and remembered a time Weyland had told her that the most important parts of those she loved were not in her head, but in her heart. He'd said that these parts were a foundation of her core. In that moment, the young woman hoped her family would remember her the way she remembered her mother, and that she might one day bring them comfort rather than the pain she had recently wrought.
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And she gasped, for the beast, she, they, had stopped falling.
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They were flying.
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***
Chapter 9
As the beast with thick leathery wings swooped down above Weyland and Emily, Constance, watching, screamed and threw herself against the thick, gnarled vines that twisted together, holding her in place. The wolves in her mind, the pack, had bitten and snapped at flesh when she tried to escape. The beast snarled and menaced but...didn't kill. Perhaps she needed Constance's body.
It had been moments, only moments since they had all been sitting together, discussing the importance of Constance's sisters and brother - remaining monarchy of the Winter Court as they were. As hidden, ostensibly, as she was. More valuable by far, they stood for the hope of an entire people, while she was...she didn't know. None of them knew. Princess of some independent nation was the extent of their information. Certainly not as important as the woman who lay cowering at her feet.
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All she could do as the beast flew toward Weyland was throw herself against the thinnest of those brambles, cringing in her mind's eye as the beast sent Weyland sprawling to the ground.
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She screamed, her hoarse voice shredded from tears and emotion. "Perhaps in time you could learn to control it," he had said. How very wrong he had been, and yet...
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She felt the beast's eyes fall briefly on Emily and shivered, cowering in the back of the cage.
'What use is it?' she thought. She was trapped in her own mind and there was no way out.
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No way out.
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Her body slumped against a thorn, pricking her skin and for the first time, she simply let it be, feeling the warm blood cool as it trailed down her back, drawn by gravity and its own weight. The beast had won. It would take what it wanted, whatever that was now, and be gone. Gone. What she had wanted from the first. What she'd wanted days (had it only been days?) ago.
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For the first time she looked around.
Why a hedge maze?
Why walls?
Why a cage?
Why so many wolves?
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Why...
Why did any of this matter?
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The cage was what the cage was. A cage.
Why natural?
Why not bars, if it could be anything?
What did the bust over there show? It faced away from her, but this was her mind, so it should have been familiar.
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"Is that it?"
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Her eyes were dragged back to the present - drawn to Weyland, one eyed, bleeding and leaning heavily on his sword and the cane. She leaned forward unconsciously, as if trying to hear him more clearly. As she did, her arms slid against the cage, catching on a thorn and slicing the skin as neatly as a paring knife. She winced and pulled away.
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"I'm sure you can do better..."
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Voiceless, she found herself standing and her mouth forming into an O of horror as she felt rather than saw the beast's focus lock on the alfar.
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"Come on, then," he taunted, swaying slightly as if drunk. The beast's head tilted, as if considering what it would take to eliminate the distraction. Constance felt it conclude: not much.
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"No," she whispered, hands gripping thorns, pulling, tearing at her own mind. The distraction the beast felt at Weyland's taunt suddenly shifted inward as Constance sliced her arms to the bone, uncaring of the consequences. Life mirrored mind as the beast turned and snapped at her, spittle flying at her face. Shocked, she shrank back as the beast shook its head and howled.
The howl forced Constance to her knees. Even in her mind, trapped though she was, she felt the feral freedom flow through her and gave into it.
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"We're not going to let you take her."
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Weyland's voice rang true. They would follow the beast until she killed them.
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"Why fight us? Work with us."
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Constance knew the beast had no intention of that. She just...knew. But then:
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"You want the other one?"
It wasn't what he intended, but Constance felt the beast's attention shift to Emily, still pleading for her life. The rest of his words were lost as Constance stood, took hold of the vines forming the cage and slowly, deliberately, began to slice at her wrists; arms; chest; any part of her she could get close enough to cut with the sharp thorns, screaming silent tears and prayers to whatever, whoever might take pity on her; she pierced her skin with the thorns as deeply as she could.
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It needed her body? It needed her alive?
Well, no more.
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Bloodied, battered and bruised, Constance dug her fingers, slippery with blood, into the wounds she had caused, willing them to grow, willing for it to be over, wishing safety for her family - from her. Silent screams that echoed through her mind as howls; free, cursing, baleful, angry; then growls that lingered in her ears, making promises, giving warnings, dreadful portents, then whimpering, soft whimpering as Constance prayed for safety -
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and tore herself apart.
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With almost a smile, almost a laugh of victory, Constance, momentarily free, coughed as her lungs filled with blood and collapsed as the world went dark.
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***
Chapter 10
Constance sat in the cockpit of the Apollo, knees drawn up to her chest, perfectly still, eyes resting on the wall of the ship. Watching the wall, head on knees, she had no tears left to cry. They meant nothing to the dead anyway. The heat of her father’s coat around her shoulders made her want to retch - the heat of life too much, the heat of his life, much more. She watched and watched and watched that stone creep up Alistair’s legs, her father’s legs, watched and watched and watched as his fingers reached out to her, before melting into unyielding, cold rock, so foreign from his nature it was laughable. Each second was a year as she saw him turn, saw the pen she had herself held only the day before, saw the book, open, and knew what had happened.
No matter what she did, the men in her life kept sacrificing themselves for her. People kept trying to protect her, dragged her back to life rather than accepting the truth she had accepted days ago: everyone else was safer with her gone.
Blinking, her vision turned grey. Closing her eyes, she expected to hear the snarls and growls of the beast. Instead, she heard the ocean. Water lapping at a shore, the lost ambling across the wastes. No colour, no clarity - things were not black, nor white, but grey. Not cold nor hot but neutral. As many questions and hopes and dreams as Constance had, the wastes simply were and that was comforting. In this place, she was safe - more importantly, everyone was safe from her. Here, she could feel she was not to blame for all the heartache, the pain, the loss, the grief others felt. Grief happened, it crashed over you like a wave, and then…
It was gone.
She opened her eyes, back in this world that seemed so unfamiliar. The others were staring at her. How long had her eyes been closed? She shrugged gently. Quietly. Some question about her appearance. She blinked again
And was outside the gates at the lighthouse. The man behind her in the queue asked what happened to her face, too.
“I suppose I wasn’t in charge.” She had said, would say, heard herself saying. She opened her eyes. The three looking at her couldn’t have understood that answer. The three looking at her might not really be there. As she’d signed her death papers, she had asked not to forget, after all. Though how could she remember something she didn’t remember happening in the first place?
Very carefully, very, very carefully, she asked the question that still plagued her, had plagued her for her entire life.
“Are you real? Am I alive?” As it tumbled from her lips, the absurdity of the question hit as hard as the fear of the answer.
Looking at each of the three faces, the enormity of what she had seen when she’d returned to life - the first thing she had seen -
the thing burned into her vision so deeply that blinking into death was a reprieve
- it had been real.
The stone creeping up her father’s face as he had done the last thing she wanted anyone to do for her.
She closed her eyes again, but this time, it was dark behind her eyelids. The comforting neutrality was gone. She was consigned to a fate she had thought was no longer hers.
More vicious than the cage constructed by the beast within was the cage of duty she heard slam behind her. Colder, sharper, more agonising than the iron that had punctured her in death. As she hid that wound from view, she looked once more at the wall of the Apollo, watched him, watched him, watched him turn to stone. Saw each weathered line on his face crumple as they locked eyes to be frozen and turned to dust.
This birth was harder than the last.
She watched and watched and watched - the quill leaving his hand, the blood still wet on the page, the hag taking pleasure in hands that were just out of reach. Small, shaking newborn hands reaching for those that had been used to soothe, hold, sculpt her into what she had been.
Gone, the cage closed.
Her father had given his life for hers.
She had no choice but to live it.
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***
Chapter 11
Constance slowly closed and opened her eyes, munching quietly on a lemon. Just a few days ago she had been at home, an ordinary young woman. Normal. So normal. Now... her parents were not her birth parents, her sisters and a brother were elves, one brother was not related to the rest, the other was in danger, and there were triplets she didn't know about, one of whom was now an airship. Oh, and her closest friend was another kind of elf known as an alfar, who had given up an eye and found out his own family had betrayed him for her benefit.
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Wrapped in her father's coat, she sat and listened to the others. Ishmael, her brother ship, had told her to remember that family was made of more than blood. As the haze of death cleared more, she wondered how true that was - or rather, whether family was a good thing. It had been family, after all, that had started this journey, with Nora trying to trick Constance into seeing Emily. It had been family that got her bitten, family that made it difficult - still - to speak with that particular sister, family that led to Weyland sacrificing an eye, family who had betrayed him, family who got her killed, family that had brought her back. Family, as far as Constance could tell, was an awful thing.
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And yet, as she looked from Nora to Emily to Weyland, she would do anything for them. And perhaps that was the point.
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They wanted her alive, so she would stay alive and make the most of it. Nora wanted to save Nathaniel once they had Dorian? Then she would save Nate - though from the look of despair on Weyland's face, she didn't think that was possible.
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Nate had always had a soft spot for Constance, and of her two brothers, she had spent more time in his company. He was much more socially adept than Nora, so while Nora got lost in the minutiae of cogs and gears and whirring beauties in the workshop of 3M, talking about all sorts of things Constance couldn't understand, Nate would keep her entertained with discussion of gatherings or small toys he built simply to make her laugh. It was he who had surprised her with a pianoforte in the workshop to keep her busy while Nora worked - he who had taught her the basics of music theory.
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Would all this be gone now? Would he still remember this? Weyland had said that vampires became the worst version of themselves. Was this to be his fate? Surely he would be better dead than...
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Glancing at her hands, Constance looked at her left palm. The one the Gatesman had punctured as she reached for his book. The neutrality of death had been comforting, but now, even thinking they would need to, might need to...
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Family. Again.
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Holding the hand up so the light could catch it, she inspected it more closely. Death did strange things to a person, but...should that hole be filling so quickly? It seemed strange, now that she thought about it, that it wasn't bleeding. Even stranger perhaps that she came back to life with it. Magic was a strange thing, and not something she understood, despite how coated in it her family seemed to be.
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There was that word again.
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Still staring at her hand, she noticed that what was filling in wasn't flesh coloured at all, but a strange blue. It didn't seem to be killing her like the bullets, but why blue? Curiosity taking her once more, Constance touched the edge of that hole -
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And the glamour, which had held through her life and death and life again, shattered.
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Shards of glittering brilliance fell around her. Hair, waves of deep marine blue, fell to her mid back in a complex braid. She looked at her hands. All her skin now matched what had once been the blue growth on her hand - which had now disappeared. Slowly she reached up, feeling weight on her head. A circlet rested there as though it belonged. Its weight comfortable. She didn't disturb it. Blue armour - the same blue as those bullets, scales, hugged her body. Bewildered, she looked at her family, looked at her hands and hair, then shrugged and bit into that delicious saltwater-flavoured lemon.
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***
Chapter 12
As the others discussed their contract, Constance watched the burning house, watched her childhood spark and flutter in the cool air. She had known for some time there was no going back, but to see it in front of her…
The young woman knew, as well, that Wyatt was here somewhere. As she’d reached the fountain, she’d half expected to see him there, leading the effort to put out the fire, blue grey eyes focused and intent on helping as many as he could. Raising a hand to brush across the moist gills - gills - she’d found she had, she glanced at Ishmael, busy with werewolves, looked at her other siblings, busy with whatever they were talking about now, and quietly slipped away.
Of their own accord, her feet led her West, toward a small house. As she walked, her eyes shifted impassively over the bodies of the dead. Passing dusters seemingly common to those of the Order, passing faces of those she knew only too well, having given directives, praise, reprimands just a week ago.
“The staff are not things, they’re people.”
And yet, Weyland, to look at them as people broke her heart.
Susette’s mother’s health would decline now - Constance knew that as surely as she knew she was neither old enough nor strong enough to handle that or any conversation owed to those left behind.
“We all have our responsibilities,” she had said then. How right she’d been. Stopping for a moment, her eyes filled with tears. She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes.
Gone. It was all gone. They were all -
The beast stirred. Hands dropping, she scented the air, continued to walk. As the pit of her stomach acknowledged a sensation, the beast nudged her feet toward the cottage. Constance didn’t know whether to stop, walk or run, but the beast moved them unerringly forward. They shared a body, they shared a mind. The beast knew what she wanted to know and it wanted her to hurry up about it. Scenting the air again, her mouth salivated slightly with the smell of blood. A lot of blood. Too much blood. The walk continued, the beast trying to run, Constance trying to stop. She could see the small villa now, that beloved villa. She’d stood here hundreds of times, just at the distance required for believable propriety. She had seen him leave the villa hundreds of times, habitual deep blue shirt, black breeches slipping out into the warm evening sun, rear first as he told his mother he was checking on the hounds once more before dinner before closing the door and turning to grin foolishly at her. She could see from here those dimples - her dimples, for he would only gift them to her.
Blood.
They would walk - not run - to the stables, walk close but not touching, in case anyone came across them.
Blood.
Once in the stables though, with the door closed, hay was their bed - their bodies the world to explore.
Too close.
Shaking, Constance leaned on the doorframe. The door had been ripped off its hinges and thrown. Blood and boots beneath it.
Not his. Not his.
Her mouth salivated more. On the bed, a body. Dark hair.
His scent is everywhere.
In that stable she’d once looked up at him, cupped his cheek and smiled in wide eyed wonder at his confusion as the sun kindled his face just so. She’d sketched his face in hidden notebooks, spent hours trying to understand the curve of his cheek and days trying to replicate the warmth and wisdom in his eyes. In moments such as those, when the sun loved him as much as she, she wondered why was it so hard to capture love in images when her memory could do it so well.
Him. Him.
Leaned over the body was a beast, dark furred, not so large or dangerous as the one in her mind, but larger by far than the girl in the doorway staring. It hadn’t seen her, for it was eating.
Eating.
“Stop it.” Constance was sure she’d screamed, but it was whispered in her mind, and the wolf continued its meal.
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“Please.”
The dark hair of the body on the bed shifted as the wolf fed. Thoughts turning inward, she approached the beast within her and put a hand on its fur as her body took a step toward the wolf without.
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“Stop it. Please.”
The beast within tilted its head to one side.
“Release me.”
“Alright.”
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***
Chapter 13
The light of the day broadened as the train trundled, too quickly? Too slowly? Toward Paddington. As the sun rose, Constance leaned on the windowsill, arm propped up on the ledge, eyes on the growing light in the trees, mind’s eye on the still form of her lover, laid out on the bed where she had left him. Beside her, holding a hand, Nathaniel, returned as if from the dead.
As if from the dead. Hand in hers.
On her skin, blood. The smell of it comforting and heinous in equal measure. In the other hand, clutched tightly, a small square of purple silk. His scent was all over her and in that hand, flecks of blood in her hair - someone had wiped her hands…someone must have wiped her hands. She didn’t remember doing it, and now she looked at them, they were mostly clean. The Beast was quiet for once, sulking, or perhaps mourning the loss of one of her own.
The sun was rising on the first day the world would have to turn without Wyatt. The first day she would have to exist without…
She felt a hand squeeze hers and thought she’d squeezed back, but maybe not, because a voice whispered through her mind.
‘Hey, you going to be okay?’ She didn’t question it. Too much, too much had happened for her to question why her brother’s voice was in her head. “No,” she wanted to say. “No, I will never be okay again.” But instead she asked “Did you know?” Quickly followed by a much simpler question: “Does it get easier…to lose people?”
He had known, of course, and when he said that for some it did, in fact, get easier, the young princess determined that it would be much better if she were one of those people.
Across from her sat Weyland, who she knew kept looking at her even as he spoke to Nate. And she could hear Nora’s warm tones trying to get through to Ezra and Emily who, truth be told, Constance was struggling not to despise. The Beast much preferred hatred and anger to misery. Constance took a deep breath and held it for as long as she could.
‘If I hold it for long enough,’ she mused, ‘perhaps I’ll join him.’ But to do that would mean he died for nothing. No, she must bear children. She must live and bear children. She much be happy, and live and bear children. The other side of contractual obligations - even if they were not your contract to adhere to.
For she had killed him, then said the cost to revive him, her fertility, was too steep. The contracts…the conditions…they kept building up. Weyland had sacrificed for her, so she must find happiness to justify that cost. Father had sacrificed for her, so she must live. Wyatt had changed for her, and it had resulted in his death. Contracts…there was always a cost, and Weyland had been right. The cost was a life. At least one.
As she watched Wyatt ascend to heaven - no more beautiful a man was there than he - too good for a Marley, too good for a Marley-Boulder-Tooth - she’d realised the cost. He got to go. She must stay.
Stay. Be happy. Bear children. Do good.
Suppressing a snarl, the goblin princess rose and left the group to stand at the end of the carriage, leaning against the door and facing away to get as far from Ezra’s declarations of love as she could. They were sickening and threatened to draw the Beast from where it paced within her. Worse, it was getting harder to disagree with the sentiment. For a woman who had mocked love, had walked out on it in all its varying forms…Emily had done something right. There was Ezra, loving her, while Constance did her best to feel nothing.
To feel anger was to tempt the Beast. To feel anguish was to never move again, to feel…to feel was frankly a poor decision, so the best alternative was simply not to.
Two hundred years was the best guess on how long goblin royalty lived. More than long enough to learn not to feel. More than long enough to simply do what was expected until it was no longer expected.
One hundred and eighty years to go.
A slow road indeed. And one she knew she would be forced to walk. Nora was not so forgiving.
As Ezra asked for permission to marry her sister, she sighed internally. This was as good a time to practice as any.
“Do what you want, but not in my sight,” she wanted to say - but didn’t, of course.
As they walked to the Pixie to hear their father’s last will and testament, Constance dropped back. She didn’t care what they were saying, she didn’t care what they were doing. Glancing down a familiar alley, she didn’t even care what happened to her - so she took a step away from the group and toward the glowing red eyes that called to her.
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Chapter 14
As everyone sat around the table, listening to their father’s voice tell his story, Constance sipped. First she finished the wine that had been pushed across the table in her direction, then she sipped at the thick liquor Ezra had offered. It tasted good and strong and it pushed the edges of darkness in the room away - made them seem fuzzy and soft and empty. There was no space for Wyatt or Dorian in this emptiness, and Constance sipped again, gratefully, the golden syrup burning away grief, loss, pain, gratitude, hope, fears, dreams…everything, really. Shifting in her seat, she ran her lip across the rim of the glass, looking over it into her father’s face as he said…things that no longer mattered and would have stung if the alcohol hadn’t warmed her skin and protected her from what? Fury? Grief? The guilt of not caring?
The only thing that made it through the haze, distinctly, was the knowledge that she had been payment. Grum Gully Boulder-tooth had paid for his life with hers, and for that alone she was prepared to spit at his feet. The shadows in the room shifted, the story of a man she thought she knew continued, and she remained at the table, mute, waiting to care about something. Waiting to know why she was there - why her existence mattered.
But her father’s eulogy - given by himself, no less - continued with no real information. It was hard, particularly with the amount of alcohol at work, to remember why she was here. To remember how much these people had meant to her a week ago. How different the relationships had been and how simple things were…
Sighing and looking around the bar, her eyes drifted across the art, her nose picking up the scents of sweat, sticky, old whisky on surfaces, patches of mildew on thinning carpet in booths. Nothing in this room smelled normal, and the Beast snuffled discontentedly in its cage.
They would probably need to go after Dorian. She rolled a finger over the metal card in her hand, embossed with Jack’s mask and etchings.
Venice. If they were going to have to go to Venice, let it be done. What good did it do, she thought, listening to a dead man speak, to sit here when they could catch up with Nora’s brother instead?
What they would do once there was a question of curiosity, she found, as she took another sip. In numbness, she could asks questions she couldn’t otherwise ask, and they seemed reasonable, practical.
Would Dorian need to be killed? Would Jack? Did Van Helsing or Hattie-Marie matter anymore? What good did they do if the Prowler, Jack and Dorian had succeeded anyway?
What use was any of it, really? She retreated into her mind and reached out to the Beast. Both compromised, she sat outside the cage and reached in, nails digging into fur to scratch contemplatively.
No home, no family beyond the one seated by necessity (necessity being Alistair Marley) at this table, no future, no point, no lover but very good alcohol.
Weyland had said they all loved her. If they’d loved her, maybe they’d have considered why it made sense to drag a grieving woman from place to place, keep her bound to them like a dog.
Yes, she cared about them, she supposed, leaning against the cage, but…
And that was it.
But.
It was with interest that she and the Beast watched Nora fall to the floor, blue residue on her finger. Head tilted, both marvelled at the veins cobwebbing black across her skin.
Both waited for someone to do something.
Both watched, curiously.
How had they survived a bullet made of this material?
As Ezra scooped up the young hag, Constance stood, swaying. Empty.
Time to move again. Another Marley was dying. Tradition stated that was not allowed.
Not in this family.
Everyone remained bound together, like the Beast in the cage. Alistair Marley said so.
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Time to save Nora.
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