Mona Lisa Darkening

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

My body felt as if someone had viciously pummeled me. Why do I hurt so much? I wondered. With that one question, all the recent events came rushing back, hitting me like a sharp, brittle hailstorm.

I remembered the awful, wrenching agony of Mona Louisa being torn out of me, of stepping across the doorway and crossing into Hell… of being attacked by Gryphon. My charred hand was whole and unblistered. And my neck, I found, reaching up to touch it, was smooth, untorn.

"My father healed you," Halcyon said.

I turned my head in a swift, startled movement, and saw Halcyon standing there, a towel wrapped around his waist, his black hair hanging wet and damp around his face; he'd obviously just come from a shower. Crossing the room, he disappeared into the closet and emerged a minute later wearing his usual black pants and a white silk shirt that he casually buttoned up as he walked to where I still lay in his bed.

"Can you get this for me?" he asked, presenting me with an undone cuff. Two diamond cufflinks were cupped in his other hand. He looked tired, I realized, sitting up. And he was treating me almost like… a wife, with casual intimacy. Maybe another time it would have pleased me, made me happy. Now it just unsettled me, his nearness. Trying to be as casual as he, I retrieved a cufflink out of his hand. But my fingers accidentally grazed his palm and I flinched. With clumsy haste, I fastened the first cuff.

"I'm sorry I hurt you," he said when I began working on the second cuff, which was taking longer than it should have because my hands were trembling.

"It still hurts," I said, not looking at him, "like an open wound inside me." Finished, I drew my hands slowly away from his sleeve, instead of yanking them back quickly the way I wanted to.

"My father healed the surface wounds Gryphon inflicted. Not the inner one caused by me."

I braved a quick glance at his face before my eyes darted away. He looked tired, I thought, the same echo of weariness I had seen on his father's face.

"I'm so sorry." A whispered apology to my bent head.

"You warned me it would hurt. And I know you did it to save me. But God, Halcyon, it hurt so much."

He reached out to take my hand. I shied away from him. And he froze into a dangerous stillness.

"I'm sorry, I'm still a bit jumpy," I said, not looking at him. Not daring to look at him. "I'll be better with time."

"That's something I'm afraid we don't have." His hand dropped back to his side and I watched as those long elegant fingers clenched into a loose fist. Noticed, as I had never noticed before, the cutting sharpness of his nails.

I looked up — forced myself to — and as I met those chocolate brown eyes, I realized suddenly that I no longer had that deep and intimate connection with him afforded by the presence of his demon blood within me. It was gone, ripped away with Mona Louisa. I couldn't read his emotions now. Could read nothing on that closed face.

"What do you mean?"

"I had to tear Gryphon off you. The blood on your feet drove him wild."

"Miles's blood." Drawn by my tiger claws when I had lifted him out of the arena.

"The blood flared up his bloodlust when we crossed back into Hell. He's a new demon, Mona Lisa."

"I'm well aware of that!" I said in angry outburst. "Especially after he went all demon on me and attacked me."

"So now you don't trust either of us. Now you're afraid of us both." Halcyon's eyes were hard, cold, his voice flat in a way I'd never seen or heard before.

I opened my mouth to deny his words… and couldn't. Actions did not lie, and my body's instinctive reactions around him had told a vivid truth. No, I did not trust them anymore.

"I just need some time," I said in a small voice.

"Time away from both your demons, to forget the pain we caused you. But as I said, I cannot give you that. Yours is not the only pain we must contend with," Halcyon said. "You must address Gryphon's pain first before you run away from us. Otherwise there will be only one demon lover for you to return to, if you ever do."

Halcyon's strange words and strange attitude frightened me. Made my heart race. And I became aware of that wonderful noisy rhythm — my heart was beating again in the fabulous rhythm of life! But elation quickly ebbed and worry took its place as Halcyon's words sank in.

"Are you saying that Gryphon… wants to kill himself?"

A twist of lips. "He's dead, remember. But if you mean if he wishes to end his demon existence, then yes."

"Why?"

"Because, as you said, he went all demon on you and attacked you."

I squirmed, hearing my words thrown back at me. "But he couldn't help himself, I know that. I remember how overwhelming bloodlust can be."

"Then you must tell him this. And you must give Gryphon more than mere words. You must make him believe it with your actions."

My fingers went again to my neck, remembering the feel of his sharp fangs tearing into my flesh. Remembering again the painful slide of his demon nails sinking into me, the frightening strength in those hands. With a deep shuddering breath, I forcibly closed the door on those memories. "Take me to him and I will convince him."

"How?" He flung out the word like an accusation. "You cannot even convince me that you do not think of me as a monster. And I did not attack you or rip into you with nails and fang. How will you convince Gryphon?"

"You're not a monster," I said, flinching at the outburst. "Just someone who is much stronger than I."

"Someone who deliberately inflicted pain on you, as did Gryphon." Halcyon's eyes closed, dark lashes coming to a rest in crescent shadows over his golden skin. Then his eyes flashed opened, snaring me. "But what lies between you and I does not matter at the moment. Tell me," he said almost gently. "How will you convince Gryphon that you do not see him as the monster he sees himself as? As the monster you see him to be also?"

"I don't! He's not a monster. Just a new demon with strange new urges and… difficulty controlling those urges."

"Is that what you will say to him?" Halcyon gave a hollow laugh. "Maybe I should save us all the trouble, time, and heartache, and simply turn him loose, allow him to seek his final rest. Maybe I should seek it, too."

"Don't say that!" I said angry, bewildered. "Why are you talking like this? Behaving this way?"

"Because I am tired… so tired… and my own heart aches." He ran a hand through his damp hair. "Forgive me. I am not entirely myself. The other realm drained me more than I thought. I need to rest, and I shall do so, but not until we see to Gryphon first."

I tried to hold onto my anger but it slipped away at seeing Halcyon so unsteady, so agitated… so unlike his usual calm and incontrol self. "What do you want me to do?" A simple question.

A simple answer in turn. "I want you to be his Queen."

"He is no longer Monère, Halcyon. And I am no longer his Queen."

"You have been his Queen, his lady of light, longer than he has been demon dead."

"Just barely," I said, feeling pain wash through me at that truth. How brief our time together had been.

"He lived for over seventy-five years where his Queen was everything to him, her word absolute. I do not want you to ask him to forgive himself. I want you to command him to. To demand it of him."

"I never demanded anything of Gryphon when I was his Queen. I asked for… hoped for things, but never demanded. I was not that type of Queen with him."

"Mona Sera, your mother, his former Queen, was, however. And Gryphon spent many decades serving under her."

"You're asking me to be like her? Cold, cruel, ruthless?"

"Not cold. But cruel and ruthless? Yes, if you need to be. He will respond to that. It is too ingrained in him, and he is only just transitioned. Kindness, sweetness, any hesitancy on your part will not do the job. You must command his obedience."

"That he, what? Not end his existence? How can I convince him to do that? Just telling him isn't going to make that happen. No matter how ruthless, how cruel, how Queenly I command him."

"No, you are correct. Words alone will not convince him that he can trust himself with you again. You must show him with action. Convince yourselves both."

"What action?"

"What is the most definitive act that tells a man that a woman trusts him, that she loves him?"

My lips flattened. "You want me to make love to him?"

"No, making love is too tender an action, an emotion, Mona Lisa. I want you to take him and make him yours again."

"You want me to fuck him."

"Yes."

I blew out a frustrated breath. "I don't know if I can," I said softly. "I keep remembering the way Gryphon looked when he attacked me. That frightening new strength of his."

"He is chained. I will keep him so."

"That doesn't make it better, Halcyon. And… I don't want to rape him."

"It will not be rape."

"I don't know if I can."

"Then beat him."

"What?"

"Punish him. You have to do something to lessen his guilt or it will cause him to seek to end to his afterlife. Anything that you can think of that will accomplish this, you must do."

"I can't think of anything other than give him the words — "

"Which will not do when they are empty! He is hurting, not brainless!"

"Then we have a problem. I don't know what else to do." Other than what Halcyon had suggested. To punish him or take him, as he put it.

"We do not have much time," he warned, making me feel like a clock that he was winding too tight.

"Just give me a fucking moment!"

"Take your moment in the bath," Halcyon said shortly, as he headed out the door. "You need to wash the smell of blood off yourself before you see him."

"Where are you going?"

"To prepare him," he said and closed the door behind him.

The bath didn't give me any new or brilliant ideas, but it did get me cleaned up, a wonderful feeling all on its own. I walked into Halcyon's large closet with the intent of pilfering some of his clothes. I didn't expect to see my own clothes hanging beside his. Not my old stuff but new clothes, made in my size, in vibrant colors that would flatter my white skin and dark hair. I slipped into a gossamer dress that fell in a light swirl down to my ankles. It was peacock blue and fit me perfectly. I found Halcyon waiting for me back in the bedroom, the hard look on his face softening when he saw me in the dress.

"You made all those clothes for me," I said, uncertain how I felt about that.

"There are undergarments and other women's apparel in the left bureau drawers," Halcyon said, all his anger gone, disappeared like mine. "But it would be better if you did not wear them. Just the shoes you have on." A dainty pair of slippers that I had chosen from among a dozen others. My shoes set alongside his. Men had shared my bed before. But never my room or closet space.

"You even got me shoes," I said numbly.

"Do not look so surprised," Halcyon said. "You are my mate. Of course I would provide for you."

More than provide. He had made room for me in his bedroom. Taken space that had once been entirely his, and shared it now willingly with another. It… unsettled me.

"You do not look pleased."

"No, of course, I…" I stopped the lie I had started to utter. "It just seems so… married" A word, a concept, that suddenly made me feel a bit strangled.

"Married is a human concept," Halcyon said with calm reasoning. "You are my mate. Demons provide for their mates."

"Then why are you so willing to have me fuck Gryphon?" I burst out.

"Because in your heart, you are also his mate," he said, looking at me with level eyes. "Come," he said more softly. "Let us go to him."

I almost ran out the door in my eagerness to escape the shared intimacy of the bedroom. Given the choice between facing a chained and snarling demon, and tackling my other issues… Well, I'd take the angry demon any day, hands down.