Page 28

IV

How strange it is, after so many years alone, to find herself with constant company.

Strange, but not unwelcome.

That first month, they play at being sailors. Most days they drift, safe in the darkened belly of the ship. Most nights, they go ashore. They skim a dozen harbors, docking long enough to sate themselves, gone again before the bodies can be found or counted.

Now and then, they pretend they have been stranded, run up a white sail and wait for aid to come, and when it does, they feast and cast the corpses over the side, leaving empty vessels, like fruit peels, in their wake.

And when they grow bored of sailing, which they do as summer nears, they find the nearest port, sell the ship, and set off in search of trouble.

Every night, it seems, they find it. In taverns and on travel roads, in plaza squares and busy inns. Hector and Renata fold Sabine into their games, as if each were made for three instead of two. How seamlessly they hunt, how carelessly they kill. How much fun they make it all.

And every night, Sabine’s collection grows. When she walks, the charms and pendants at her wrists and throat knock against each other, chiming like bells. Now and then they break off, fall away, shed like bits of skin. She lets them go, knows there will be plenty more.

Hector and Renata tease her for the little tokens, but she doesn’t care. She likes the weight of them, like armor, the way she can run her fingers over the bits of metal, glass, crystal, stone, and remember the bodies that they came from, recounting each and every kill.

The seasons change, and bit by bit, so does Sabine.

She didn’t realize how stiff she’d grown in solitude, how tightly she was coiled, until her new companions begin to loosen her.

They are so intimate, so physical, and they extend that tenderness to her.

Liquid as they are, Hector and Renata massage her into movement, like coaxing winter into spring, until Sabine feels herself unfurl.

Welcoming Renata’s fingers as they dance up and down her spine, or smooth the crease that forms sometimes between her brows. A touch that makes heat bloom beneath the surface of her skin.

Welcoming Hector’s palm as it strokes her hair, or grazes her cheek. His touch so different from her husband’s, firm but never laying claim. A touch both familiar and familial. And unlike Renata’s, it holds no heat, only a pleasant, steady warmth.

Sabine heard once that happiness makes time move quick.

Perhaps that is why their first year passes in a blur.

And yet, she will always remember this :

The three of them, drawn into a square by the rise and fall of a guitar, the steady beating of a drum, the music like a pulse calling them forward.

Her red hair flashing like a fishing lure alongside Renata’s glowing skin and Hector’s charm.

The air around them heavy with curiosity and want. Their limbs tangled like roots.

And after: Renata’s laughter skipping down stone walls, and Hector, plucking a pair of white roses from a bursting hedge, and gifting one to his love, and the other to her as he declares Renata his petal, and Sabine his thorn.

“Espina mía,” he calls her, like a ghost of esposa mía—my wife—the sounds so similar, the weight so different. Ironic, that wife is meant to be a gentler word, and yet on her late husband’s lips it always felt like a rebuke, a sharp tug on a short leash. And as for espina —

“It is a compliment,” he says, tucking the rose behind Sabine’s ear. “We grow in the same soil, it is true, but some of us wither there, and some of us thrive. In time, you learn,” he adds, eyes dropping to the trinkets layered at her throat, “which of us makes better monsters.”

Sabine’s mouth twitches in a smile. She is glad to be a thorn.

Renata calls out from down the road, drawing restless circles around a lamppost, skirts flaring gently in the breeze.

Soft red petals, she thinks as Hector drifts away.

Sabine watches him go as she tugs the rose from her hair, barbs catching on the strands, carrying threads of copper with it.

“Espina mía,” she murmurs, bringing her thumb to a thorn, pressing down until the skin splits, and sluggish blood wells up. A drop runs down her wrist.

“Sabine!” calls Renata, one arm hooked through Hector’s and the other reaching out, toward her. She smiles, licking the blood from her skin.

“Coming,” she calls, dropping the flower to the street.