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VI

Winter becomes spring, and spring becomes summer, and summer once again gives way to fall. They tangle like weeds, the three of them, and yet there is an order to it. Sabine on one side, Hector on the other, Renata squarely between, keeping them together, holding them apart.

Sabine and Hector bicker now and then, but she is not one to flinch, or shrink from a fight, and he enjoys her boldness—after all, she is not a petal, but a thorn—and if he can feel her occasional urge to push him from the nearest cliff, well, it doesn’t seem to faze him much.

They pass the days in the houses that they’ve emptied, in rooms rented to men and women who vanish in the night.

Doors locked, and curtains drawn against the sun, Hector and Renata sleep together in the largest bed.

More than once, they invite Sabine to join them there, but she still relishes her own space, retreating to a second room, a private refuge.

But she doesn’t go far—admits, if only to herself, that she does not mind the nearness of them, the way the solid silence of their bodies takes up space.

And then one night, Renata climbs out of Hector’s bed, and into hers.

Renata, whose touch has always sparked something in her. Whose fingers wake her now, tapping like rain against her skin.

Even half asleep, Sabine no longer pulls away. She rolls toward the touch, finds Renata staring at her, eyes like darkened panes, small candles burning behind glass. A silent question. A silent answer. Then, Renata’s mouth on hers.

They have kissed a hundred times, but this is different.

Perhaps it is the way Renata’s bare limbs wind around her body, or the fact Hector isn’t watching, but heat plumes beneath her skin, and her heart seems to turn over in her chest. A smile pressed against her lips, and then Renata’s mouth begins to travel, leaving a trail of kisses down her throat, over her breasts.

The skim of teeth against her skin makes her entire body kindle, light.

Renata’s hand drifts lower, hooks the hem of her nightgown, plays up over her thigh. Then it slips between her legs, and Sabine catches her wrist as something clamps inside her. A ghost of that old rebellion. A pair of doors flung shut against impending siege.

“No,” she says. “Not that.”

But when Renata begins to pull away, Sabine’s grip tightens on her wrist, unwilling to let go. Renata halts, hovers, trying to read her expression in the dark.

“Tell me,” she whispers, “what do you want?”

That is the problem, isn’t it? She doesn’t know. Sabine is full of knowing what she does not want, but even after all these years, she hasn’t found the words for what she does. The air must be filling with her longing and frustration, because Renata shifts, brings her mouth back to Sabine’s.

“You lead,” she says. “I’ll follow.”

Something comes loose then. Something clicks.

Sabine rolls over, pressing Renata down into the bed—a memory rises up, of Andrés struggling beneath her—but Renata only smiles. Small as she is, there is no human weakness. She has that stony strength, a mirror of Sabine’s, disguised by supple skin, curving hips.

Renata reaches up to touch Sabine, but she tsk s, and takes her hands and guides them onto the cushion above her head.

“Stay,” she says, and Renata does, her arms raised, her fingertips against the headboard, her body a map, waiting to be charted. Her stillness, an invitation to explore.

Sabine straddles Renata and surveys the smooth terrain, first with her eyes—eyes that capture every slope and line, even in the dark—and then with her hands.

She takes her time exploring, as if trying to memorize the contours of Renata’s collarbones, her hips, her navel. Until Renata starts to shift again beneath her, not restless but eager, body arching, and Sabine lays a palm flat against her stomach and pushes her back down into the bed.

“I said, stay,” she orders softly.

Renata bites her lip, and whispers, “Please,” the words too faint for human ears. Whispers, “I want this.” Whispers, “I want you.”

And yet, it’s clear, she will not take what she wants. Will let Sabine decide when and how to give it to her. Sabine, who is getting bolder now.

“Do you?” she whispers back as her hand slides down Renata’s stomach, and then, lower still, between their bodies, coming to rest in the shadow between Renata’s legs. Stroking the soft folds. “Do you want me?”

She studies Renata’s face, sees the candles brighten, her mouth part, the air clouding with a hunger she doesn’t try to hide.

“Yes,” she pleads, and Sabine’s fingers slip inside.

Renata’s body answers instantly, warm, and wet, her head tipping back, her throat long and her mouth open, fangs glinting in the dark. She looks the way Sabine feels right after she bites someone. Like she’s the one who’s breaking open.

Her fingers curl, and Renata lets out a small gasp, and this time, Sabine doesn’t stop her when the other woman reaches up, fingers snaking through her copper hair, grasping the back of her neck, pulling her closer.

Sabine catches Renata’s mouth with hers, teeth skating along her bottom lip. Doesn’t know she’s broken the soft skin there until she tastes the blood, earthy, sweet.

Her senses flare. Her body comes alive again. And even though there’s no one between her legs, she feels her own pleasure mounting with Renata’s.

In her marriage bed, she’d been nothing but a site where pleasure happened to someone else, but as Renata’s body clenches around her hand, Sabine feels awash in pleasure.

Renata is panting louder now, and Sabine, sure that Hector will hear them, presses her free hand over Renata’s gasping mouth as her pleasure crests and her whole body tenses beneath Sabine.

As her limbs go slack, Renata laughs against her palm. Sabine withdraws, and lies beside her, expecting her to leave. But she doesn’t, simply winds her limbs like roots around Sabine, and crashes into sleep.

Sabine lies there, folded in Renata’s arms, her scent, her own limbs heavy in the aftermath, until she drifts off, too.

When Sabine wakes, it is night, and her bed is empty.

She rises and finds Renata and Hector dancing lazy circles in the sitting room as he teaches her something called a waltz.

Sabine sits on the edge of a chair and braids her hair, and watches, sure that he will take one look at her and know, and this life of theirs will fall apart.

But that whole night passes, and Hector makes no mention of it.

He knows, of course he knows. Sabine is certain of it.

There are no secrets between the three of them, and even if Sabine could keep what happened to herself, Renata seems determined to put it on display.

More than once, she abandons Hector’s side for Sabine’s, as if staking claim there, one arm snaking around her waist. More than once, she kisses her outright.

More than once, she fondles, strokes. And every touch makes Sabine tense a little more beneath Hector’s watching gaze, until her whole body is coiled and bracing for the fight.

And yet, it does not come.

Hector only smiles, and carries on alone.

She cannot fathom it. Andrés was such a jealous man.

And so she watches him all night, trying to read the air around him, trying to grasp at his mind, his mood, his thoughts, trying and failing until at last, he turns on her and snaps that he can feel her knocking at the door, and it is grating on his nerves.

“If you have something to say,” he scolds, “just say it.”

It’s a relief to be confronted, and she lets the truth spill out. “I bedded Renata.”

Hector doesn’t plunge into one of his moods, doesn’t strike out at her, doesn’t rant or rage. He just cocks his head to one side. “And?” he asks, confirming her suspicions. He knows. He knows, and yet—

“You are not mad.”

He only shrugs. “Why should I be? Because she is mine ?” His mouth twitches. “Renata does not belong to me, Sabine. And even if she did, forever is a very long time. She is free to amuse herself however she likes. Sometimes that means she wanders off, into someone else’s bed.”

His tone never darkens, but his eyes do.

“You thought I would be threatened. By you. But I am her maker, Sabine. Renata will never look at you the way she looks at me. You will never mean as much to her as I do.”

He might as well have struck her, the words stinging like a handprint on her cheek. It makes her feel foolish and small. It makes her want to break something. Someone. But Hector has not finished breaking her.

He shakes his head and says, “Perhaps one day you will understand what it means to truly matter to another. Until then, just remember, little thorn.” He smiles, with not so much as a candle’s worth of warmth. “You may be her plaything. But I am her god. ”

That night, Sabine thinks of killing Hector.

Of fleeing Spain.

Of slaughtering a town, and leaving the two of them to be discovered in the bodies’ wake.

But then, Renata climbs back into her bed, and pulls her close, and makes Sabine promise not to leave. And she does not understand the look in the other woman’s eyes, the sheer weight of the request.

“I won’t,” she promises.

She does not feel the words wrap around her heart like chains until the next time, when her bed is empty, and she tries to leave, and learns the hard way that, among their kind, promises are binding.

And so she has no choice.

She stays.