Page 24 of Lovesick

Imagine.

“Just keep her under control.” Gore states it as advice, even though we both know it's an order.

I think of the inverted cross on her forehead, the one I painted on her. A blessing. From the entire group. For wealth in fertility. All things she doesn’t yet understand. I wonder, not for the first time, if she ever will. How does one explain the inner workings of this beast that is The Obsidian without scaring her off.

Petrifying her.

Not that she can ever leave anyway.

Gore’s words sink deeper into my head.

Control.

My lips curve upwards of their own accord, thinking of Nellie blindly following me into the dark. Through a cemetery, down a spiralling pit, into literal obsidian.

She did it all willingly.

But she won’t always.

The blunt blade of my knife glides across the top of the butter, warmed to room temperature, the cool silver handle digging into the slice in my palm.

I glance down at it, the blood dried, the cut fresh. Nellie has one the same. A scar forever mine,ours,carved into each of us. Without thinking, the fingers of my other hand reach up, brushing the fresh wound in my chest. Again, something that, despite what The Obsidian believe, is ours.

Mine and hers.

A branding of me, of us, weTwo.

Two.

A number used to identify.

Gore is one, I, two, Bram is three, Tolly four.

We weren’t gifted the pleasure of being called our names until Milus deemed it so. We were never supposed to use our birth names with each other until Father said so, until we passedenough tests to be fullyin, but we did. My brothers and I, Rune, who is a brother in all but DNA, we always called each other by our names, we never used our numbers.

We meant more to each other than that.

Meanmore.

I would kill and die for any one of them. The only people in the world that matter to me.

And Mother.

But now I have Nellie.

That, I think, makes everything I’ve ever known different now.

“Poison,” the word mumbles out of me as I drop my knife to the table with a dull clattering thud. “That’ll be first.” It’s a statement and a question.

“Yes,” Gore’s voice is low, quiet, but so loud inside my head it makes my ears feel like they’re bleeding.

“Spiders.” I nod to myself with my own word, solemn in my resolve.

All members of The Obsidian are to take a Pair, but the Blackwell men can only Pair if their potential life partner passes a series of tests.

I watched Gore and Dolly go through the trials, despite only being a boy at the time, and I remember everything they had to endure. EverythingDollyhad to endure.

I was thirteen to her eighteen, Gore twenty-three, each trial lasted only hours, the toll they took on Dolly, though, lasted a lot longer than that.