My Marionette Lover novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Only Mine

Brad lifted the cabinet door off its hinge pins with a butter knife from the buffet.

We went down the back stairs once the trustees had gone quiet.

We got back to the Annex at one in the morning, and Arlen bandaged my hands.

He did it clumsily, with the first aid kit from the wall, winding gauze round my palms until they looked like boxing gloves.

"Too tight?" he asked.

"Perfect."

He sat on the daybed beside me and said nothing for a long time.

The Prince leaned on the workbench with his glued face, and the clock on the wall ticked.

"I need to ask you something," Arlen said. "And I need you to say yes before you hear it."

"That's not how asking works."

"Hazel."

"Fine. Ask."

He looked down at his own hands.

"How do I know it's mine?"

I waited.

"The way I feel about you," he said.

"You tied me to you at the fountain."

"She tied me to her at nine."

"I've never had one feeling in my life that I could prove was my own."

"Arlen."

"I want you."

"I want you so much I can't sit still."

"But I was built by a woman who writes down how I feel in a ledger."

"What if she gave me this too?"

I understood then why he had been so quiet.

It wasn't fear of her.

It was fear of himself.

I took his bandaged face in my bandaged hands, which was ridiculous, and made him look at me.

"Stand up," I said.

"What?"

"Stand up, and come outside."

The quad was empty and wet, and the lamps were burning low.

The sky had begun to go grey over the chapel.

"Stay here," I told him.

I put the jester's bar down on the grass at his feet, deliberately, so he could see the thread slack and lying still.

Then I walked away.

I walked across the whole quad, fifty yards, past the fountain and the benches, with my back to him.

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