***
When I returned home, I found Lucy out in front of the house, slumped over in a lawn chair, instructing Akio and Macie on how to straighten the window panes that they were hammering back into the house.
“Like that?” Macie asked.
“No.” She and Millie replied. Millie was sitting in her lap, lying back against her, but when she saw me coming up the path, she squealed happily and ran to me.
“Hi, baby!” I greeted her, “Hello, family.”
“Hello, beautiful woman.” Akio replied, “How about now, Lucy?”
“No.” She replied. In the light that was able to break through the thick storm clouds overhead, she was even paler than she had looked in the candlelight the night before. She was lounging back, her long, dark red hair pulled to the side and hanging over her shoulder, and her eyes hidden behind thick, black sunglasses.
“Whoa, check out the superstar.” I said. “Is this impending storm not making it dark enough for you?”
“No.” She answered simply.
“Yes, I have been calling her ‘Marilyn’ all morning.” Macie told me as she laughed, “Are you enjoying the clouds, Marilyn?”
“I wish I had more energy so I could come up with a witty retort. I will have to take a rain check, as they say. No pun intended.”
Macie hopped down off of the ladder and zoomed over to her. As Millie and I pulled very over-exaggerated grimaces of fake disgust, Macie leaned in and kissed Lucy softly. Because she knew we were watching, Lucy fought her smile, but she did angle her head up so she could kiss Macie back, and it was not a short kiss, either. She held her lips there for a long time, and then reached up and brushed Macie’s hair away from her face.
“Alright, the PDA is going to make the rest of us throw up!” I told them as I opened the door to go inside and nearly pulled it clean off the hinges.
“What is PDA again?” Macie asked, “You have told me this before, I know.”
“Public displays of affection.”
“Oh, how often does Dr. Luciana Miletus display any affection, public or otherwise, for her long-suffering wife?” Macie asked, “You must suffer it right this moment, because as the One God knows, it will be years before she kisses me again.”
“You stop that!” Lucy snapped at her jokingly, “I love you from one thousand times around the entire circumference of this Orb, Macina Miletus.”
“I know it.” Macie replied, kissing her again, “I am merely teasing you, as I always do. Every day, I know you love me.”
“Awww!” I beamed brightly from ear to ear and grasped my heart, because the two of them were so lovely sometimes that I could barely stand it. I looked at Akio. “Why don’t you ever talk to me like that?!”
“I talk to you like that every time I see you, woman!”
“Well, clearly not enough that it has made an impression, man!”
Once I was inside, hidden away from them, the anxiety that I had been feeling through my entire walk home reared its head again. I closed my bedroom door carefully so as not to make a sound; the slightest push, and it would slam into the door frame and rattle the whole house, and they would know that I was stressed. Macie and Lucy were ace Heart-Readers, and if I showed the slightest sign of being perturbed, they would root into my heart simply out of reflex, and then they would see the threats that had been made and the deals I had struck to counteract those threats.
Shortly before dinner, there was a gentle knocking at my door, and I assumed that it was Akio, but was surprised to find Macie there instead.
“Lucy and Millie are in charge of the cooking tonight. May the One God help us.”
“May he, indeed.” I replied with a laugh, because the last time Lucy had cooked, Akio and I had been forced to go into town in the freezing cold for carry-out from the wharf.
“I, um…” Millie sat down beside me on the bed, “I just wanted to talk. You seem tense, sweetheart. I know that there is much going on. By the One God, I can barely look at her without crying. I cannot stop myself from feeling what she feels, and I know that you cannot, either.”
“No, actually. I can’t feel what she feels. She keeps me out.”
“Yes. She is very good at that, isn’t she?”
“She’s the best at it. I just… I pity her, and she knows it, and she resents me for it. I know she does.”
“She does not. You know that Lucy will not suffer anyone’s pity. She loathes showing weakness, even to us. She feels she must be unbreakable for our sakes all the time. She is the woman of the house, so she must be strong. She has not told me what he did. Has she told you?”
“No.” I shook my head, “And I don’t want to know. She wouldn’t want me to know.”
“No.” Macie agreed, “She would not. Violet…” She grasped my hand, “There is something so heavy perched upon your heart. It is making you ill. It is making your heart cry out for our help. For my help or Lucy’s help. You don’t know what to do.”
“No, that’s just in general.” I lied quickly, even though I knew it was useless now. I knew I would spill everything now that she was asking me so directly. I had wanted to confide in her or Lucy, but she would be so afraid once she learned that they were threatening to take Millie, and Lucy would be furious when she learned that I had bartered on her behalf.
“So, that is what it is. I had so suspected…” She cleared her throat nervously, and I kicked myself. Why had I thought it, and why had my heart felt its typical fear of those thoughts? “Of course they would threaten to take Millie and put her in that ungodly place. Of course they would. I am shocked that they have not done it sooner.”
“Macie,” I grasped both of her hands and spoke imploringly, “Trust me, I have it under control. All I have to do is kill Paul. Once he’s dead, Caspar is going to get us out of here. You, me, Lucy, Millie, Akio… We are going to leave. They will never take Millie. I won’t let them.”
“You made a deal with him?” She whispered in a shaking voice, “Violet…” Her hand reached out and grasped my face. “Violet… Sweetheart…”
“I know. I know.” I said, as the tears rushed into my eyes, “But I had to, Macie. First, I made a deal with Paul, and then I made a deal with Caspar. Maybe…” I chuckled, though I didn’t actually intend to do it, “Maybe I’ll kill them both.”
“God, do they know what Lucy has done?”
“Not Paul, but Caspar knows.”
“By the One God…” She sighed and took her hands from mine so she could run them through her hair, “By the One God…”
“No, he says he is going to use her plague to kill the rest of the Nobles in the city. He is glad that she did it. He is not going to tell anyone.”
“I wonder who else knows.”
“Tristan, her secret boyfriend.”
“Our secret boyfriend.”
“I’m still mad about that.”
“I do apologize.” She replied absentmindedly.
“I’ll accept later. Savannah knows, too.”
“And Savannah is married to Paul. If Paul knows, then we are done for.”
“You know Savannah would never tell. Paul won’t know I’m coming for him. He’ll think that our deal is still on and that soon, I’ll kill Caspar.”
“Outside of Caspar, only Tristan and Savannah know that Lucy started this plague, and you and me. We are the only ones. If one of us falls, the rest of us fall. You know that, don’t you?”
“I do.” I reached out and grasped her hand, “So I guess we had better not fall, huh?”
She smiled, and laughed somewhat hysterically. Tears welled in her eyes and began to fall as she squeezed my hand.
“We had better not fall.” She repeated, “We had better not fall.”