“Who did you kill this time?” I demanded.
His chest fell again in a deep exhale, and I saw how exhausted he was, how his muscles twitched and jumped, but I couldn’t bring myself to feel sorry for him. He collapsed onto the bed, staining the sheets crimson, bracing his head in his hands like he was on the verge of fracturing. “You know I can’t remember what he does. There are only hazy memories . . . following a doctor, but he let him live. And then I remember dark alleyways and the smell of blood. Whitechapel, most likely, which means another ruffian who would have died soon enough anyway, frozen to death drunk in some alleyway.”
“And that makes it right?”
His eyes flashed with indignation. “Of course not!”
His outburst made Sharkey whine and hide behind my skirts again. A doctor, he had said. Could the Beast have been following Dr. Hastings? Hastings had certainly wronged me . . . so why hadn’t the Beast killed him yet?
He certainly deserves it, that awful man, I thought, and then caught myself. Judging who should live and die sounded too much like Father’s arrogance.
Edward started tearing at his broken shoelaces until he could get kick both shoes off. His feet were knobby and caked in blood from where the claws had emerged between his joints. The claws were gone now, hidden once more between his bones. My own feet creaked with pain at the sight of them.
“Nothing’s changed, Juliet. It’s still me.”
He looked at me with eyes that were all too innocent. A boy with a monster trapped inside, and nowhere to go but this dark attic, and no one to trust but me.
“I know.” The crimson red spilled across his shirt was a terrible distraction, one I could scarcely look away from. Although to see it so plainly . . .”
My left hand started shaking, and I clutched it to my chest before he could see the bones shifting on their own accord. He set his torn coat aside, looking so battered and beaten and hopeless that a small part of my heart twisted with sympathy for him.
“I know you aren’t a monster, Edward. You aren’t the one who wants to kill. It’s just so difficult to understand where the line is between you and the Beast.” I knit my fingers together, wishing I better understood my own heart, and sat down next to him on the bed. “Before I knew about the Beast, I admired you greatly. You saved my life. You defended me against my father. I know that’s still you . . . and yet he’s in there as well.”
Edward picked at his own fingernails, caked in blood. “If it wasn’t for the Beast,” he asked quietly, “would you have ever loved me?”
The bluntness of his question left me shocked. I didn’t answer, because I didn’t know how. Something had been stirring between him and me, feelings I had thought only belonged to Montgomery. But Montgomery had left me. For all I knew, I’d never see him again. Was I to live my whole life alone, then?
Edward reached over cautiously and took my hand. His hand was strong, so much larger than when I’d first known him—a testament to his beastly nature encroaching. Blood caked the beds of his fingernails and the lines of his palm, and it stained my own, too. That was fitting, in a way. His victim’s blood was as much on my hands—my conscience—as his. If it hadn’t been for me, Father would have never known the science to make him into the monster he was.
I felt hot tears on my cheeks, and then Edward wiped them away with the one clean patch of fabric on his cuff.
“It’s my fault,” I choked. “If only I was smarter, if I could have already cured you.”
“You’ve done everything you can.”
“Father would have figured it out by now.”
He pushed back his shirt cuff and brushed my cheek with his thumb instead. “Your father had a lifetime of knowledge. You’re only starting. And we’re getting closer.”
“But how many people must die first?”
“I’m trying,” he murmured, smoothing my loose hair back with both hands as the fire in the woodstove cracked and sparked. “Don’t you think that I would have stopped him if I could? I told you, I’ve tried to take his life by taking my own. He won’t let me.”
There was so much pain in his voice, so much self-hatred and guilt.
“That isn’t what I want,” I said, letting my fingers intertwine with his soaked fabric, holding him close so that he couldn’t slip the chains of my hands. “I don’t want you to die, Edward.” My voice had a breathlessness I hadn’t intended. His eyes found mine, asking a question, and I blinked.
“I mean . . .”