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Description
           The light shatters and splinters in the water; sunlight streaming through torn curtains into diamond-studded liquid the consistency and warmth of blood. Coloured by blood. Streaks of red issue from the most hidden, most secret part of her. She is dimly aware of the ache, but it is nothing compared to the ache in the seat of her emotions; she cannot name it. For once the words have all run dry.

          His arms enclose her, kneeling beside the bath he drags the cloth across her vulnerable shoulders tenderly, watching the ribbons of water run between her angelic, emaciated shoulder blades. How could she know that he loathed to be touched by any other than her? Even now she cannot look at him; he frightened her, he knows, hurt her even. But this pains him too. For years her heart beat in his breast, her face haunted his dreams, his own reflection mocked him with her visage. He can't say it's not a relief to shed the mask; to tear away the fabric of propriety, exposing it not as fine silk, but as cobwebs and as ash.

          He rests his head in the smooth curve of her neck and collarbone, the bones like delicate splints of glass wrapped in warm, breathing satin. His dark hair, dishevelled from the struggle, mingles with her titian curls and he thinks again of how good she smells, of warmth and cleanliness. The steam rises off the water like sea fog to kiss the nail-scored markings on his chest, and he remembers how, when she stopped fighting, she cast her arms over her face as if she could not believe what was happening to her. He had been forced to pull her hands away to kiss that bright, mocking mouth.

          'Amélie, I love you, you know that? I love you so much,' he whispers into the youthful down of her throat, 'I'm so sorry I hurt you, but you make me mad, you made me suffer. But I forgive you,' he brings his hand to her cheek, brushing his palm against the softness, 'I promise next time I'll be gentle.'

          Is she crying? Very quietly – even now she is proud – she adds to the water the sum of her own pain. And it breaks his heart. He gathers her to his chest like a broken animal, and a part of him delights in the nearness of her, the warmth of her, her damp skin against his own; like new-borns. It is so fitting.

          'Chérie…' the childish nickname slips off his tongue easily, and in her loss, her confusion, she turns to the man who caused her pain. Slender arms wrap instinctively around his neck as she fits her whole body into the embrace.

          'François…' the name is a plea, he responds by holding her ever closer as her harpsichordal fingers entwine in his earth-coloured hair.

          He remembers how, when it was over, when he had ceased to move in her, when he had felt content, united with her ultimately, he had lain with her in the aftermath silent and motionless for what seemed like hours. Her heart had continued to beat like a wild thing in a cage as he stared at her face that had become catatonic with shock. He revelled in the satisfaction that for once, it was he who had surprised her. Then he peeled away the last vestiges of her nightdress alongside the last remnants of his self-restraint, and carried her to the bath like an invalid, while her child-like limbs attempted to cover herself.

          He holds her tightly, knows that he will never let her go now that he possesses her ultimately. He runs a thumb down the curvature of her spine as she sobs into his shoulder, 'I'm going to take you far away from here, Chérie, wherever you want to go, we'll go,' he smiles softly, 'Do you remember when we were children, I said I'd take you to Venice?'

          She nods into his shoulder, her nails dig into his arms in agitation and he welcomes the slight pain. As Amélie had grown, she had ceased to need him, her newfound independence at once delighting and dismaying him. But he had never ceased to need her; he remembers vividly the nights of waking from nightmares to be soothed by her hand on his face, his head on her breast, hearing that infernal, eternal heartbeat echoing his own.

          Of being pursued by her perfume. Of catching sight of her in the bathtub and being silenced by the sight of her pure white flesh; how she arced upwards when the maid accidentally poured the bucket of cold over her shoulder, and how her laughter echoed up into the vaulted ceilings of the empty, cavernous house. She was the opposite of him; the other side of him, the perfect fit. He knew it now more than he knew anything; their bodies had come together as if they were made for one another.

         'When Papa comes home,' Amélie manages to articulate, 'He'll kill you.'

         This elicits only a smile of the wolfen variety, like the grins of the grey, skeletal, starving pelts that stud the countryside like tombstones. This winter has been harsh; it is too cold even for snow, instead the hoarfrost covers the ground like a prayer. Amélie remembers how François had promised to show her the frost flowers, and once, many years ago, he had. She remembers the fanning of the pale splints into all the directions of the wind, how he had plucked it from the ground and handed it to her with such tenderness – and he was capable of such tenderness – that not a single blade bent, yet when she had held it, her breath had melted it away.

           His grip on her tightens, 'And what if I kill him first? He's come between us for too long,' he brushes a long fingered hand over her upper back, over the puckered skin that runs horizontal to her spine like a second ribcage ghosted over her flesh, 'I should kill him just for this.'

           Murder is too much; Amélie raises her fists but François is stronger, he always was. For a moment they struggle, but she cannot fight him; her body is too broken, and again she sinks into his embrace. He strokes her warm hair as bright a red as autumn fields and remembers how, when she concentrates, she runs a lock of it through her lips and sometimes, she bites it. A low sigh, something akin to lament echoes in his chest.

           Again, his memories torment him incessantly, how their unloving parents had separated them, deeming their intimacy strange. Wrong. How they had blamed Amélie, little Amélie, for all their hate. He remembers the morning that she was to leave for the Parisian finishing school, and he for the 10th Chasseur-à-Cheval; how the coldness of the gardens chilled him like never before; the way her breath had seeped into his lungs.

            You shouldn't have to go! Why are they doing this François?

            I don't know, Chérie, I don't know.

            Then the moment that inexorably led to this climax, this fusing; her eyes of bleu celeste, heavenly cyan, shone with passion, both feverish anger and fear, and she moved into the circle of his arms to be comforted, as she often had been. But this was different; this was no childish return to the source of affection. Instead her lips met his with a touch at once gentle and possessive, and it was she who opened her mouth, seeking an escape from the emptiness inside. But it was he who touched her tongue with his own. It lasted brief moments, but François suddenly heard the roar of the blood in both their veins, the twin tattoo of their heartbeat, time narrowed, crystallised so the sensation was burnt into his memory.
Even when she pulled away in surprise he can remember the sensation of their lips parting slowly, unwillingly, seemingly almost to tear, as she moved out of his grasp. François put his hand to his mouth, an action mirrored by her own, and he felt sure that her eyes were as black with desire as his. Her stammering apology only sweetened the moment even as she bolted from his company and left him with no greater goodbye than the taste of her on his tongue. A taste that haunts him even now, that no amount of wine could mask.

           Disorientated, Amélie recalls the moments before he had hurt her so, when she was confused and afraid and virginal. She had taken the narrow stiletto from the sheath by her bed and held it trembling before her as he had approached, looking less like a man and more like something feral. He had not slept, she could see that in his stare, his acerbic features.

           Yet he had come closer still, advancing like some predatory being, his eyes never leaving her own. Even when he pressed her to the wall, in turn pressing the dagger against the vulnerable flesh of his breast, she could not do it. Even when he grasped her hands, pulling the blade towards him.

           Faites-le, Faites-le.

           It was like a shaft of sunshine, a silver bolt of lightning cast by God himself, and she could not use it. The knife rattled uselessly in her hand, fell, flashing, like divine intervention. But he hadn't stopped; he had knelt to retrieve the dagger, all the time brushing the side of his face down her arm like a cat, as she stood, caught in his strange sublime web.

           Now why can't you do it? It isn't all that difficult; watch.

           Raising the point to his own throat, he fitted it in the soft exposed flesh of under his jaw. He would have covered her hair, her lips in the bright arterial blood of their ancestors. Knocking the knife from his hand she cried out half in disgust, half in fear. Because she cared for him still, despite her horror, her confusion.

            As her tears slow her mind frantically reviews her past, the life that she thought she had known, sifting feverishly through the memories half seeking, half dreading what she knows she will find. It was a lie, all the feelings, all the happiness had nothing but a hollow, rotted core beneath the beautiful façade. She feels sick as François strokes her shoulders absently, consoling her, as he had done so many times before. A dark green, slimy nausea that threatens to suffocate her rises in her chest.

          'How could you?' she says, so brokenly that even with the little distance between them François must lean close enough that her lips almost touch his cheek, 'You have spoilt everything,' as she speaks the memories of her childhood flash upwards through her mind, as if she is running down a corridor lined with portraits of the past that once seemed so comforting, now their smiles appear mocking; her parents conniving and cruel. The canvas of memory warps, twisting the thoughts out of shape, tearing them from the board, fraying the edges and showing the once bright colours to be harsh and ugly in the light.

           'Don't you see, Amélie, it isn't spoilt,' he brushes the hair from the sides of her face, the glorious hair he had wanted to touch for so long, like a child drawn to the shine and the softness, 'You can't know what a relief it is, to no longer have to pretend, Amélie.' She keeps her eyes closed; she cannot bear to see him, but he adores the way her damp eyelashes cling to one another and glitter against wet skin of her cheek, 'We are free now, to go where we choose, to be who we choose,' his voice cracks a little, 'Free to love, little sister.'

            Amélie remembers how, when he had pinned her to the wooden floor, pressed this forearm against her collarbones and proceeded to tear away at her clothing that he had paused. His body was pressed against hers and she could feel every muscle, every dip and curve of him through her flimsy nightgown, the feral heat and power of him. His dark hair formed a tangled crown of thorns around them both.

            Tell me you love me.

            Frightened, she was so frightened; she thought it would make him stop. And so, gently, she told him that she did. But he did not stop. Instead, he smiled and bent his dark, feline head to hers, and pressed his mouth to hers, and she let him, because she was so afraid. In the end, the pleas, the bites and scratches, not even the acquiesce could stop him from hurting her so; she bled, staining the last rags of her fine cotton nightgown with her shame. A part of her could not believe what he was doing, and he did it slowly, savouringly, agonisingly, the hitch of his breath echoing in the hollows of her throat, not even when he bit her shoulder and snarled her name into the mess of her neck, matted with hair and sweat.

            Amélie doesn't understand, her head aches, her body aches. With a voice barbed and thin she makes for the chink in his armour, the sentence that she knows will hurt him,

           'I hate you,' In that one word she pours her hurt, her anguish, her confusion.

           The effect is immediate; the water sloshes angrily as he thrusts her away, his face closing off like shutter-barred windows to keep out the winter storms. Inscrutable cerulean eyes – far too angelic for his nature – stare at her hard, 'What did you say?'

           Her voice is stronger now, she can be just as tenacious as François; 'I hate you.'

           He strikes her sharply with the back of his hand; the blow opens up a nick in the corner of her mouth, and she feels the heat rush to that side of her face with a sting. But what she is not prepared for is the look of pain scrawled across François' features; she cannot decide if it is because he struck her, or because her words have bitten him.  He grips her upper arms, fingers leaving purplish blooms flowering on her anaemic flesh; Amélie thinks bitterly of how, in this family, they cannot express affection through the giving of roses, instead they must paint their love on each other's bodies in blood.

          'Don't ever say that to me, Amélie. Do you understand?' he pulls her close, 'It's because of you that I was sent away, because of you that this happened.'
She is still frightened; she will always be frightened, and she nods, wide eyed. François strokes a curl that has fallen across her face, then with the pad of his thumb wipes the drop of blood from the corner of her mouth and puts it to his tongue. It is this defiant side of her that captivated him so; even after they were reunited, and he was amazed by the changes to her body, by her new, restrained and balletic movements that befitted a young woman, it was this quick temper that remained enchanting. He remembers feeling relieved at the realisation that her spirit remained unbroken; he saw her strike a foxhound when it leapt up to her, dirtying her dress, with her loose glove and a detachment that left him breathless.

           'Do you love me?'

            Tell me you love me.

            There is nothing for a heartbeat, the emptiness of the house is overwhelming, deafening, and not for the first time Amélie dimly wonders where her mother is.

            'Yes.' And the most crushing, soul-destroying realisation is that it is true. She has loved him so long as a brother, she cannot hate him now.

            He holds her face almost tenderly, and brushes the tears away from her cheeks softly, his own face lit with such adoration that Amélie shuts her eyes, 'Then say it, Chérie, say it aloud.'

            She drags stagnant air into her lungs, 'Je t'aime, François…'

            The breath of his sigh fans lightly across her face, but she doesn't open her eyes. So it comes as a surprise when the warmth of his mouth envelops hers; she does not fight it, she is already dead, not even when his tongue slowly sweeps her mouth in desolation, tasting her, savouring her. Amélie cannot quite repress a shudder.

            Her lips are the colour and shape of a small pink poppy; François notices; the strange lift in the centre which gives them such fullness, the coral shade which he now knows to be the same tint as the flush of her breasts. And her taste, her taste, is the same as all those years ago, something sweeter, smoother than crème fraiche.

           He pulls away with a gasp, 'Why is it you? Why are you the one?'

           There is loss in his voice and they are silent. The bathwater has cooled almost entirely; she shivers. At this François stands and scoops her out of the cold liquid; the sun has risen higher in the sky, yet does nothing to burn off the chill.  As he wraps her tightly in the pale cotton towels, Amélie again finds her mind shutting itself off from her body. She stares intently at the scar on François' cheek; a nick virtually unnoticeable, where as a child she had scratched him out of sheer curiosity, as he dries and dresses her. She doesn't move to cover herself, there is little point now.

           'Where is Mama?'

           'Where I left her, Chérie, you needn't worry about her,' he looks at her slyly as he slides the dress the colour of vivid sea foam over her shoulders; he always loved her in green. His fingers burn a trail over her breasts, 'She was coming to take you away, Amélie, I couldn't let her do that,' on catching her distraught expression in the dressing table mirror he smiles like the crescent moon, 'I haven't killed her, Chérie, if that's what you're wondering, just hit her over the head with my water jug.'

           'Why?' it's a whisper. Though she knows, just as she knows herself. They are of one soul and there can be no secrets.

            François is dismissive; 'She found my poetry, saw the way I watched you. It's her fault, she never could leave well enough alone,' he cups her chin, looks at her with such gentleness, 'Forget her, she should never have blamed you for this.'

            The memory has carved itself into the mind of both, creating a sickly, discoloured scar. Of the day when François had come home from the hunt to find his little sister in bed, the back of her dress open, and the flesh of the shoulders split and deformed.

            Because the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children; because their father believed his daughter to be the temptress of his son.

            She was sleeping. Tears had dried strange pale streaks onto her skin. François had put a hand to her cheek, still so youthful, so soft, like the down of a small bird. And then went to find his father. François split his father's lip, their father broke François' nose. They wear the scars of their family's twisted affection on their bodies.

            Amélie can see this memory reflected in François' eyes, in the dark pit of the pupil, where her features drown.

            He lets her go, stoops to retrieve his shirt and pulls it over his head; Amélie watches the muscles of his back compress in the mirror, the deep groove that runs along his spine, the shoulder blades like jags of slate; there is such power and beauty in him. Her eyes tack back to her own reflection and she sees there is a dark, blotched mark between her slanting collarbones where François had torn the silver engagement locket from her neck and replaced it with his bitter-tasting love bite. It lies across the room where he had flung it; dirtied and languishing in the cold ashes of the fireplace, the pale lock of hair dislodged from its fastening.

           'And Albrecht?'

           'Dead in a ditch for all I care,' François is packing a trunk with clothes from both his wardrobe and hers, 'With twenty trenched gashes in his German skull. He never deserved you.'

            She looks at him with such horror but he ignores her, 'Get ready, we leave soon.'

            Perhaps in days to come, on the ship from France to Italy or America or England, she will find the courage. After he has proved himself master over her again and then lies sleeping, perhaps she will retrieve the dagger from inside her bodice and balance it above the pale exposed expanse of his chest. She will look on that face, gentle in repose as dreamy moonlight gilds it like a marble bas-relief, perhaps she will find the strength to impale him. Perhaps.

             She will put the point to his chest, and she will look at his face, summoning her hurt, her anger. She will spite that sleeping form, kneeling by him, ready. That vulnerable, damnable form.

             She will silently resheath the knife. She will lie down and cling to him as a sailor to a spar in the storm. She will succumb.

             François slips a collar of lace and pearls around Amélie's neck to hide the purplish, blistering mark of his love and drops a kiss on the delicate flesh of below the ear. Wincing, as if he had hurt her again, she twists away as his hand skims the top of her thigh.

             'Too soon?' For a moment their faces hang in the mirror, the shape of the brow, the jaw, the colour of their eyes too similar, so different. As if they have been born again.

           Taking her hand François leads her from the room, dragging the trunk through the empty mausoleum of a mansion. She follows him like a child; she is bleeding again, as though she is twelve once more and only just beginning her monthly cycle.

           It's the marquis' ball and Amélie and François are fourteen and seventeen years old, it is a time before their parents fell apart, before they slept in separate rooms, before their father took a riding crop to his fourteen year old daughter, before he beat his son unconscious for what he could not understand. They know nothing of the world. The moon hangs like a rose pearl in the sky, inky swirls of cloud curl across its face as three prospective suitors try to capture Amélie's attention; she is drowning in the cloying scent of their civet and admiration.

           'Gentlemen, you will excuse a brother's right,' from nowhere he appears; the roundness of youth has melted from his features, his shining hair pulled loosely into a velvet ribbon at the base of his neck, the right corner of his mouth lifts into an teasing expression and the scar she gave him creating a dimple in his cheek.

           With feigned regret she takes his hand and follows him to the floor. His hand is on her waist, hers on his shoulder; his dark, beautiful hair brushes her wrist occasionally and again she envies the soft luxuriance that is wasted on a boy.
'I'm not tearing you away from your admirers, am I?' he grins at her impishly and Amélie discreetly steps on his foot.

           'Actually, I must thank you, I was fit to scream,' Amélie assures him, 'They are so incredibly dull.'

           François assumes a mockingly hurt expression, 'But one of them could be your future husband, Chérie, you should show some respect.'

           Smiling serenely, Amélie twirls effortlessly beneath his outstretched arm, 'My darling, you are the only man I could ever marry.'

          'And I you,' François replies simply, lifting her lightly off her feet as the music soars. This is happiness. This is love.

Time bears them ever upwards, into a future irrevocable, irreversible.
As it destroys all things.

Description
           The light shatters and splinters in the water; sunlight streaming through torn curtains into diamond-studded liquid the consistency and warmth of blood. Coloured by blood. Streaks of red issue from the most hidden, most secret part of her. She is dimly aware of the ache, but it is nothing compared to the ache in the seat of her emotions; she cannot name it. For once the words have all run dry.

          His arms enclose her, kneeling beside the bath he drags the cloth across her vulnerable shoulders tenderly, watching the ribbons of water run between her angelic, emaciated shoulder blades. How could she know that he loathed to be touched by any other than her? Even now she cannot look at him; he frightened her, he knows, hurt her even. But this pains him too. For years her heart beat in his breast, her face haunted his dreams, his own reflection mocked him with her visage. He can't say it's not a relief to shed the mask; to tear away the fabric of propriety, exposing it not as fine silk, but as cobwebs and as ash.

          He rests his head in the smooth curve of her neck and collarbone, the bones like delicate splints of glass wrapped in warm, breathing satin. His dark hair, dishevelled from the struggle, mingles with her titian curls and he thinks again of how good she smells, of warmth and cleanliness. The steam rises off the water like sea fog to kiss the nail-scored markings on his chest, and he remembers how, when she stopped fighting, she cast her arms over her face as if she could not believe what was happening to her. He had been forced to pull her hands away to kiss that bright, mocking mouth.

          'Amélie, I love you, you know that? I love you so much,' he whispers into the youthful down of her throat, 'I'm so sorry I hurt you, but you make me mad, you made me suffer. But I forgive you,' he brings his hand to her cheek, brushing his palm against the softness, 'I promise next time I'll be gentle.'

          Is she crying? Very quietly – even now she is proud – she adds to the water the sum of her own pain. And it breaks his heart. He gathers her to his chest like a broken animal, and a part of him delights in the nearness of her, the warmth of her, her damp skin against his own; like new-borns. It is so fitting.

          'Chérie…' the childish nickname slips off his tongue easily, and in her loss, her confusion, she turns to the man who caused her pain. Slender arms wrap instinctively around his neck as she fits her whole body into the embrace.

          'François…' the name is a plea, he responds by holding her ever closer as her harpsichordal fingers entwine in his earth-coloured hair.

          He remembers how, when it was over, when he had ceased to move in her, when he had felt content, united with her ultimately, he had lain with her in the aftermath silent and motionless for what seemed like hours. Her heart had continued to beat like a wild thing in a cage as he stared at her face that had become catatonic with shock. He revelled in the satisfaction that for once, it was he who had surprised her. Then he peeled away the last vestiges of her nightdress alongside the last remnants of his self-restraint, and carried her to the bath like an invalid, while her child-like limbs attempted to cover herself.

          He holds her tightly, knows that he will never let her go now that he possesses her ultimately. He runs a thumb down the curvature of her spine as she sobs into his shoulder, 'I'm going to take you far away from here, Chérie, wherever you want to go, we'll go,' he smiles softly, 'Do you remember when we were children, I said I'd take you to Venice?'

          She nods into his shoulder, her nails dig into his arms in agitation and he welcomes the slight pain. As Amélie had grown, she had ceased to need him, her newfound independence at once delighting and dismaying him. But he had never ceased to need her; he remembers vividly the nights of waking from nightmares to be soothed by her hand on his face, his head on her breast, hearing that infernal, eternal heartbeat echoing his own.

          Of being pursued by her perfume. Of catching sight of her in the bathtub and being silenced by the sight of her pure white flesh; how she arced upwards when the maid accidentally poured the bucket of cold over her shoulder, and how her laughter echoed up into the vaulted ceilings of the empty, cavernous house. She was the opposite of him; the other side of him, the perfect fit. He knew it now more than he knew anything; their bodies had come together as if they were made for one another.

         'When Papa comes home,' Amélie manages to articulate, 'He'll kill you.'

         This elicits only a smile of the wolfen variety, like the grins of the grey, skeletal, starving pelts that stud the countryside like tombstones. This winter has been harsh; it is too cold even for snow, instead the hoarfrost covers the ground like a prayer. Amélie remembers how François had promised to show her the frost flowers, and once, many years ago, he had. She remembers the fanning of the pale splints into all the directions of the wind, how he had plucked it from the ground and handed it to her with such tenderness – and he was capable of such tenderness – that not a single blade bent, yet when she had held it, her breath had melted it away.

           His grip on her tightens, 'And what if I kill him first? He's come between us for too long,' he brushes a long fingered hand over her upper back, over the puckered skin that runs horizontal to her spine like a second ribcage ghosted over her flesh, 'I should kill him just for this.'

           Murder is too much; Amélie raises her fists but François is stronger, he always was. For a moment they struggle, but she cannot fight him; her body is too broken, and again she sinks into his embrace. He strokes her warm hair as bright a red as autumn fields and remembers how, when she concentrates, she runs a lock of it through her lips and sometimes, she bites it. A low sigh, something akin to lament echoes in his chest.

           Again, his memories torment him incessantly, how their unloving parents had separated them, deeming their intimacy strange. Wrong. How they had blamed Amélie, little Amélie, for all their hate. He remembers the morning that she was to leave for the Parisian finishing school, and he for the 10th Chasseur-à-Cheval; how the coldness of the gardens chilled him like never before; the way her breath had seeped into his lungs.

            You shouldn't have to go! Why are they doing this François?

            I don't know, Chérie, I don't know.

            Then the moment that inexorably led to this climax, this fusing; her eyes of bleu celeste, heavenly cyan, shone with passion, both feverish anger and fear, and she moved into the circle of his arms to be comforted, as she often had been. But this was different; this was no childish return to the source of affection. Instead her lips met his with a touch at once gentle and possessive, and it was she who opened her mouth, seeking an escape from the emptiness inside. But it was he who touched her tongue with his own. It lasted brief moments, but François suddenly heard the roar of the blood in both their veins, the twin tattoo of their heartbeat, time narrowed, crystallised so the sensation was burnt into his memory.
Even when she pulled away in surprise he can remember the sensation of their lips parting slowly, unwillingly, seemingly almost to tear, as she moved out of his grasp. François put his hand to his mouth, an action mirrored by her own, and he felt sure that her eyes were as black with desire as his. Her stammering apology only sweetened the moment even as she bolted from his company and left him with no greater goodbye than the taste of her on his tongue. A taste that haunts him even now, that no amount of wine could mask.

           Disorientated, Amélie recalls the moments before he had hurt her so, when she was confused and afraid and virginal. She had taken the narrow stiletto from the sheath by her bed and held it trembling before her as he had approached, looking less like a man and more like something feral. He had not slept, she could see that in his stare, his acerbic features.

           Yet he had come closer still, advancing like some predatory being, his eyes never leaving her own. Even when he pressed her to the wall, in turn pressing the dagger against the vulnerable flesh of his breast, she could not do it. Even when he grasped her hands, pulling the blade towards him.

           Faites-le, Faites-le.

           It was like a shaft of sunshine, a silver bolt of lightning cast by God himself, and she could not use it. The knife rattled uselessly in her hand, fell, flashing, like divine intervention. But he hadn't stopped; he had knelt to retrieve the dagger, all the time brushing the side of his face down her arm like a cat, as she stood, caught in his strange sublime web.

           Now why can't you do it? It isn't all that difficult; watch.

           Raising the point to his own throat, he fitted it in the soft exposed flesh of under his jaw. He would have covered her hair, her lips in the bright arterial blood of their ancestors. Knocking the knife from his hand she cried out half in disgust, half in fear. Because she cared for him still, despite her horror, her confusion.

            As her tears slow her mind frantically reviews her past, the life that she thought she had known, sifting feverishly through the memories half seeking, half dreading what she knows she will find. It was a lie, all the feelings, all the happiness had nothing but a hollow, rotted core beneath the beautiful façade. She feels sick as François strokes her shoulders absently, consoling her, as he had done so many times before. A dark green, slimy nausea that threatens to suffocate her rises in her chest.

          'How could you?' she says, so brokenly that even with the little distance between them François must lean close enough that her lips almost touch his cheek, 'You have spoilt everything,' as she speaks the memories of her childhood flash upwards through her mind, as if she is running down a corridor lined with portraits of the past that once seemed so comforting, now their smiles appear mocking; her parents conniving and cruel. The canvas of memory warps, twisting the thoughts out of shape, tearing them from the board, fraying the edges and showing the once bright colours to be harsh and ugly in the light.

           'Don't you see, Amélie, it isn't spoilt,' he brushes the hair from the sides of her face, the glorious hair he had wanted to touch for so long, like a child drawn to the shine and the softness, 'You can't know what a relief it is, to no longer have to pretend, Amélie.' She keeps her eyes closed; she cannot bear to see him, but he adores the way her damp eyelashes cling to one another and glitter against wet skin of her cheek, 'We are free now, to go where we choose, to be who we choose,' his voice cracks a little, 'Free to love, little sister.'

            Amélie remembers how, when he had pinned her to the wooden floor, pressed this forearm against her collarbones and proceeded to tear away at her clothing that he had paused. His body was pressed against hers and she could feel every muscle, every dip and curve of him through her flimsy nightgown, the feral heat and power of him. His dark hair formed a tangled crown of thorns around them both.

            Tell me you love me.

            Frightened, she was so frightened; she thought it would make him stop. And so, gently, she told him that she did. But he did not stop. Instead, he smiled and bent his dark, feline head to hers, and pressed his mouth to hers, and she let him, because she was so afraid. In the end, the pleas, the bites and scratches, not even the acquiesce could stop him from hurting her so; she bled, staining the last rags of her fine cotton nightgown with her shame. A part of her could not believe what he was doing, and he did it slowly, savouringly, agonisingly, the hitch of his breath echoing in the hollows of her throat, not even when he bit her shoulder and snarled her name into the mess of her neck, matted with hair and sweat.

            Amélie doesn't understand, her head aches, her body aches. With a voice barbed and thin she makes for the chink in his armour, the sentence that she knows will hurt him,

           'I hate you,' In that one word she pours her hurt, her anguish, her confusion.

           The effect is immediate; the water sloshes angrily as he thrusts her away, his face closing off like shutter-barred windows to keep out the winter storms. Inscrutable cerulean eyes – far too angelic for his nature – stare at her hard, 'What did you say?'

           Her voice is stronger now, she can be just as tenacious as François; 'I hate you.'

           He strikes her sharply with the back of his hand; the blow opens up a nick in the corner of her mouth, and she feels the heat rush to that side of her face with a sting. But what she is not prepared for is the look of pain scrawled across François' features; she cannot decide if it is because he struck her, or because her words have bitten him.  He grips her upper arms, fingers leaving purplish blooms flowering on her anaemic flesh; Amélie thinks bitterly of how, in this family, they cannot express affection through the giving of roses, instead they must paint their love on each other's bodies in blood.

          'Don't ever say that to me, Amélie. Do you understand?' he pulls her close, 'It's because of you that I was sent away, because of you that this happened.'
She is still frightened; she will always be frightened, and she nods, wide eyed. François strokes a curl that has fallen across her face, then with the pad of his thumb wipes the drop of blood from the corner of her mouth and puts it to his tongue. It is this defiant side of her that captivated him so; even after they were reunited, and he was amazed by the changes to her body, by her new, restrained and balletic movements that befitted a young woman, it was this quick temper that remained enchanting. He remembers feeling relieved at the realisation that her spirit remained unbroken; he saw her strike a foxhound when it leapt up to her, dirtying her dress, with her loose glove and a detachment that left him breathless.

           'Do you love me?'

            Tell me you love me.

            There is nothing for a heartbeat, the emptiness of the house is overwhelming, deafening, and not for the first time Amélie dimly wonders where her mother is.

            'Yes.' And the most crushing, soul-destroying realisation is that it is true. She has loved him so long as a brother, she cannot hate him now.

            He holds her face almost tenderly, and brushes the tears away from her cheeks softly, his own face lit with such adoration that Amélie shuts her eyes, 'Then say it, Chérie, say it aloud.'

            She drags stagnant air into her lungs, 'Je t'aime, François…'

            The breath of his sigh fans lightly across her face, but she doesn't open her eyes. So it comes as a surprise when the warmth of his mouth envelops hers; she does not fight it, she is already dead, not even when his tongue slowly sweeps her mouth in desolation, tasting her, savouring her. Amélie cannot quite repress a shudder.

            Her lips are the colour and shape of a small pink poppy; François notices; the strange lift in the centre which gives them such fullness, the coral shade which he now knows to be the same tint as the flush of her breasts. And her taste, her taste, is the same as all those years ago, something sweeter, smoother than crème fraiche.

           He pulls away with a gasp, 'Why is it you? Why are you the one?'

           There is loss in his voice and they are silent. The bathwater has cooled almost entirely; she shivers. At this François stands and scoops her out of the cold liquid; the sun has risen higher in the sky, yet does nothing to burn off the chill.  As he wraps her tightly in the pale cotton towels, Amélie again finds her mind shutting itself off from her body. She stares intently at the scar on François' cheek; a nick virtually unnoticeable, where as a child she had scratched him out of sheer curiosity, as he dries and dresses her. She doesn't move to cover herself, there is little point now.

           'Where is Mama?'

           'Where I left her, Chérie, you needn't worry about her,' he looks at her slyly as he slides the dress the colour of vivid sea foam over her shoulders; he always loved her in green. His fingers burn a trail over her breasts, 'She was coming to take you away, Amélie, I couldn't let her do that,' on catching her distraught expression in the dressing table mirror he smiles like the crescent moon, 'I haven't killed her, Chérie, if that's what you're wondering, just hit her over the head with my water jug.'

           'Why?' it's a whisper. Though she knows, just as she knows herself. They are of one soul and there can be no secrets.

            François is dismissive; 'She found my poetry, saw the way I watched you. It's her fault, she never could leave well enough alone,' he cups her chin, looks at her with such gentleness, 'Forget her, she should never have blamed you for this.'

            The memory has carved itself into the mind of both, creating a sickly, discoloured scar. Of the day when François had come home from the hunt to find his little sister in bed, the back of her dress open, and the flesh of the shoulders split and deformed.

            Because the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children; because their father believed his daughter to be the temptress of his son.

            She was sleeping. Tears had dried strange pale streaks onto her skin. François had put a hand to her cheek, still so youthful, so soft, like the down of a small bird. And then went to find his father. François split his father's lip, their father broke François' nose. They wear the scars of their family's twisted affection on their bodies.

            Amélie can see this memory reflected in François' eyes, in the dark pit of the pupil, where her features drown.

            He lets her go, stoops to retrieve his shirt and pulls it over his head; Amélie watches the muscles of his back compress in the mirror, the deep groove that runs along his spine, the shoulder blades like jags of slate; there is such power and beauty in him. Her eyes tack back to her own reflection and she sees there is a dark, blotched mark between her slanting collarbones where François had torn the silver engagement locket from her neck and replaced it with his bitter-tasting love bite. It lies across the room where he had flung it; dirtied and languishing in the cold ashes of the fireplace, the pale lock of hair dislodged from its fastening.

           'And Albrecht?'

           'Dead in a ditch for all I care,' François is packing a trunk with clothes from both his wardrobe and hers, 'With twenty trenched gashes in his German skull. He never deserved you.'

            She looks at him with such horror but he ignores her, 'Get ready, we leave soon.'

            Perhaps in days to come, on the ship from France to Italy or America or England, she will find the courage. After he has proved himself master over her again and then lies sleeping, perhaps she will retrieve the dagger from inside her bodice and balance it above the pale exposed expanse of his chest. She will look on that face, gentle in repose as dreamy moonlight gilds it like a marble bas-relief, perhaps she will find the strength to impale him. Perhaps.

             She will put the point to his chest, and she will look at his face, summoning her hurt, her anger. She will spite that sleeping form, kneeling by him, ready. That vulnerable, damnable form.

             She will silently resheath the knife. She will lie down and cling to him as a sailor to a spar in the storm. She will succumb.

             François slips a collar of lace and pearls around Amélie's neck to hide the purplish, blistering mark of his love and drops a kiss on the delicate flesh of below the ear. Wincing, as if he had hurt her again, she twists away as his hand skims the top of her thigh.

             'Too soon?' For a moment their faces hang in the mirror, the shape of the brow, the jaw, the colour of their eyes too similar, so different. As if they have been born again.

           Taking her hand François leads her from the room, dragging the trunk through the empty mausoleum of a mansion. She follows him like a child; she is bleeding again, as though she is twelve once more and only just beginning her monthly cycle.

           It's the marquis' ball and Amélie and François are fourteen and seventeen years old, it is a time before their parents fell apart, before they slept in separate rooms, before their father took a riding crop to his fourteen year old daughter, before he beat his son unconscious for what he could not understand. They know nothing of the world. The moon hangs like a rose pearl in the sky, inky swirls of cloud curl across its face as three prospective suitors try to capture Amélie's attention; she is drowning in the cloying scent of their civet and admiration.

           'Gentlemen, you will excuse a brother's right,' from nowhere he appears; the roundness of youth has melted from his features, his shining hair pulled loosely into a velvet ribbon at the base of his neck, the right corner of his mouth lifts into an teasing expression and the scar she gave him creating a dimple in his cheek.

           With feigned regret she takes his hand and follows him to the floor. His hand is on her waist, hers on his shoulder; his dark, beautiful hair brushes her wrist occasionally and again she envies the soft luxuriance that is wasted on a boy.
'I'm not tearing you away from your admirers, am I?' he grins at her impishly and Amélie discreetly steps on his foot.

           'Actually, I must thank you, I was fit to scream,' Amélie assures him, 'They are so incredibly dull.'

           François assumes a mockingly hurt expression, 'But one of them could be your future husband, Chérie, you should show some respect.'

           Smiling serenely, Amélie twirls effortlessly beneath his outstretched arm, 'My darling, you are the only man I could ever marry.'

          'And I you,' François replies simply, lifting her lightly off her feet as the music soars. This is happiness. This is love.

Time bears them ever upwards, into a future irrevocable, irreversible.
As it destroys all things.