Chapter Text
Grace met Alex at a party in a house belonging to a friend of a friend. The bass was thrumming through her body and the buzz of the lurid pink drinks made it hard to concentrate. Which was her excuse for failing to click that she was being introduced to her soulmate. She missed the name, and just saw a cute upperclassman who managed to smile in her eyes rather than leer at her chest.
He led her onto the crowded dancefloor and she was charmed by his attempt to actually properly dance rather than writhe like every other person in the darkened room. After a while they moved to the porch and made out.
He tasted like red wine rather than the cheap sweet alcopops she had been drinking. He called an Uber like a sensible adult rather than drive impaired. And he lived off campus, in an apartment where not a single item that looked like it had come from a kerb.
She was slightly giddy and she patted a wooden table. ‘Is this real fucking oak?’
Alex shrugged. ‘I have no fucking idea.’
He lifted her onto the table and they exchanged messy kisses.
Grace kicked off her shoes, and they headed to his bedroom which was just as classy as the rest of the apartment. There was a huge bed with dark linen that smelled great.
Grace leapt on it and laughed. She grabbed his shoulders and pulled him towards her.
&&&&
When she woke up, several hours later, Alex was stroking her wrist, right over her mark. Alex looked at her with glowing amazement, apparently more entranced than before.
She went to kiss him but he made a stop gesture. ‘Let me show you my driver’s licence,’ he said.
‘I can tell you are over 18,’ she laughed.
‘That’s not it.’ He reached to the floor and pulled his wallet from his abandoned trousers. He fumbled until he pulled out his ID.
‘Alex Le Domas?’ she whispered.
He stroked her wrist again, and she knew he was touching
the messy lettering – LE DOMAS.
‘Oh,’ she said, and she reached for his hands. On his wrist was written GRACE.
Grace burst into tears and Alex hugged her. ‘We are meant to be together,’ he said into her hair.
Grace tried to tell him how much this meat to her – how her parents had died, the foster system, the loneliness, the need to be with someone, the need for a new family.
Alex’s own voice babbled back – much less calm than before – how he was estranged from his family, how he needed to find something else, something better, some kind of grace.
Their voices overlapped and then were lost in kisses.
&&&&
Grace had moved in with Alex within a week. It just made sense – they were together all the time anyway, and they were going to form a new family together.
She was sure DOMAS was related to DOMUS meaning a home, a hearth, a family, all the things she wanted. This amused Alex.
‘Maybe,’ Alex said, ‘Or maybe the Spanish for a break in.’
She swatted his arm. ‘Or maybe I am breaking into a family.’
Although, frustratingly, Alex was always trying to break away from his family.
He was quite happy with their life in the apartment, spending time with friends, happy to watch movies, hang out, though not, oddly, to play board games. But he was resistant to establishing a new family. She had decided to stop arguing for a child and to start with something small, a dog and an introduction to his siblings.
Alex went to quarterly business meetings which seemed like the weirdest way a person could possibly interact with their family, but apparently his clan owned a company – or several companies – and the shareholder meetings were just big family gatherings.
‘I could come?’ she suggested in their second year together.
‘You’d be bored.’
‘Not to the business meeting,’ she clarified, ‘Just to say hello. Maybe dinner?’
‘They are not good people…’ He sighed.
‘I just want to see where you came from. But if you want to wait for us to meet later, I understand. I’ll just stay home and keep company with Fluffy.’ She dropped a kiss on the dog’s head.
&&&&
Grace sometimes felt that she was getting by on snippets.
Sometimes his sister rang, and if Alex was not there Grace was always more than happy to talk to Emilie. She seemed like a ditz, but a light-hearted one. She was always happy to burble on about her children, her husband, their holidays, their relationship.
‘Of course I’m a blank – not like you and Alex, destined, so romantic – and I think that’s for the best. It meant Fitch and I were free of the expectations that soulmates have. I mean you guys are pretty much obliged to stay together, no matter how different you are.’
‘So Fitch is a blank too?’
‘Yes, and both the kids. I think that makes it so much simpler, doesn’t it? Because they don’t have to spend their time looking for the right person – it could just be anyone who is the right sort.’
Grace was getting good at ignoring throw-away comments like that.
‘And your parents?’
‘Oh they are soulmates, though of course Daddy’s says MONEY as well. But, you know, that’s quite common among people with money… Charity’s mark is similar too, you know.’
‘Oh and….’
‘And you would not believe what Rupert Murdoch’s fourth wife’s said…’
&&&&
Quite often his mother would call and Alex would have short, quiet conversations with her before handing the phone over to Grace. She even got Becky to send through some photos of Alex when he was a kid, looking cute with his arm thrown over his brother.
And very occasionally, late at night, he would get drunken phone calls. Those calls never went well – Alex would take them in another room and she could hear his voice getting more and more tense.
‘No, no…. D, you are the one who needs to listen to me. No, D, just try to see it my way.’
When he had finished, Alex took a long while to return to the lounge.
She perched on the arm of the couch, and tried to ask the most innocuous question ever. ‘D?’
‘Daniel, my brother.’
‘I would love to talk to him.’
‘He was just telling me how I should break up with you.’
‘Maybe not then.’
&&&&
Grace knew Alex’s family had had her investigated. They had money and they were checking to see if she was a gold-digger or a mark-faker.
‘It’s fine,’ she told Alex. ‘I know what the detective will find. My parents’ marriage certificate, my birth certificate, the registration of my mark, their death certificates. And it will give them comfort.’
Alex kissed her cheek. ‘I am glad you are OK with it – it’s exactly the sort of thing my family would do. It’s why we’re not close.’
‘Well, Emilie told me that Daniel’s wife is… you know… a bit obsessed with money.’
‘That woman’s mark literally reads CA$H.’
‘So their concerns are understandable.’
‘Daniel should never have married her.’
‘It does seem like an odd choice?’ she probed delicately.
‘Daniel never wants to be happy,’ Alex said, and Grace did not know what she could say in response.
&&&&
When Grace finally met her in-laws, she was thrilled. So much so that she did not think about the fact that when she walked into the fancy restaurant she asked for the ‘Le Domas booking’. In retrospect, it was so bitterly clear. They all had the name. All of them.
Including Alex’s drunken brother who leered at her wrist with the messy LE DOMAS, so unlike Alex’s normal style, and told her that she was too good for his brother.
Grace smiled, exchanged air kisses with her future mother-in-law. Becky actually looked happy to meet her, and patted the chair next to her.
‘I’m so pleased that you have brought him back to us.’
Grace focussed on that and chose to ignore the smothered disagreement between Alex and his brother.
When their muttered argument got too loud, Emilie sighed. ‘You shouldn’t be arguing, dumbass. You should totally be introducing us to your fiancé. Come on, G, tell us how you met.’
Grace rescued Alex from having to explain the original drunken hookup. ‘Your nickname is G? What like Great Alexander the Great?’
‘No, like a matched set.’ Emilie pointed to Alex’s wrist ‘Grace, see, G.’
Emilie turned to Daniel and pointed to his wrist, ‘And Disgrace.’
Daniel waved languidly and she could see that he did indeed have DISGRACE written down his arm.
Grace flinched. What a terrible misfortune to be born with that. No wonder Daniel was a fuck up, with a self-fulfilling prophecy like that written into his very flesh.
It did not occur to her that a DISGRACE was still a form of GRACE.
&&&&
When they were taking the wedding photos, Grace was forced to stand awkwardly by her brother-in-law. The photographer urged them to stand closer. ‘Smile, smile please. The more natural the better.’
Grace tried to smile.
‘There’s still time to leave, you know,’ Daniel muttered, ‘You are much too good for him…. And the two of you don’t seem like you have a bunch in common.’
Grace brought her hand up to her face so her wrist was facing the photographer.
‘Lovely,’ he called, snapping madly.
‘You don’t belong in this family. I mean that as a compliment.’
Through gritted teeth, Grace repeated, ‘But I do, Daniel. I really do. It’s literally written on my skin.’
The photographer called out again, ‘Just one more big smile!’
&&&&
The wedding was a blur and the evening was a nightmare. Grace was hunted. Grace was betrayed. Grace’s husband had lied to her and lied to her and lied to her throughout their entire relationship, and then had willingly endangered her life.
Emilie, who she had thought was some kind of friend, blew the head off a maid on the off-chance it was her. Becky, who had kissed her and welcomed her to the family only hours before, chased her and told her that her death was necessary. And Tony, who she had never really liked, wanted to stab her and throw her body in a pit. A pit where they kept other bodies.
Daniel tried to help her, inefficient and conflicted but at least not homicidal.
‘I knew you’d help me.’
‘I didn’t. All I knew was at some point someone had to burn it all down, and it might as well be the family disgrace.’
He was leading her towards an exit when they were confronted by Charity in the main hall.
Daniel made a sudden leap to heroic and lunged in front of Grace.
Charity cocked her gun. ‘Get out of the way!’
‘Charity,’ he appealed.
‘You really are a fucking disgrace! You don’t even care if we all die!’
‘You don’t have to…’
Charity shot him in the neck, her own husband.
Grace grabbed the gun off Charity and fired it point blank into her vapid face, and then turned to Daniel who was bleeding out on the floor.
‘Daniel! Daniel, Daniel.’
‘Go,’ he said. These were probably his last words and he was still trying to help her.
‘Thank you.’
‘You are a good person,’ she said earnestly, ‘Better than you know, better than this shitty family deserves.’
‘Not good enough…’ he said.
She took his hand, sitting on the bloody marble. As she watched his breath hitched and then stopped.
The soul mark on his hand faded.
And the soul mark on her hand faded.
She stared at it blankly.
She sat in the puddle of death until Alex and Fitch found her and hauled her back to be sacrificed.
&&&&
While the Le Domas family assembled, Grace considered her situation. She had so fundamentally misunderstood her life but it was all clear now.
Her soul mate was a LE DOMAS. There were many Le Domases. Alex was not her soul mate.
In retrospect, this made perfect sense.
He had been looking for a person that would reinforce his alienation and would lead him away from his psychotic family. His idea of grace was pretty different from hers, because she had crazily been tugging him back towards them.
Daniel, though, was already a disgrace to his family and had become even more of a disgrace because he had chosen her. He had chosen her.
Alex went to tie her hands. He paused as he saw that her soul mark was faded.
‘That’s right, you son of a bitch!’ she spat out. ‘It was never you! It never would be! As if you deserved a single good thing, when you did this, you asshole.’
He recoiled but the knife was within her grasp. She stabbed his shoulder and then ran to the far side of the room.
She retreated to the corner, in a frenzy, covered in blood. Her blood and Daniel’s blood. She screamed at the Le Domas family. She threatened them with the knife every time that they moved.
And eventually dawn came and they died. She had won. She was the last one standing, even as the whole house burned down behind her.
She sat on the stairs where only the day before she had been photographed with Daniel, and she cried.