mistress90: переводы

→“When I fainted—on the hunt—it wasn’t the first time.”

→He half turned toward me. The dying star above silhouetted his face in crimson. “What?”

→“Lucas,” I whispered, carefully pitching my voice so low that I wouldn’t disturb anyone nearby. “I have to tell you something.”

→Above us, the image zoomed closer to one star, a sluggish giant near the end of its life. It glowed red, darker than blood, and its gaseous surface rippled feverishly like the sea during a storm.

→It was wrong of me to keep looking for protection—to keep relying on Lucas to face so much of our hardships alone, or to depend on him to get my blood supply. And it was wrong for me to hide behind lies. Lucas deserved an equal partner in our fight to be together. That meant he deserved the truth.

→The lies can’t protect you any longer.

→He wants to take care of me, I thought. He wants to protect me, no matter what it costs.

→The lights dimmed around us, and the “sky” above blazed into a thousand glittering stars. Lucas and I settled back in our seats, his hand clasping mine, as the narrator began telling us about supernovas. The coral and silver of the bracelet laced around my wrist, cool and heavy. Already, it didn’t feel like some other possession I owned; it felt like a part of me. A talisman. A link between me and Lucas, just like the brooch.

→“Love you, too.”

→He slid the bracelet around my wrist. “There you go,” he said, his voice rough. “Happy birthday.”

→That was his pride at work again, but not only that. I couldn’t argue with him any longer. Instead I hugged him tightly.

→“I don’t want to hear anything about the money,” Lucas said. His face was set. “I’ll pay the guys back every cent, and I don’t care how long it takes me. But you’re my girl. You’re going to have a birthday present. Something you deserve.”

→“It’s—amazing.” The carving on this bracelet was even more delicate than on the jet brooch. Chinese dragons rippled across the silver links that held together the ovals of coral. Although I desperately wanted to slip my hand into it, I had to say, “Lucas, I love it, so much, but—”

→From his pocket he pulled out a beautiful bracelet of red coral. As I stared at it, he said, “You like it, right? I didn’t know what kind of thing you might want, so I figured this was kind of like the brooch.”

→“Do what?”

→Lucas and I took our seats. I was about to point out a funny T-shirt someone else in the crowd was wearing when Lucas said, “Better do this before it gets dark in here.”

→But one day, during an afternoon catnap, a dream intruded.

→The money he brought in from the garage wasn’t that great; Lucas worked hard, and for lots of hours on the days they called him in, but it was under the table, which meant they could pay him less than minimum wage. So far it was enough to buy our food and pay our bus fares, with a teeny bit extra, but we’d barely begun scraping together the money to repay Balthazar and Vic. I’d started looking in the newspapers for places we might rent after Vic’s family returned from Tuscany, but I couldn’t believe how expensive even the smallest apartments seemed to be. Even if Vic let us have the stuff from the attic, we’d need to buy extra furniture and more clothes and maybe a car someday. I didn’t know how we would ever manage.

→“Do these dreams mean something?” I asked.

→“Make it a week and a half. You wouldn’t want to start work next Monday, would you?”