Near us, there’s a gentle waterfall. There are no white flowers, but I take the vines of Tracey’s body and will them to leave her, and form an arch over our heads.
The vines easily slither from her arms, twist around two nearby trees, and arches. “I can make you see white flowers on them, but I’ve been controlling you.” It’s a joke, but she doesn’t laugh. Tracey watches the vines continue to make up the forms of people using help from the forest. The first, a woman with amber hair made up with browning leaves, takes the spot at Tracey’s side.
“It’s my mom,” she says.
The second person the vines form is Olar, a body made up of bark, vines, and loose grass. But unlike the leaves, dirt is used to form Olars dark hair. And a small flame makes up their eyes. Olar’s blue, her mother’s is orange. There are no words, but they nod in a way for us to continue.
“Are you doing this,” Tracey asks.
Quite taken aback myself, I shake my head.
“It’s amazing,” she marvels.
The vines still. Over our heads, the arch I started has advanced into one that belongs in a cathedral. It’s dressed with flowers galore. “Bet my mother could name all of those,” I mutter.
“She totally could.” Tracey looks over her now naked arms. “It’s weird how I’ve hated these things so much, but they’re so unique. Once, I missed you so badly, once left me to touch you. Every facet of me loves every bit of you, Nathan. Good, evil, Burdened, man. And, not once have I wanted that to change. I’ve told you over and over again, even if we were cursed, I’d choose you. If I die tomorrow, as long as I have this moment of joy, peace, and belonging with you, I’d go a very satisfied girl.”
“I couldn’t live if you died, Tracey.”
“Yes, you could, Nate. And I vow to you.” She places her hand on my chest. “I give you my heart. Not just as your mate, but as your life.”
Since the day I told Tracey about who I was, I’ve loved her. I still can’t remember everything, and while sometimes I wish I did others, it doesn’t bother me. Erase my mind a thousand times, as long as I can meet her, relearn her, see her as she views me through blinded eyes, ignoring the evidence that I’ve never been nor will I ever be good for her. And she’s right, we’re cursed, and yet every fucking time we’re choosing each other as we hope that love will somehow overcome the curse.
So to her, I vow, “I don’t love you. I don’t want you, I don’t need you or require you. I destroy you, I murder every piece of your heart and your mind, I stole your soul and willed my control over your life.”
She frowns. “There’s a but somewhere right . . . ?”
I place my finger to her lips. “I selfishly marked myself over your life. I selfishly forced you to take a risk I knew you weren’t equipped to take. And though I didn’t love you enough to stay away, to save your life, or to live for you . . . Every second chance I get, I’ll choose you. I’ll take your love you fill me with. I’ll take your wants and needs. I’ll sell my soul to stay beside you and curse myself to carry your heart. My vow to you, Tracey . . .”
She’s put most of her weight on me as I help hold her up, but it’s made it hard to look into her eyes. For my next words, I want her to see them as clearly as she hears them. So, I encourage her to take a step back and do her best for a second to hold herself up as I drop to one knee. “I did this wrong the first time.”
She chuckles.
“But, it’s never too late to humble myself before you. I vow to you, to put you first. Your life, your heart, your love. I vow to choose you, for you to live and for you to love. My vow is to love you enough for you to live regardless of what it does to me.”
She kneels in front of me, knees shaking as she squats down to the ground. “Don’t live without me.”
I grab her hand and place it on my chest. “No matter where you are in the universe, you’ll always be with me. To live is greater than to love. We’ve touched the sky, Sparks. We’ve felt every aspect of love except living. Live with me, even if it costs us distance.” I throw my hand over her mouth, cutting off her comeback. “My love for you is greater than death and distance. You’ll feel it through realms and across seas, I promise. But promise you’ll live for me. No more of this, Sparky,” I gesture toward her deteriorating body. “I’ll live for you, and I’ll love you greater than life.”
Tracey looks away from me. I don’t peek in her mind to see what she’s thinking, or even ask. She knows what I’m asking. If we can’t find a way to fix her, I don’t know what I’ll do. But I know she’ll give her life for me, knowing she’s enhancing me every day. She’ll let herself crumble away for some ignorant reason, when she knows she deserves life. I hate that she loves me so much.
It’s because of the curse. Maybe . . .
The curse on our lives made it destined for her to give herself for me. Like my beast asked her that night, and she will. Blindly. Tracey would pull a Juliet on me if I blinked too long, and I don’t want that. So, I make myself a promise. It’s me over her. If I have to blast a pearl-glazed bullet through my skull, I will.
I’ve stolen her smile. Regret pains her gaze and fills her eyes with warm tears. I steal her line, “Hate me for loving you, Sparky.”
Slowly, she shakes her head. “I’ve lived a life without you, and I don’t want to do it again. I prefer this sickness to kill me than to be torn away from you again.”
“If this shit kills you, Sparks. You will be torn away from me. Your entire heart will surrender to me and I’ll live on, being some monster who doesn’t give a damn about this world. I’ll let my darkness rule over me and allow this world to have its way because the only thing worth living for is gone. I’m not asking the impossible, Sparks. I’m just asking you to choose life over love.”
“They go hand-in-hand, Nate. Love life’s loves, and my life is yours. But,” she drags, voice hoarse, “I’ll live you for. Always have.”
“Always will?”
She nods.
I stand with her rising with me, and we sway to the music.
An invisible barrier forms around her, preventing me from pushing my strength to her. The only thing I can share is the hearing ability.
She collapses, and I realize why I can’t share my abilities. Giving them away weakens me, and the curse doesn’t want me weak. It wants me to be the Seeing of the Death, so sucking away my mate—my wife—is how it does that. Any Burdened Sephlem, once bound to their significant other, would snap at the loss of their mate, especially if they were cursed to live without them. Not only is this curse purposely killing my mate and giving me what’s left of her, but it’s plan is to further the pain, making the impossible possible. The man living without the woman.
I drop with Tracey, and we sit. She rests her head against my chest, wheezing as she breathes. Burying my realization, I rest with her.
The music stops, and the sun’s lowering. Tracey sleeps, and I carry her back to the boat.
After I row us back to land, I sit and stare at her sleeping frame. Dark circles stain her eyes, she’s lost her color, and she’s lost the weight in her cheeks—in her entire body. It’s all happening too fast. Cancer doesn’t even move this fast . . . Or does it? Because this cancer called Nathan is deteriorating the life of Tracey as we breathe.
From the bag, I grab the hourglass I’ve been keeping near me, unsure of what it does. Chislon, before we left their world, mentioned her time being equal to that left in this device.
I bring it before my eyes, measuring the amount of sand versus time remaining. Exiting the boat, I stand over the rocks. Hourglass high over my head, I thrash it toward the ground, and it leaves my hand and crashes. Glass, wood, and sand going everywhere. A scream follows the break of glass, multiple screams and moans. It remains on the rock, shattered, soon washed away by the tide.
I look to Tracey, hoping she’s better.
She’s not. It did nothing.
I did nothing but destroy a paperweight, a decorative piece, thinking it wa
s somehow tied into my wife’s life. The hell was the point of that pointless object but to pose as another distraction?
I look back to its direction, understanding. Choices . . . Had I chosen the All-Seeing of Death, it likely would’ve held weight, keeping time of other’s lives, providing me a place to reserve souls as Amelia does with her fountain. But, because I opted out, it means nothing.
Crash This Train
Nathan
I’m on my knees, eye level with Tracey on the bed, trying to wake her up. She’s breathing, but dead to the world, still.
“Come on, Sparky. Please wake up,” I beg. We’re closing in on twenty hours and she’s not twitched or spoken a word. I tap into her for the fifty-sixth time, and she’s felt the same—perfectly fine. “What’s wrong with you, and how do I fix it?” I lay my head in front of hers and push my knuckles across her flushed cheek. “How on earth do I fix you?”
I’ve been at my best, and I’m hating myself for it. I’ve been trying to take on her pain. Since it doesn’t want to go away, let me have it, and she can have my strength. All of it!
Dammit! I could defeat the entire world, show every doubter that Burdened Sephlems can genuinely love someone more than they love themselves, and it would all be for nothing. Nothing I do is ever enough.
My Burdened surfaces, requesting full control. I decline, explaining I’m not leaving here until she wakes up, chill out.
He snatches the control. Seizing Tracey by her neck, he draws her close and lightly places our lips to hers. Tracey breathes and her eyes flutter. “Hmm?” she hums.
The fuck kind of Disney prince and princess shit was that?
He smacks me with a memory from something it saw on TV.
I shake my head, unable to fathom when it grew a heart and started being romantic. Granted, it worked.
Tracey’s eyes open into thin slits.
“Hey, beautiful. Are you feeling any better?” I ask.
Tracey nods, but she doesn’t. I don’t know why I asked. She’s weaker than ever. “I’m going to get us some answers. I won’t kill you, I promise.”
She passes out again. I kiss her forehead.
Chislon should be able to help me out. There’s always another way. There’s always been another way.
I find an entryway to the other realm and will an entrance. Space before me waves out like a calm ocean and gives way for me to step through it. I enter and it seals closed behind me. The sky’s a bit brighter, the darkness that once washed the land in sorrow has lifted. It’s only been a couple of weeks since we left and things have definitely changed. Though with caution, the humans stroll in the day, cleaning their streets and reconstructing what they can of their homes. But they take turns, neither of them staying outside for more than five to ten minutes at a time.
As I walk the streets, the intentions of people nearby sink down on me. They crave a safer land where they don’t fear someone will come after them. They only spend so much time outside because they don’t want to become familiar with the Qualms.
The Qualms are very present, taking the human’s place in fear.
“They are not this way all the time,” a lady says, who’s coming up beside me.
I drop my gaze.
She comes just to my elbow and looks up at me through gray-haired bangs that brush her lashes. “This is why they want for you to stay. Without you here, they’re tormenting. And since those from your world fled back here, it’s only a matter of time before they’re ruling over our land again. We’re not asking you to work magic and somehow get rid of them all. We need you to dominate over them and set barriers and lines they can’t cross. We’re only asking you to stay here, care about us the way you cared for your homeland. Take down those who won’t stand down, and scatter those to darkness who want to remain alive. It’s why you were born, Knight. To protect us.”
It took zero effort to rid our world of the Qualms. My presence, alone, sent them scattering. And those who didn’t want to leave, she’s right, they met a death they can’t come back from. For those that resided within someone or something were the hardest. It was here that my ability kicked in. Control . . .
As I would insert myself in someone’s mind, forcing my way into their thoughts, it was the same, but easier for me and painless for them. Simply locking eyes with my victim, finding the direction of their intentions and aspirations, I conform them to my own, as I would unfold a sheet of paper and then fold it back in the opposite direction.
A single flip of direction and their will conforms to mine. I didn’t blink or snap, I just wanted it to, and it happened as I wanted. The Qualm left the body, and for those humans that still resided, lost in the far part of their mind, with a slight hitch of that control, I drew them forward, all by my thoughts. Seconds is all it took; for groups or single individuals. Towns or one home. Everything was back to normal in a slow blink of an eye.
All but one thing.
I place my hand on the lady’s shoulder. She bows, and I stop her. “None of that, please. I’m not that guy. I mean, I am that guy, but I’m not that guy. What I mean is, I don’t want people bowing down to me, and praising me. I don’t want followers or constituents. I don’t want to be a savior to a world I know nothing about. Hell, I don’t want to be a savior to the world I know. I don’t mind helping and saving, and being there. I’ve done that for my family for my entire life. I just don’t have much family left.”
“Yes, you do,” she cuts in and points to more people coming from the sewers, alleys, and other places they hoarded. “You have an even greater family now. People that love you for who you are, what you’ve done.” Taking my arm, she pulls me with her to a small home, one of the cleanest of this neighborhood. “What do you want? How can someone with such greatness be so sad?”
We sit on the steps of her porch. “I am a Sephlem. My kind are created to be a part of someone else. Everything we are is created for this person. For me.”
“It’s the young lady you are always with. But she’s missing today.”
I prop my elbows up on my knees and force my hands through my hair. “She is because she’s incredibly sick.”
“Tell me more about how you are created for her.”
“Sephlems are monogamous beings. We’re mated to others whose heartbeat matches our own. For me, I’m the worst of my kind, rare to mate, but when we do, it’s trying. It’s hard to remain mated, or alive. But my mate and I, we’ve literally stood against the tests of time. But, fate . . . It destined me to be the man in your eyes. A Knight. We were bound within days; it’s a one times one equals one kind of thing. I breathed on her breath, saw through her eyes, felt her atoms flow through my body. When her blood rushed, so did mine. When her heart fluttered, mine did too. All because I no longer had one and mine was replaced by hers.”
“How’s that work?” The lady shifts on the step to better face me. “Her heart is in you?”
“It is. It’s how our mating is sealed. And now we’ve gotten everything we’ve wanted, and I’m stealing it back from her.”
“But you’ve done that from the beginning. Stolen from her.”
Her statement grabs me by the neck and chokes me for longer than a second. “I suppose you’re right. I knew the outcome, and I gave in. Maybe I took advantage of the joy. The hope. Her wishes. My wishes . . . I murdered us a long time ago. Did exactly what she asked me not to do.”
“Did you know all this would happen?”
“No. But they warned me it could.”
“They warned that you would kill the woman you are bound to?”
“No,” I blurt.
“Then why are you angry with yourself? It is sad, very sad that this is happening to you. And I’m sorry to see you’re in pain. What are you doing to change it?”
Change it? I haven’t even figured out how I’m causing it. I came here to find Chislon and see if he could tell me anything. But, by the way he dispersed the other day, it didn’t appear he’d be willing to help. He us
ed us like everyone else.
“If this is your last day, would you care to spend it joyously, together? Or moping around here in search of answers no one here can help provide you. Don’t let your limited time steal your display of love, Knight. If you really love her, and I mean really love her, you’ll find a way to save her. It’s in your blood. To save.”
I snort, rising. “Thanks.”
“Be safe out there.”
I leave her porch to head back. The Qualm who stared at me with a promise, I feel it around, somewhere, eyeing me again. I sense it. But I can’t see it.
With the help of the ability I stole from Tracey, her sight, I perceive it as though I’m looking it dead in its eyes. Its expression wipes clean, as it’s shocked I’ve invaded its sight. “You or any of your friends hurt these people, you’ll have me to answer to.”
It disperses and finds the nearest darkness to accompany.
I’m faced with options again. It’s one or the other, and my Burdened flashes a brilliant thought in my mind.
I know how to save Tracey!
I Was Made For Loving You
Tracey
“Hey,” comes softly, with a gentle stroke against my cheek. My lashes flutter and the pain from the stretch of the skin heavily brings on my consciousness. The ache in my cheeks from my smile is even worse, but the sight I lay my gaze on is worth the pain. “I’ve been trying to wake you for the past four hours. You scared the shit out of me.” Nathan sighs and falls back on his butt. He strokes my knee. “You okay?”
I croak, “Yes.” But no. I’ve not been okay for days. “What are we doing today?”
“Maybe you should hang out here. I’m going to the other realm and to check on something.”
My bones feel like metal grinding against rusty joints as I’m trying to sit up. My flesh burns as it stretches over the deteriorating bones and aching muscles. I hold in my cough. “Just because I’m not about to fight you on this, doesn’t mean you’re right.”
Finite: A Dark Paranormal Romance (The Sephlem Trials Book 4) Page 41