by Anna Santos
“Okay.”
I had to agree. He had compelling arguments, and I had nowhere else to go. At the same time, I didn’t want to be away from him.
Chapter SEVEN
CEDRIC
My feelings were an enigma to me. What should I be feeling? It was as if I was in a dream, a confusing one, where all that I believed and expected was put to the test. Everything was shattering into little pieces of sadness and distress. I was confused, but, at the same time, a light lurked inside my mind and heart. There was a hidden yearning, looking to escape my rational thoughts and my determination to control my feelings and my desires.
Maybe I failed to be the best that I could be to Aria. I had big dreams, big plans for us, the moment I knew we were meant to be. Somewhere along the way, I lost myself, and I changed. I hadn’t experienced intense feelings for decades after the curse was activated. I should have been more understanding and realized that Aria was just a young girl. She needed to mature.
I wasn’t reasonable enough to give her what she needed. I wasn’t even sure of what that was. How could a girl decline everything I had to offer her? She would be my queen and my other half. I would save her soul, and she would have wings and incredible powers. Why give up all of that to become human? A simple human who would go to Hell if her soul-mate would fail to fix their bond.
Philippe wasn’t the most suited to have Aria. He was a deceiving vampire, a…monster. Why would I give her to him willingly when she could be mine forever? Why would I think that she would choose him over me? Philippe was ruthless. At least, I thought he was. He changed…for her. Love can change someone, apparently. I changed, but not for the better. I let my feelings get the best of me. I let my fears poison my heart. Even if I did everything in my power to keep Aria safe, I had isolated her from what she used to know. I should have taken things slower. I should have let our feelings grow deeper and shouldn’t have lied and kept secrets from her. My mate wasn’t another one of my royal subjects. Yet I had pressured her and failed to see her side, to understand her doubts and fears.
Nevertheless, even if I didn’t like the idea, the fact was that Philippe was her other half. They were meant to be, despite what he had done. He regretted his mistake. I should have freed Aria the moment she became captivated by him; the moment she told me that she was having doubts. We should have talked, so I could explain that she had a choice, and I could free her from our bond. I didn’t because I wanted her for myself, no matter the risks. I thought I could make her forget him, cut her ties with her old self, and create a new Aria, my Aria, my angel, and my queen.
What I thought was no longer important. She had made her choice, and I must respect it. She may not want to be mine, but she deserves to be happy. Aria is the kindest person, and she has a big heart. I hoped Philippe wouldn’t destroy that and twist her soul with his thirst for power and inability to feel.
He has changed. The Vampire King was different from what he was before. He no longer seemed mad at the world. Still, I’m not a fan of his. How could I be? He was a murderer and a vampire. Aria was too good for him.
Pondering about it, I was the one who seemed mad at the world, feeling cheated by the angels, who bound me to Aria, and deceived by my faith and my curse. I felt trapped by my duties to my subjects, my crown and the necessity to give the angels and gargoyles a queen and an heir. My heart that experienced desire, grief, happiness, love, and hate had lied to me. I should be wiser and not make rash decisions. My reckless heart clouded my judgment and made me fear the loneliness of the years that come.
I didn’t just hurt Aria with my inability to listen. I hurt myself and Josephine with my lack of trust. I didn’t want her to hate me and think that I wasn’t going to be true to my word. As much as it killed me, I needed to let her go and choose. Above all, I needed her to understand my reasons. My egocentric reasons to keep her in my dungeon. I respected and liked her. She was an amazing and beautiful being who made me feel understood.
I wanted to have her friendship back. I didn’t want her to flirt with the other guys and ignore me. I needed her forgiveness, and, for that, I needed her to listen to what I had to say. Even if I had to grab her against her will and take her to somewhere where she couldn’t ignore me.
Philippe wanted to take care of Aria, and she seemed to want to stay with him. He could protect her, and Kayden was behind magical bars, unable to escape my prison. I had one opportunity to reason with Josephine and hope that she would understand why I did what I did.
As for the idea that Aria had that I was falling for Jo, it was absurd. Jo and I were beyond impossible. Humans had a tendency to sugarcoat things and see solutions where there were none. Gargoyles and angels may be magic but not God. We didn’t choose whom to love.
In any other circumstance, in any other destiny, some other life, if I wasn’t a gargoyle, I could mistake what I was feeling for Jo for…not love as deep as I should feel for my mate, but attraction, fascination. She was gorgeous and enthralling, without a doubt.
I wasn’t going to let the opportunity to speak to her slip through my fingers. Kayden could wait. Therefore, I grabbed Jo’s arm before she could escape, and we teleported to my father’s office in my realm, and I prayed for the best.
“If you don’t let me go right now, I’m going to be extremely mad and slap you,” Jo warned me, pushing me back, so I would stop touching her.
Her eyes were black, and her vampire teeth were showing.
Looking around, she questioned with shallow breathing, “Where are we?”
“My palace,” I mumbled as I kept a safe distance.
“What the hell! Seriously, couldn’t you take me somewhere farther than this?”
“I need to talk to you. After, I’ll take you wherever you want,” I explained to her, aware that she was even madder than before.
She was probably thinking that I was going to keep her here against her will. It wasn’t such a bad idea, but it hadn’t been a rational teleport. My mind thought about the safest place to have her scream at me and where she would be incapable of leaving before I could explain myself to her. That was the best solution. No one would hear us, and no one would interrupt us. She was trapped here with me.
“I don’t want to talk to you…ever,” she muttered, with animosity in her voice.
My heart fluttered with sadness. I didn’t want her to hate me. “I need to explain myself to you.”
She folded her arms and glared away. “I don’t want your explanations.”
“Come on, Josephine.” I stepped forward with begging eyes. “We are friends.” I put my hands on her arms and searched for her gaze.
She pulled herself away from me as she ordered, “Don’t touch me.”
“I just want to talk,” I explained, raising my hands to show her that I wasn’t going to hurt her.
“We aren’t friends. Friends don’t send each other to the dungeons.”
I sighed deeply as I ruffled my hair. “It was a rash decision.”
“You think!”
I knew she was being sarcastic, but I nodded anyway. “Give me five minutes to explain myself to you.”
“You don’t need to waste your time with me, a freaking vampire. Someone you could never trust.”
I deserved that. I knew I did.
“I said that without thinking. Please sit down.” I motioned to her, showing her the chair.
She didn’t move.
I sat first and waited for her to trust me. She walked to the seat cautiously with a serious face and cold eyes. She sat down, gracefully. My eyes lingered on her face, noticing the red lipstick and the dark eyeshadow. She looked as stunning as ever. I wasn’t even aware that I was quietly staring at her until she cleared her throat.
“What stupid excuse will you give me for what you did to me?” she questioned as she folded her legs and rested her hands on her knee.
I felt silly. It was a pathetic excuse. I didn’t know what I was thinking. “I was a jerk,” I mumbled. �
��I’m sorry.”
Arching an eyebrow, she probed, “What are you sorry for?”
I pulled my chair closer to hers and noticed how she recoiled. She didn’t want me near her. Maybe she was afraid of me. That made me feel even worse.
“I’m sorry for…arresting you and sending you to my dungeon.”
She looked at me for what seemed like ages. It was a pathetic attempt at an excuse. I was an idiot. Her eyes intimidated me, though. She appeared unreachable and cold. It didn’t seem like the cheerful and reasonable Jo I grew to like.
“Okay. I have to leave. I’m going to…” She got up and looked around, uncomfortable.
I rose to my feet. “Does that mean you forgive me?”
“Sure. Now, take me home.”
“Aren’t you mad at me anymore?” It sounded too easy.
Jo clenched her jaw as her eyes narrowed. “Stop staring at me with those puppy eyes and take me home.”
“I want us to go back to being friends.”
“That ship has sailed, Cedric.” She stepped closer. “You tried to kill Philippe and locked me in your dungeon when I was nothing but friendly and helpful to you,” she complained, bursting out her frustration. “I shouldn’t be feeling sorry for you.”
“And why are you feeling sorry for me?”
“Aria dumped you!”
“She did,” I confirmed.
They had plenty of time to talk about it while we were chasing Kayden around the town and the sewers. Aria must have told her everything that happened between us and that she was in love with Philippe.
Fisting my hands, I muttered, “You don’t need to feel sorry for me. I don’t want your pity.”
“It was all your fault.”
I glared at her. “How was that my fault? Care to explain?”
“What did you expect?” It was a rhetorical question because she continued saying, “In the short time that we talked in her bedroom, she couldn’t feel anything but worry about what you would do while complaining about how stubborn and unreasonable you were. You lied to her about your curse. You gave her the responsibility of your death if she fell in love with Philippe and wouldn’t be able to love you enough to save you. You…treat others as if they are crap or one of your minions to boss around. You don’t listen to anyone’s opinion, and you hate vampires because of what one of us supposedly did to your parents and your sister.”
“You have no right to talk about what happened to my family,” I said, rattled by her mention of them.
She stood her ground as she faced me. “I have the right to talk about what I bloody want. You aren’t the boss of me, and you are going to listen even if you don’t want to. You were the one who brought me here against my will.” Pointing the finger at me, she poked my chest. “You were the jerk who sent me to the dungeons and dismissed my hard work to convince the other vampire leaders to help us against the specters’ intentions. You are an egocentric bully of vampires.”
“Vampires are no saints,” I protested. She was overreacting. Women often did that.
“Humans, angels, and alike are no saints, either,” she argued with me, leveling her voice. “You are just a biased angel who judges everybody by the mistakes that someone else did. Philippe isn’t the one who killed your parents and your sister. It was Maurice, not Philippe. Philippe wasn’t even in Paris when that happened!”
“That bastard tricked my sister to fall in love with him. Maurice misled my parents to think that he had true feelings for her and sent them into a trap to be killed by a bomb. He killed my sister and my family,” I clarified. “For generations, we were led to believe that vampires were deceiving and evil. My dad chose to please my sister. He thought that it would be good to forge an alliance with the vampires by letting their love happen. It was sort of a Romeo and Juliette romance, and we all know how those two ended up. My dad didn’t want to lose his daughter. She was willing to run away to stay with him. I didn’t want to lose my sister. So, we trusted that vampire with our lives, and he killed my family. I wasn’t killed because I was late for dinner. If I was there, I would have died with them and their bodyguards. It was all a trick to end our lives. He didn’t love Lilly. He didn’t care about her. How could she know? She wasn’t old enough to kiss him and understand if their love was true or not. He tricked us. He had rejected his soul-mate, so he could be with a gargoyle girl. He seduced Lilly with a purpose. It was all an elaborated scheme…a lie.”
Jo listened to my version of the events, quietly, with caring eyes.
I breathed deep and regretted speaking so loudly and with so much anger. It wasn’t her fault. I didn’t even know why I let myself remember that about my past. My emotions were enhanced now that I was an angel. My feelings were all over the place. Everything felt deeper and harder to me now. But it wasn’t her fault. Jo was innocent. She was the sweetest and brightest vampire woman I had ever thought existed in the world. She wasn’t trying to deceive anyone. Jo knew how painful it was to be deceived.
Looking into her shiny eyes, I noticed the compassion she had for me.
“You were a young boy. You shouldn’t have had to experience that. Still, other people experience that and worse in their lives. They survive, and they don’t blame an entire race for the wrongs of one person. I don’t hate humans and, before I was a vampire, some humans did me a lot of wrongs. My family was killed because they dared to oppose the king. I was taken to the palace where I had to endure a lot of things to survive. Pretty women were…abused and enslaved to be mistresses of some royal family member… I don’t want to talk about it. But that doesn’t make me hate humans. Do you understand me?”
By then, my heart had stopped beating. I was caught by her shaky and emotional words about her past.
I moved my hand to grab hers. She was trembling. The memories still hurt her. Jo looked away. Vampires weren’t so coldhearted, either. She wasn’t. There were a lot of emotions inside of her. She had a kind soul, even after what had happened to her during her mortal life. I couldn’t help but admire how strong she was.
“Don’t you dare pity me,” she warned me, pulling her hand away from mine.
My heart was stinging inside my chest. Jo turned around, breathed deeply, and ran her fingers through her long and shiny hair.
“I want to rest. I’m tired, and your five minutes are up. I don’t wish to speak to you anymore. I’ve heard your apologies, and I’d rather forget about your existence and carry on with my decision of…”
“Give your life in exchange for another.” I tried to complete her sentence, feeling hurt by her cold words regarding the time we spent together. Am I that unimportant to her?
Turning around and looking somewhere behind me, she said, “Yes. Time is running out. Tomorrow, I’ll have to be in front of Oliver’s statue and recite the spell to exchange places.” Focusing her gaze on me, she asked, “Are you going to be true to your word and allow me to come here?”
Her words angered me. “And if I don’t want you to save Oliver?”
She stared at me in confusion. Why would she want to give up her life for a guy who couldn’t give her anything? Why couldn’t she stay alive to… I had no idea why I was so enraged by her stubbornness in dying for Oliver.
Jo’s voice quivered. “Why wouldn’t you want that?”
“For one, you are my friend, and I don’t want to lose you,” I told her the truth.
She stepped back, turned around, and faced the window. It had the curtains shut, but there were feeble rays of light coming in. The sun was rising in the other world, spreading its light on my land, turning my warriors into rock—my cursed subjects. Soon enough, it was going to do the same to me. I was going to go back to being a gargoyle, lose my wings, my powers, and my enhanced feelings. Maybe the pain in my heart would numb, and the loneliness wouldn’t be so deep and scary.
“I made my decision a long time ago,” she declared.
I stepped forward and put my hands on her shoulders. She was tense, and I star
tled her with the closeness.
“We’ve talked about this, Cedric. I’ve explained to you my reasons,” she whispered.
I moved closer and hugged her to me, hiding my face in her hair. She smelled sweet and felt nice inside my arms. I knew that I was being selfish, and she had selfless reasons to do what she wanted to do. I respected her and admired her for that. Yet, at that precise moment, I didn’t want her to stop existing. It haunted my thoughts, and I couldn’t help but feel sad about her departure, her death. I didn’t want her to die. I didn’t want her gone.
Jo’s pleas reached my ears. “Please tell me you understand my reasons.”
“I may understand, but I don’t approve of them. I don’t want you to die to save some guy who disappeared more than two hundred years ago and… It may be selfish of me, but, maybe, it wasn’t your fault. Maybe it was his.”
“What are you saying?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t want you to die.” I held her tighter, making her gasp and hold on to my arms.
“Please don’t tell me that you put me in a cell, so I couldn’t fulfill the ritual,” she begged me.
“I would be lying if I denied it,” I said, enjoying her scent and the softness of her hair. My body reacted differently whenever I was next to her. I loved Aria, I still did, yet I had feelings for Jo, too. Something like the raw lust that I experienced when I kissed Aria. But not lust alone because it was more than attraction. I liked being next to her, talking to her, and listening to her.
I couldn’t deny that Jo was a walking temptation. She made men turn their heads to see her passing by. She could make entire kingdoms fall if she wished it. Helen of Troy had nothing on her. Josephine was enchanting.
I stumbled back when she freed herself from me. That made me wake up from my daydream and focus on her angry face as she turned around to face me.