“They’re safe.” I promised. “I left them safe.”
At that information, her eyes widened. I noticed the gash across her cheek, the dried blood that was so dark and harsh against her delicate skin. “You left them?”
“It’s ok.” I soothed. “You’re free now. He won’t hurt you.” I stood and offered her my hand.
“You shouldn’t have come.” Despite her protests, she allowed me to help her up. Her eyes swam with tears.
“It’s ok.” I smiled. “Everything is alright.”
“No,” She shook her head. “You should have stayed. They need you.”
“They need their mother,” I grabbed her hands in earnest. I wanted her to go before Xian changed his mind. “James needs you.”
“I’ve had him for twenty two years.” She straightened, collecting her dignity again. Her tangled red curls spilled down her back in a wave as she moved. “It’s your turn.”
“I belong here,” I attempted to convince myself, but the words sounded strange—contrived. I couldn’t make myself believe the lie, let alone her.
“You belong where you are loved, where you are needed. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to figure out what they see in you. But I see it now, Lilith. You will make a great queen…maybe even a better one than I.”
My mind reeled in a desperate attempt to understand the progression of our conversation. She was a fighter; she was supposed to be picking up the pieces and running back to her family. “Please,” I swallowed back more tears; they made my voice thick and desperate. “Please go now… and tell them how much I love them.”
“I would say the very same,” She smiled. It was a look I’d not yet seen on her; a wry, intuitive little shape that seemed to transcend the gravity of that moment. “A queen must make sacrifices, Lilith. You’ve already made yours. This is mine.”
Calista turned away from me and after only a second, walked calmly toward Xian. I watched her, mind churning wildly, and then turned eyes on him. “Xian,” I warned. “Don’t hurt her!”
Xian kept his eyes locked on mine while she drew closer and closer to him, until finally she stopped just a few steps away, her shoulders squared. Calista bowed her head just the tiniest bit, and then moved quick as a whip.
Xian turned just as she raised the stake. I hadn’t even realized she’d taken it from me, quick as a thief. Now she was prepared to shove it between his ribs. I’d taken the stake with every intention of using it, but she had the conviction I lacked. She meant to drive it into his heart. He reacted so quickly, I barely even saw her move before he threw her to the ground in front of me. The stake clattered to the floor jut after her. Xian stepped forward, hatred searing in his eyes.
I put a hand on his chest in an effort to stop him. “Leave her alone.” I begged, trying to put some space between them.
Xian threw me across the room with a simple flick of his arm. I hit the wall. ‘Don’t hurt her!” I gasped through the pain blossoming through my ribcage. Calista was already on her feet, facing him head on. “You promised!”
“And you betrayed me!”
“He’d never let me leave this place alive.” Calista’s voice was calm. “Run, Lilith.”
Run. Is that all they thought I could do?
I struggled to my feet to stop him, but Xian moved more quickly, eliminating the space between them. He looked at her and she looked at him with unparalleled hatred. Xian glanced up at me from under sooty lashes—it was an expression I’d seen on him dozens of times. I didn’t want to hurt you, he would say, but it was the only way to make you understand.
Xian moved with a violent speed. Though I screamed again, Calista did not move a muscle, or show the slightest indication that she’d even been bitten. But the proof was there, a tide of red gushing out of her neck. Xian pulled away and looked at her mildly. “I bit your daughter. I killed her.” He let that sink in for a moment before adding, “I must say… she was sweeter.” The queen stood, unspeaking and unflinching, but the look in her eyes spoke volumes. Xian looked at me, the blood tinting his lips a ridiculous shade of red. He looked manic, unstable, as he leaned into her and whispered something in Calista’s ear. I didn’t hear it; I’m not sure I would have wanted to.
Whatever it was, it got the reaction he wanted. She lunged at him, a scream ripping from her throat, while he stood with a satisfied smirk. He watched her throw herself at him for a moment, and then moved so quickly that I almost missed it.
The crack of Calista’s neck was sickening, the kind of sound that makes vomit rise to the back of your throat and stops your heart from beating. She fell to the ground in slow motion, dead before she could even touch the tile, her fall burdened by my horror.
Chapter twenty one
My heart flooded with grief, my eyes with tears, and my mouth with the vilest string of profanity I’d ever imagined. And yet, my mind fell blank. Words, the only constant I had ever known, decided to fail me. Except, it was not so much that the words failed me as I failed words. My brain screeched to a halt, refusing to accept anything as it reeled over what I knew to be truth. Calista was dead. The mother of the man I may love… Dead at the hands of the man who claimed he loved me.
A million thoughts pulsed through my mind, a million words twisting, dancing, and leaping out of my reach. I hurt, and at the same time I was numb.
"They die, Lilith.” Xian wiped his hands on his pants, like her blood repulsed him. “It's natural."
"Not by our hands." I shook my head in denial. I had been deceived, Xian's promise broken. It should not have surprised me, and yet the shock paralyzed my body and brain. "Not by yours!"
"If not mine, than by disease or illness. I did her a favor." His lips were bent into a smirk; he was mocking me. But his eyes—he truly believed in the validity of that claim. "Aging is a pitiful thing, and takes so long. I don't even think she suffered...much."
His words triggered me. No longer numb, I lunged at him, trembling with rage. I had nothing to attack him with, but in my blind fury, my bare hands seemed good as anything. A wild cry escaped my lips. Always one step ahead of me, he anticipated my move, grabbed my wrists and immobilized me. Evan inched closer, looking rapidly between us, uncomfortable.
Xian, however, was relatively unperturbed by my murder attempt. That infuriatingly calm smile was still perfectly in place. Sometimes he reminded me of a puppet, his face forever painted into a self-satisfied smirk. I could smell him; clean and cold, like mint. It made my heart squeeze into a knot. “I know now Lilith, what it will take to keep you with me forever."
"Nothing," I struggled to wrench out of his grip, but it was no good. "Nothing you could ever do will make me stay! Not after this."
"I can keep you here as long as I desire you,” He whispered it just close enough to my ear to make me shudder. “Locked away until you come to your senses and realize I am what is best for you."
"I'll take my own life!" I said vehemently. I said it out of desperation, but a small part of me meant it. Despite having spent the past several weeks trying to deny the possibility of taking my own life, it was a fate I’d welcome over the one he was offering.
“Not if you can’t die. Not if you’re immortal.”
“Impossible.” I spat, turning my head away from him. Looking at him was turning my stomach.
“I can do it, Lilith.” He grabbed my chin, forcing me to look at him again. “And I would do it, for you.”
“If you do, I will kill you.”
Xian blinked at my threat. “Then you will soon follow and we will spend eternity in Hell together. What is the point, when we could spend it here, alive?”
“Neither of us are alive.” I shook my head and swallowed back tears.
“It’s subjective.” He waved a hand as if he could dismiss my foolish arguments all together. “Besides, your heart still beats...for now.”
“Not much longer!” My rage was resurfacing. I was cycling drastically through the stages of grief: denial, anger, and sadness all
sweeping through me in waves. I made a desperate jump at him, but Evan grabbed my arms and pinned them back without even any direction from Xian. I struggled against him, desperate. I would claw him, bite him, pull his hair... Anything, as long as I got to lay a hand on him. Anything to make him hurt even a fraction as much as he’d hurt me.
“No,” Xian turned his back on me. My fight was futile, but I still struggled to get free until Xian was at the door. He turned, and I refusing to take my eyes from his face. I saw the words form on his lips rather than hear them over the fury of adrenaline coursing in my veins. “Not much longer indeed.”
Evan pushed me away from him, leaving me at arms’ length, and watched me warily for a moment. He almost said whatever he’d been thinking before leaving. Instead, he looked at the body of the queen on the floor. My eyes followed his, and I couldn’t help stare at her. He shut the door, the scrape of a lock affirming my solitude. My captivity had been renewed. I could feel my lip quivering, but I wasn’t ready to let the tears out yet. In that moment, I was alight with hatred, every nerve quaking with a fury I would no longer be hostage to.
I lay on the ground, letting these feelings transform me. I’d been hurt. I’d felt the pain of broken bones, the sting of a well-aimed right hook, the agony of teeth tearing through the most tender of flesh. I’d been angry. I’d known the way that rage can make you a different person, like you’re standing on the opposite side of the mirror, watching someone ugly and cruel tear the world apart. But never had I felt this…it was a feeling I couldn’t even attribute a name to. I only knew that I felt myself floating away, becoming ever more distant. And as I watched my meek self slip away, I wished her farewell.
Evan opened the door later, but I didn’t know how much time had passed. It could have been minutes; it was more likely hours. I stared at him from where I sat against the wall, my knees hiked against my chest. A second man moved into the room. He collected Calista’s body wordlessly, cradling her weight as if it were insubstantial, and left. Evan sighed before shutting me in again.
I’d been sitting on the cold, unrelenting ground long enough that it had put a chill into my bones that even the intensity of my fury couldn’t thaw. It made me ache so that finally I had to gather myself and stand. And when I did, I felt lighter, the old pieces of me falling away.
The attic room was almost exactly as I had left it. Only one thing I noticed was different—it was darker. I strode to the window and pulled back the thick curtains. A sheet of plywood crossed over my window, at least a quarter-inch thick. It effectively blockaded any light from entering the room: not the sun or the moon.
I drew in a deep breath and slammed into the wood as forcefully as I could, using my shoulder to hit it in the middle. Nothing happened, other than probably the beginning of a wicked bruise. But the resilience made me feel all the more trapped, all the more helpless. I slammed at the boards with all my might, until finally I had scraped the skin clear off some parts of my arms and gashes of skin were surely ripping away. Only then did I stop long enough to look around the room for something to pry that damned plywood away.
Was it too much to be allowed to see outside? It wasn’t like I was going to break the glass of my window and shimmy four stories down to the ground…It actually wasn’t a bad idea, but it didn’t help much. What good would it be to escape when I’d been the one to willingly walk through those doors? If I ran, he would only continue with his original plan and this would have been for nothing. Still, the dark seemed to breed my poisonous feelings.
I crossed to the desk on memory and found a candle there, just where I’d left it. The scent of lavender seemed cloying now. I pulled the drawer open so fast it came free of the track, and dumped the contents on the bed. My fingers found purchase around the matchbook. There were two matches left, not very promising, but it provided me with a little bit of light once I fed the flame to the candle.
Other than the boards, nothing had changed. It was like a tomb...my tomb. A cold realization trickled down my back as it struck me that I had been born in this house, and I would die in this house. The fact that I’d escaped for even a few weeks was miraculous. But it didn’t make me feel any better.
The only thing that did make me feel better was the flicker of an idea.
I considered setting fire to the boards, but the boards would not be the only thing to catch fire. The curtains, the draperies, even the walls would borrow the flame...not that I was at all opposed to the house burning down. The flames wouldn’t feel to Xian like anything other than a brush of wind as he ran to safety. Yes, the idea of lighting this match and letting it take on a life of its own was intoxicating, but if I wanted any good to come of it, I would have to trap Xian first.
Using the candle as a guide, I picked my way through the room and opened up my closet to see all of the things that had been meant to buy my love... no, not my love. My compliance, my ignorance maybe, but not my love. Tailored dresses for when father chose to entertain, crisp tops and, though I rarely left the home, expensive coats. There were enough shoes to provide half of Africa, and several skirts by obscure Italian designers. Father sought to buy the love of all his children.
I did love my custom dresses and patent leather pumps as much as the next girl, but if father had really wanted to help, he should’ve bought me archery or fencing lessons. Of course, they’d never have appealed to me, and they wouldn’t have done much good against Xian. A sword, even, would have been a more useful gift, though even now I didn’t think I’d be able to kill him.
It shouldn’t have given it a second thought, and it wasn’t even likely, but if it came down to it, could I kill Xian? I’d never been one for violence, and even as much as I hated him, I didn’t think that I could do something so…barbaric. I wished it was simple to kill him, just a gun shot or a knife to the throat…but even as the impossible thought crossed my mind, I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it. To end a life, even one that was undead, just wouldn’t sit well with me.
Then again, I would only have to live with myself for a little while after. I was going to Hell, undeniably. Killing him would actually probably be a good thing, compared to what he’d done, what he would continue to do if he lived. Maybe killing him would land us in different circles of Hell. Unless the experience was personalized, tailored to an individual’s fears and torments, in which case I’d be stuck with him in my own private eternal torture. Either way, I didn’t seem to be in a good position to make any of those decisions.
I was pretty convinced that I couldn’t do it…not because I’d once cared for him, but because his life was not mine to take. But then I thought about heaven. I wondered if it was personalized, too. Because the only thing I knew that I wanted, what I wanted more than anything ever, was to spend more time with James. It wasn’t possible, obviously, but even thinking about it made me consider trying for redemption.
I thought of the man I loved, even though I’d known him for way too short a time. Even though that love went against everything either of us knew. Even though it was entirely unprecedented, unfounded, and utterly stupid of us.
When I’d fallen for Xian, I’d have sworn I knew what love was. That feeling of being special, being beautiful, being everything to someone. After a year of flirting with disaster, after I’d severed those ties and pushed Xian out of my head and my life, I had only learned what love was not. It wasn’t about your heart speeding up when you saw them, or people validating your relationship with their approval. It was not about gifts or showing affection or possession.
There was something to be said of my worldly knowledge that it too to realize what exactly love was. Not the way that somebody else made you feel about yourself, but the way that they made you feel about them. Sure, having someone look at you like you were the creator of the world, like they would kill for you, was an enticing part of it. But the deeper, much more significant part was knowing that you would do the same for them…anything, really. I’d foolishly told Xian I would have done
anything for him, but I didn’t understand then just how much you could do for someone you loved. And I loved James.
Though I’d always known the versatility of love, it was really only starting to hit me that there were different kinds. The love that binds families, which existed outside of the story-books, which I’d never been able to trust. It was real. Thinking back to Julius and his devil-may-care attitude, things made a little more sense. He wasn’t just crazy because he’d lost half of himself and he chose to take it out on the world. Sure, Julius was the furthest into the deep end, but they had all loved their sister. It was clear in everything they did, from James’ devotion to his people to Janna’s obsession with remaining true to her father’s expectations. The queen even, and her very obvious devotion to her children, the way she had stepped up in their defense, the way she’d thrown down her life for them…for me, as an extension of their happiness.
But of all the kinds of love I could think of, it was the love of friendship that puzzled me most. Most romantic relationships, as far as I knew, started with a friendship, yet mine had blossomed from nowhere apparently. And then here was this girl who accepted the love I had for her brother, who seemed to know everything about me. I’d never had a true friend, I suppose, so I could have been off base, but something about her told me that maybe she loved my presence. It was a presumptuous part of me that thought that, but if that’s what it was, then maybe the love of friendship was a gateway. With James, it would have been a gateway into true love: the undying, scorching hot passion of two souls who found each other without deal-breaking flaws. With Janna, that gateway would be into the love of a family. Though I had countless ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’, Janna felt to me something more than a friend. Friends didn’t throw their lives down for each other, but family did. Just as irrational as my love for James, Janna was more of a sister to me than anybody ever could be.
Thinking of how Xian had hurt them all, looking at the spot where Calista’s lifeless body had been, it became clear to me. It wasn’t a matter of if I could kill him. It was a matter of how.
The Celestial Kiss Page 28