by S. J. West
Malcolm watches her phase and secretly hopes Lilly doesn’t try to cook something for him herself. He knows that she’s so worried about him she might lose her common sense. Lilly is talented in many things, but cooking is apparently not one of them.
Caylin sits down on the spot her mother just vacated. She leans in to give Malcolm a hug. Malcolm hears her gasp when she touches him and instantly knows she used a bracelet that once belonged to Jess on him. He knows that she’s felt the pain he’s in, but he’s grateful in the knowledge that she can’t distinguish from the physical pain he feels from the hellhound bite and the emotional pain he’s lived with since the day Lilly and Brand were married.
Malcolm gently presses his lips to one of Caylin’s ears and whispers, “Don’t tell anyone.”
Caylin holds onto him even tighter as if silently telling him she’s fully aware that the pain he feels in that moment will never go away.
With each passing year, Malcolm watches Lilly and her family grow. And with each passing year, he watches as more and more wrinkles line her face and sees her body weaken due to the passage of time. He’s never considered time his enemy, but now he considers it his nemesis because it’s slowly taking the person he loves away from him. There is no battle he can fight to save her, and there is no miracle cure to return her to her youth. All he can do is watch and pray that his father will keep to his promise that after Lilly’s death He’ll make Malcolm human so he too can pass from this Earth in time.
In the next memory, Malcolm is sitting on a porch swing with a frail, much older Lilly wrapped securely in a wool blanket sitting on his lap. Her head is leaned against his shoulder as they look out across a blue lake to a distant mountain side. I know they’re at the home Malcolm built Lilly all those years ago. It’s the place she’s chosen to die.
“Malcolm,” Lilly says in a weak voice.
Malcolm looks down at the woman he loves, holding back the pain he feels as he looks at her, knowing he will lose her soon.
“Yes, dearest?”
“I have to ask you to do something for me.”
Malcolm sees the tears in Lilly’s eyes and knows what’s coming.
He’s known it for a long time now but hoped through the years that they might find a way around it.
“You know I would do anything for you,” he tells her, brushing a stray gray hair off her cheek.
“I need you to stay alive,” she tells him. “I need you protect my family until the girl from the vision is born. She’ll need your help.”
In his heart, Malcolm knew this would be the price he would have to pay for loving someone he was never supposed to. In a way, he felt like God was punishing him all over again for such a sin. No one knew how long it would be before the girl who was supposed to take the seven seals back from the princes of Hell would be born. But, just the fact that she lived in a city built in the clouds told Malcolm it would be more years that he wanted to think about.
“I don’t want to live that long without you, dearest,” Malcolm tells her, secretly hoping she won’t make him promise to stay on Earth after she’s gone.
A single tear rolls down one of Lilly’s wrinkled cheek. Malcolm leans in and kisses the path of her tear away, wiping away all evidence of its existence.
“You must,” Lilly says in a sob.
Malcolm holds her closer to him as she cries. His heart feels like it will collapse in on itself but he knows what he has to do.
“Then I promise you I will,” he says to her, even though he would rather die in that moment than live without her in his life. “I will protect them all and help the girl when she’s born.”
The scene switches to one inside the house.
Lilly is lying in a bed and Brand is sitting beside her holding her hand. The room is filled with Lilly’s children, their children, and their children’s children.
Malcolm stands in the background and simply watches because he knows there is nothing he can do to stop what’s about to happen. For one of the few times in his life he feels completely helpless. Death isn’t an adversary he can fight against. It’s simply the natural progression of a human life and there’s nothing he can do about it.
Lilly stares up at Brand with the same love and devotion I saw on her face on her wedding day.
“Thank you,” she tells him. “Thank you for giving me such a beautiful life.”
Brand reaches out with his free hand, caressing one side of her face.
“This isn’t the end for us,” he assures her.
Lilly nods her head, letting him know she understands that they’ll eventually be reunited in Heaven.
“And I’ll be waiting there for you when it’s your time to come to me.”
“I have a feeling it won’t be a long wait,” Brand says, his voice breaking. “I don’t think my heart can beat for very long without you near it.”
She smiles lovingly at him just before she closes her eyes like she’s about to go to sleep. I can hear one last shuddering breath come from her parted lips marking her passage from this world into the next.
Malcolm feels someone staring at him and looks away from Lilly to meet Caylin’s gaze.
Of anyone in the room, she knows the pain he feels. She knows that he will have to live with the loss of Lilly for many years to come.
Malcolm phases away from the room, knowing he won’t be able to hide the pain he feels over the loss of Lilly for very much longer, especially not from Caylin.
He goes to the beach where they spent that day before her marriage to Brand. It’s night time and a multitude of stars fill the sky.
Malcolm falls to his knees holding his head in his hands. His pain is beyond the relief tears would bring. It’s an agony that rips him apart at the seams, and he doesn’t feel like he’ll ever be whole again, at least not while he remains on Earth. He continues to kneel on the sugar white sand, filled with such unimaginable pain I simply can’t stand it anymore.
I feel myself separate from Malcolm. I stand beside him and place my hand on his bowed head, hoping to bring him out of the torture his memories are causing him and back to reality. A reality I can make better if only he would let me.
As soon as he feels my touch, his head snaps up. He stares at me like he doesn’t know who I am, but then the memory of me seems to flood back into his mind.
“What are you doing here?” he demands, standing to his feet in one swift motion, towering over me. “You shouldn’t be here!”
I shake my head. “I’m not even sure where here is.”
“You had no right to see my memories of her!” He roars, as the ground beneath my feet begins to tremble and the stars fall from the sky in quick succession.
“I’m s-s-sorry,” I stammer, feeling frightened of Malcolm for the first time since we met. “I didn’t mean to. I just fell asleep and found myself here in your memories.”
Malcolm grabs me by the tops of my arms and squeezes hard as he shoves his face right in front of mine.
“You will never replace her!” He says, his features twisted into a mask of rage. “I don’t care what you feel for me. I don’t care what you might think is supposed to happen between us. I don’t care what mind games my father is trying to play. Lilly is the woman I gave my heart to, and you’re simply a cheap imitation of who she was. You will never mean as much to me as she does. Now, get out of my head!”
Malcolm shoves me back so hard I begin to fall, but I never reach the ground.
I wake up.
“Get away from me.”
I lift my head from Malcolm’s chest and look at his face.
He still looks drained from the recent hellhound attack, but the total and utter disgust in his eyes as he looks at me isn’t tempered by his weakened state.
“Get away from me now,” he orders with more vehemence.
I want to say I’m sorry, but I’m not exactly sure what I should be sorry for. How was I able to slip into his dreams and share his memories? I don’t understand what just h
appened, but Malcolm doesn’t look like he’s in any mood to explain things to me.
I sit up and then stand. Malcolm grabs the edge of the blanket and lifts it to his chin. He turns onto his left side to face away from me and doesn’t say another word.
I stand there not knowing what to do, but Malcolm obviously knows exactly what he wants me to do.
“Leave,” he says.
I don’t want to leave, but I feel as though I owe him the courtesy of doing as he ordered. It was never my intention to invade his private thoughts, but I’m not sure he understands that. I think his emotions are still too raw from reliving the time he spent with Lilly to think straight. I turn my back to him and walk into the foyer. I sit down on the bottom step of the small staircase there and lean my head against the wall.
Malcolm’s last words to me inside his dream world echo between the corners of my mind over and over again.
“Lilly is the woman I gave my heart to, and you’re simply a cheap imitation of who she was. You will never mean as much to me as she does.”
What would Malcolm think of his Lilly if he knew she visited me instead of him?
The moment I saw Lilly in Malcolm’s memories I knew who she was. She was the woman I knocked down the night of my wedding party as I made my way home through the streets of Cirrus. She called herself Rayne Cole then. She was the one who told me I should fight for Malcolm because he was worth fighting for.
I simply didn’t know at the time that my fight would be against his memories of her. Memories which seemed to be so fresh to him they could have happened yesterday instead of a thousand years ago.
I close my eyes to just rest them for a moment because I feel so tired from everything that’s happened, everything I’ve learned in such a short span of time.
I faintly remember that it's still my birthday.
“Happy birthday, Anna,” I say out loud before gifting myself with the solace of sleep.
CHAPTER seventeen
I’m awoken the next morning by the smell of something being cooked close by. I feel my stomach grumble its discontent at being left completely empty and ravenously hungry. I cautiously stand up and stretch my legs out. My body feels like someone beat it during the night, but everything seems to still be working properly. I cautiously peak around the corner and find Malcolm kneeling on one knee with one arm resting against his raised leg in front of the fireplace. I lean back and take in a deep, calming breath. I have no idea what to say to him this morning. After seeing his memories of Lilly the night before, I feel like I know Malcolm better, but, it wasn’t in the way I wanted to learn more about him. I feel like I invaded his privacy, his deepest and most close kept secrets, and from the way he reacted last night, I feel sure that’s the way he feels too.
There’s nothing I can do to change what happened. I didn’t do it on purpose. I just hope he realizes that fact in the light of day.
I take another deep breath and walk around the corner to face whatever mood Malcolm might be in this morning.
I walk until I’m standing beside him.
“That smells good,” I tell him as I see the four fish he has roasting over the fire on metal skewers.
Malcolm’s silent for a while but then says, “I thought you might be hungry.”
“Where did you get the fish?”
This makes Malcolm look up at me with a raised eyebrow.
“I know you’ve lived in Cirrus all your life but surely Andre educated you.”
“Of course he educated me,” I say in defense of my papa.
“Then what lives in an ocean, Anna?” Malcolm asks a bit condescendingly.
I feel my cheeks burn. “Fish.”
Malcolm looks back at the fire. “And the empress gets a gold star for answering correctly.”
He doesn’t say anything else, and he doesn’t look like he intends to say anything else any time soon.
“I’m sorry,” I blurt out, feeling an uncontrollable urge to make things right between us and an apology seems like a good place to start.
Malcolm bows his head and closes his eyes.
“You couldn’t have understood what you were doing,” he says in a low voice. “I know that.”
“What did I do?” I ask, needing to know so I can prevent it from ever happening again. “How did I go into your dreams?”
“All Watchers are able to construct their dream worlds to be whatever they want them to be. Your ability to join our dreams was inherited. There’s no way you could have prevented it from happening.”
I want to ask more about what I saw and experienced inside his dream world, but I don’t want to push the matter. He’s talking to me, and I’m just grateful for that small miracle.
“You need to know something,” Malcolm says, looking back up at me. “What I said to you there at the end…on the beach…”
I hold my breath and wait for him to finish.
“I meant every word,” he tells me. “I thought it only right that you know what I said was real and not just part of a dream.”
I feel my heart twist inside my chest and suddenly hate Malcolm for making me feel this way. I want to hurt him like he’s just hurt me, and I know just how to do it.
“I’ve met Lilly before,” I tell him, selfishly hoping my next words hurt him. “I met her on my way home the night of the wedding celebration in Cirrus.”
Malcolm stands to his feet in one fluid motion and turns to me.
“That’s impossible,” he says confidently, looking at me like he thinks I’m a liar.
“She told me her name was Rayne Cole when we met,” I inform him, and I can see by the surprised expression on his face that the name instantly registers with him.
“What did she say to you?” Malcolm asks in a whisper.
“She asked about the wedding. I told her I didn’t love the emperor because I had feelings for someone else. She also gave me some advice…”
“What advice?”
“She told me I should fight for the person I did care about because he was worth fighting for.”
Malcolm shakes his head. “It couldn’t have been Lilly.”
“Why? Because she chose to come see me instead of you?” I ask. “Has she not come to you in all the years you’ve been waiting for me to be born?”
Malcolm is completely silent, giving me my answer.
I can see the hurt I’ve caused enter his eyes. His perfect Lilly isn’t quite so perfect anymore. I should feel happy because I did exactly what I set out to do with my revelation, but, instead, I feel Malcolm’s pain as he realizes the woman he gave his heart to abandoned him in more ways than one.
I take a step forward, intent on trying to comfort him, but Malcolm turns away from me and walks over to the couch where his shirt and jacket from the night before have been laid out to dry. He slips on the white undershirt and then the jacket.
“I’ll be back,” he says, and walks past the makeshift curtain I put up the night before in front of the broken glass doors.
I watch him go and feel a sting of guilt from causing him even more pain than what he’s already suffering through.
“Malcolm will be all right,” I hear a man say behind me.
I look back at the fire and see a man with dark skin and a bald head standing there. I know who he is because I saw him in Malcolm’s memories the night before.
“God?” I ask, simply needing clarification that He’s actually there and not just a wishful figment of my imagination.
God smiles at me. “Hello, Anna.”
“Why are you here?” I ask Him.
“I thought you might need a friend right about now.”
I sigh, realizing a friend is exactly what I need. But that’s not all I need from God. I need some answers too.
“Did you make me for Malcolm?” I ask, needing to know if our connection to one another is real or if I'm simply deluding myself.
“If you’re asking me if the two of you are soul mates,” God says, “then the answer t
o that question is yes. But, I wouldn’t say I made you for Malcolm.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Has it not occurred to you by now that I might have made Malcolm for you?”
“Made him for me?” I ask, completely confused. “Didn’t you make Malcolm before you made me?”
“Your soul was made in the Guf a very long time ago, Anna. In fact, you were one of the first souls ever created. I've known for quite some time I would need you to fulfill an important mission one day, one only you can accomplish.”
“To take back the seven seals?” I ask, not knowing of anything else I was sent to Earth to do.
“I have hope that you can also accomplish something else during your mission to retrieve the seals. I’ve been waiting longer than anyone for you to be born, Anna. I simply hope you can do something many have tried to do, including me, but failed.”
I can tell God isn't going to go into any more details about this special mission He apparently thinks only I can undertake. So, I decide to get as much information on other subjects as I can from him while He's here.
“Do you know where my papa is?” I ask. If anyone should know where my father is, it will be God.
God nods. “Yes, I know where he is, and I can tell you he’s perfectly safe for now.”
“Where is he?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t tell you that. I don’t like to interfere with the natural progression of events. You’ll find him soon enough on your own.”
“If you can’t tell me that,” I say, “can you tell me how to make Malcolm face his feelings for me?”
“I believe you’ll be able to find a way to do that on your own too, Anna.”
“And you’re sure you made Malcolm for me? Because I feel sure I wouldn’t have asked for someone so hard-headed.”
God chuckles. “Malcolm is exactly who you need. I think you know that.”
“Are you sure he does?”
God smiles. “He knows. He’s just fighting against the idea because of his feelings for Lilly.”
“Will he ever be able to let her go?”
God tilts his head to the side as he considers the question.
“Would you want him to let her go so easily after finding out how he truly feels about her? Would it make you feel better if he was able to completely forget his feelings for someone he’s loved for so long? Is that the type of man you would want to be with?”