“And the library? Have I ruined it for you as well?”
I crossed my arms over my chest and rolled my eyes.
“Have I?” he pressed.
“I refuse to talk to a ghost. Show yourself.”
“I have my reasons why I choose not to.”
I scoffed and rubbed my temples. “This is ridiculous. What are you anyway? You’re not human. We’ve established that.” I felt like I was made of embers and he was the breath that made me burn hotter.
“Where you were today, it is the seam between the Faery realm and this one, the doorway. It is a mystery to me how you ended up there.”
“I followed the owl there.” Troubled and irked, my eyes wandered around the room. He was in here…somewhere.
“I want to apologize,” he said in a faint voice. “I am sorry for what happened earlier. It was not my intention to frighten you.”
“The owl frightened me. You made me mad.”
“I’ll amend my apology. I’m sorry for upsetting you.”
“Friend of yours?” I asked.
“Who?”
“The owl.”
“No. I thought the owl was a friend of yours.”
“Oh? What was it that gave it away? Was it the way he swept out of nowhere and attacked me?”
“No. It was the way he swept out of nowhere to protect you.”
A very unladylike snort escaped my mouth. “From what?”
He said nothing.
“Fine,” I said, heading for the door. “Don’t answer.”
“From me,” he said.
I felt a tightness in my chest and the temperature in the room began to shift. I closed my eyes, allowing my other senses to override what I failed to see. I concentrated, reached inside my head, and turned up the volume. I could hear his breathing, his heartbeat, his pulse, hammering against his walls. The walls he put up between us. “Do I need protecting from you?”
“Yes.”
“Why? Are you going to hurt me?”
When he didn’t answer, I decided I’d had enough. I moved toward the table and closed the books. I was done with this conversation. I removed the coin from my pocket and slapped it down on the wooden surface. “Here,” I said. “I tried to give this to you…” I paused, remembering the humiliation and fear, and then swallowed it back down. It didn’t matter anyway. “I’ll leave it here. Do what you want with it.” I started for the door.
“Wait,” he said in a thick voice, like that one word was hard for him to say.
I halted my steps.
“I would like it if you accepted my apology.”
“I’m sure you would,” I said, and immediately felt regret for being remote and dismissive. I had never been like this before, but I couldn’t let go of how he had treated me, and the sound of his voice when I couldn’t see him caused me to feel undone, like loose threads being pulled apart at the seams.
For a moment, he said nothing else, and then he chuckled quietly to himself. “If I let you set my breeches on fire, would you forgive me then?”
My annoyance sparked like dry wood. “No, however, I would enjoy watching you dance around very much.”
A hearty, robust laugh consumed all four walls of the library. “I’ll remember not to upset you in the future.”
“I’m not laughing,” I said. “Although, I’m surprised you are. I didn’t think you capable.”
His laughter died off and the atmosphere in the room shifted. “I didn’t either,” he admitted in a soft voice.
My heart felt a sharp pang because he sounded sincere, maybe even a little sad. Sighing, I said, “Fine. I’ll accept your apology if you come out from wherever you are and apologize to me in person.”
“I’d rather not,” he said.
“Why?”
He grew silent, and I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling a bitter chill in the room. I didn’t know where to focus my eyes, where to look. His voice didn’t come from any one direction; rather, it filled the entire space. He was everywhere and nowhere.
“I do remember you,” he said. “In the village that day. I remember you.” His voice was metallic, the fabric of his words sewn together with threads of gentleness.
Although I wanted to stay angry, he was making it impossible for me to do so. “What happened today?” I asked.
The air in the room crackled, the fire from the lanterns hissed. I shuddered and closed my eyes, feeling small and helpless, like a bird with a broken wing.
He took a shuddering breath and then let it out slowly. I felt it on my skin, below my ear and down my neck. I shivered and turned my head to peek over my shoulder. There was no one there.
“What happened?” I asked again.
“You ask a lot of questions.” His whispered words carried and echoed, drifting like tendrils of smoke.
A deep sadness seeped into the library and covered the walls in inky blackness. Shadows danced and lurched where the light flickered and the air became frigid. I huddled into myself. “What’s happening?”
Pages from the book on the table began to flip. “Read it,” Lord Lochlan said.
I walked toward the book and skimmed the page. “I’ve already read this part.”
“Read it again. Out loud.”
I obeyed and when I got to the last part, he had me repeat it.
The war nearly decimated the world until a treaty was drawn and signed into power. A wall was built between the Faery realm and ours and permissions had to be granted to cross. As long as the treaty held the war would cease. The Seelie Court also cursed the King and his child, ensuring the child would never be accepted by either Fae or human.
The Fae Princess was also stripped of her immortality and it is believed she died during childbirth.
No one had ever seen the child and it is believed the King had it killed following its birth.
“Stop there,” he said, softly.
My insides were trembling, my heart erratic. I twisted my fingers in front of me and bravely asked, “You’re the cursed child?”
“Yes.”
“The child that is part Fae and part human?”
“Yes.”
I barely knew him, yet my heart splintered into tiny pieces. “Cursed…how?”
The room continued to get colder.
“Have you ever seen Hell, Elin?”
I shook my head. “No. Of course not.”
“I have.” He stepped out of the shadows. Or did he step out of the wall? His pale eyes looked right through me. I felt pulled toward him, unexplainably so. “It’s nothing like you think it is,” he went on to say. “It’s worse. It’s not fire and brimstone.” His lip curled in disgust. “It’s cold like glaciers. Colder. Nothing like you would ever experience in this world. Souls trapped in ice, like statues, frozen for all eternity. But they’re aware. The souls trapped in the frozen tundra, the complete separation from life and warmth, are aware. The inner circle of Hell is about being suspended in awareness, frozen for all eternity, eternally aware, trapped in the dark abyss. Forever.”
I wanted to cover my ears. “Why are you telling me this?”
He took one step forward, his boot scuffing the planked wood floor. “When I touch someone, or they touch me, Hell is the image they see and it reflects back at me so I see it too. It is the last image they ever see. Right before they die of fright, then shatter like ice at my feet.”
I didn’t know what to say, so for the longest time I said nothing. I observed Lord Lochlan as he observed me in a library that had always felt large and open, but his presence made the room feel small and confined. He had a way of taking up so much space. And not just floor space, but head space too. He crawled around inside my head. I could feel him there, moving thoughts and memories around like he was searching for something he’d lost.
Get out of my head!
His pale eyes narrowed like he was reading something buried deep within me. His face was a tangle of sadness, worry, surprise, and something else. Fear? Then his features smoothed over
and he practiced having no expression at all.
I cut my eyes away from his, my heart pounding.
Did you find what you were looking for?
It was on the tip of my tongue to say, however my brain caught up, registering what this honesty was about. I swallowed, and practiced trying not to appear so heartbroken. “So today, you were–”
“Protecting you.”
On those words, the temperature began to rise. The blackness that had crept into the room retreated, taking its inky doom with it. The lanterns burned brighter. The heaviness dissipated.
Lord Lochlan sounded regretful when he said, “If you see me again, don’t approach me, Elin.”
Then he was gone. Only this time, instead of disappearing he simply walked away.
The ends of Lochlan’s cloak snapped around his ankles as he moved quickly down the dimly lit hall. He’d left her standing alone in the library and he was all too eager to escape her company. Not because he didn’t like her, but because he did.
He rounded a corner, far enough away now that he stopped and leaned against the stone wall, briefly closing his eyes and taking a much needed breath. She was not the girl he remembered. A girl who needed saving. No, this girl was no girl at all. She was…she was…
He lunged himself off the wall and began moving again. He needed to stop thinking about her. He had nothing to offer her. Nothing at all.
Making it to his quarters he opened the door and slammed it, shutting out the world, shutting out everything around him with a raucous bang, tangled up within himself. He brought his hands up to his face to shield his unnatural eyes and think about what had transpired. What had transpired? He’d had no intentions of apologizing to her. When he had left her in the forest he had hoped he would never see her again. But then there she was, sitting in his library. He’d felt her the moment she walked in and he’d made his presence unknown for both their sakes. Once again, she had come into his home and bewitched him into staying and observing. The same way she had bewitched him momentarily at the waterfall. What was it about this girl that made him linger when she was near?
He should have left, given her privacy. However, when she began to mumble underneath her breath he’d paused to listen. He shouldered the end of one of the bookshelves, keeping himself hidden, folded his arms, and crossed his ankles, as though he was readying himself for a really good joke.
“I’d like to set his breeches on fire and watch him dance!” she’d grumbled.
His mouth twitched, mirth bubbling up inside him. When she flipped one of the brittle pages from the book in a huff, he worried she would rip it in half, so he’d decided to intervene. For the book’s sake of course. “Are you finished with your ire or shall I come back?”
He had not been prepared for the exchange that followed. She had gotten to him in a way no one ever had. It was quite unsettling, and he didn’t like it. Yet an apology for upsetting her had spilled from his lips and he had truly meant it. For a reason unbeknownst to him, he needed her to like him.
When he’d stepped out of the shadows and allowed himself to be seen, it was only because she had asked. Repeatedly. Persistent little thing she was. He found himself unable to stay hidden. For once, he wanted to be seen. Because she wouldn’t forgive him, he needed her to understand, so he told her the truth. While he hadn’t meant to plunder her mind in the process, she was an open book, and like her, he liked to read.
He wished he hadn’t. He had learned many things about her then, and he was about to learn a secret, one not even she was aware of, but she’d pushed him out of her head and turned away before he had a chance to finish. What he had learned troubled him greatly.
Leaning against the door of his room, he breathed deeply and filled his lungs with stale air and the faint scent of incense. He let his hands fall from his face and hang loosely by his sides. To his right was a bed, a table, a lantern, and on the opposite wall were shelving for his clothes. Underneath his feet was cold stone, and across from him were windows overlooking the garden below. He moved toward them and pulled back the curtains. He frowned when he saw her walking across the rolling fields of green. Of course he would have to see her again when he was trying with all his might to forget her.
Walking with her head up and assured, shoulders back, she didn’t falter in her steps. She was slight in stature, fragile, yet her presence was as formidable as a castle. She had held her own with him, had she not? The way she had raked him over hot coals with her verbal tongue lashing…that memory alone forced a smirk to dance over his face. Had anyone ever spoken to him like that? They most certainly hadn’t. No one dared try. She had done so without regard to consequence. He had to admit he appreciated her fire. In another life, he would have liked very much to get to know her, court her, perhaps even take her as his wife.
The thought of never having a wife or never being able to touch another was a punch in the gut. He had never allowed those kinds of thoughts to enter his mind because it would only cause him anguish. Watching her from his window made him want things he had no business wanting.
He blinked when he noticed she had stopped and turned, looking up toward his window. Had she sensed him watching her? Their eyes met and he swayed on his feet, his breath catching on an exhale. She inched forward. He shrank back. She straightened. He stilled. For a long moment they stared, caught up in the other’s unwavering hold.
Dathúil was the word his mind conjured. A pleasure to the eyes.
Her hair was bronze silk by the light of the sun, and her gray eyes shone like silvery probes that pierced his soul, cutting like knives, wounding him from the inside out.
Her soft pink lips curved upward slowly, and curled prettily into a smile. A kind smile. It held briefly before slipping into a sad one. His heart thudded inside his chest. His blood rushed to his ears and pounded an unrecognizable rhythm. Who was the last person to smile at him? He couldn’t remember.
Then her mouth formed the words…I forgive you. She was far enough away a normal man wouldn’t have been able to read her lips, but he wasn’t a normal man.
The right side of his mouth lifted, and even though he knew she couldn’t see him form the words, he mouthed them anyway. Thank you.
She held up one hand, a wave goodbye. His hands came to rest within his pockets. She inhaled, he exhaled. She lowered her hand and turned her back to him. He pressed one hand against the glass and silently begged her not to go.
Lochlan was cursed, and a lifetime spent searching for a cure had brought him nothing but fruitless endeavors and crushing hope. Monk Searly never stopped searching for a cure nonetheless. He couldn’t help loving Searly for his perseverance and hating him for it all the same. Searly had dedicated most of his life to the cause and Lochlan loathed the time a good man had spent on a cure there was no hope of ever finding. He wanted Searly to stop wasting his life on one such as his, and he had told him as much one day when he was feeling particularly low.
“Aut vincere, aut mori,” Searly had said. Either conquer or die.
And so Lochlan endeavored to continue trying. Trying to find a cure. Trying to live without feeling dead. Trying, trying, and trying again. It was taking its toll.
For each day he lived, he died a little more.
With his fingers still pressed against the glass, he let her go. Not because he didn’t like her. But because he did.
Mirova’s town center wasn’t beautiful. With its decaying rooftops and faded stone walls its atmosphere was bleak. I imagine it may have been beautiful once upon a time, though it was dreadfully dull now. The ever present gray sky, however, did not loom overhead this day. Breaks of sunlight penetrated through thick clouds and I felt a surge of energy while warmth tickled my skin.
Horses’ hooves clicked-clacked against the worn cobblestone streets, and people of all ages milled about buying and selling goods such as handmade quilts, crafts, and figurines carved from wood. I stopped to admire a few of those because they were quite beautiful.
I walked along the village streets in the hopes of clearing my mind. I had thought about Lord Lochlan a great deal after learning who he truly was. I had initially found him to be rude and crass. Now that I know his crassness was a product of his curse, the anger I had for him melted away, and in its place was…well, I wasn’t sure what took its place. But I needed to stop thinking about him before I drove myself mad. The fact I was out among throngs of people spoke of my desperation because I still didn’t much care for being in large crowds. I think I will always prefer the tranquility of the forest to a bustling village square.
I wondered if Lord Lochlan wished he could consort about with the people he lived among, if his personality would have been of the jovial sort.
I sighed with a heavy heart because I was still thinking about him, even with all the distractions around me. It simply wasn’t fair that someone such as he would never know who he could have been without the curse.
At night, I sometimes wanted to cry for him. It had been a fortnight since I had last seen him and I still remembered the look on his face when I waved goodbye.
Loneliness.
Stop it, Elin. Stop it this instant.
Enough was enough. There was nothing I could do for him, and driving myself mad over it would not help either of us.
Gathering my sensibilities, I made another pass through the town square and tried to occupy my mind with other things. I stopped again to admire the carved figurines.
“See something ye like, lass?” asked the street vendor, enthusiasm underscoring his words.
Admiring the owl, I picked it up. “Did you make this?”
“Aye. One of me best.”
“It’s beautiful.” It was exquisite really. The eyes, even carved from wood, looked so real. I ran my fingers along the feathers, expecting them to feel sleek and soft.
“Only ten shillings,” he said.
I placed the owl back on the table, and in a contrite voice said, “I’m sorry. I don’t have any money.”
“Perhaps a trade then?”
“I don’t have anything to trade either, I’m afraid.” I eyed the owl with longing before leaving the table. “Thank you, though. Perhaps another time.”
The Moon Shines Red (Heart of Darkness Book 1) Page 3