The Ballad of Aramei

by J. A. Redmerski

  Viktor stands before her, naked and unashamed. His face holds no emotion, but the depths of his eyes are tainted by madness. Aramei tries to crawl away on her backside and hands, but Viktor walks over and kneels beside her, rendering her immobile. Her bottom lip trembles and she can’t speak.

  He reaches out and cups the back of her neck with the palm of his hand and pulls her rigid body closer.

  The trembling of her lip spreads down into her shoulders and quickly down into her feet. No part of her body is without movement. Viktor cocks his head to one side, studying her.

  “H-How do you live?” she finally gets the words out.

  But he doesn’t answer.

  Viktor raises one hand and a long, black nail emerges eerily from the very tip and then he slices open his forearm with one swift pass of it. Blood drops become one heavy stream in just seconds, but he shows no signs of discomfort.

  The nature of his smile chills Aramei to her very bones. Her eyes dart to and from his and the blood draining heavily from his arm.

  In one blurry movement, Viktor grabs Aramei by the neck and pulls her toward the blood, forcing her mouth over the wound. “Drink it,” he demands, pressing his hands into the skin around her neck.

  She chokes and gags, trying to refuse it, but in the end she knows she can’t. She swallows down every vile drop of it that doesn’t manage to drain from the corners of her mouth. She nearly throws up, but the blood is too strong and she can do nothing to keep it from coursing through her body. She can feel the heat of it in her limbs and in her toes as if she’s drinking down potent ale. It begins to tingle and itch in her veins and fill her mind with euphoric visions.

  Eventually, she is completely intoxicated by it and she struggles against Viktor no more.

  He pulls his arm away and lays her half-limp body against the ground. Her face and throat and chest are drenched in blood. But she feels like she can lay here forever and dream, to become lost in the blissful moment that his blood has so deceptively created in her mind.

  The dark sky is layered by a thick orange glow with cinders and flames rising up in every direction. The village is an inferno where Black Beasts run through the streets, cutting people down with their massive claws, infecting them one by one. Aramei hears all of this as she lies on the ground next to Viktor’s bare knees. She feels it when her sister is killed, feels it in her own heart the very moment that it happens, but she can’t react to it. All she can do is lie there and stare into Viktor’s piercing green eyes.

  And then all sound is sucked from her ears when the blade is pushed into her stomach. Her breath catches sharply and her frail, helpless eyes widen up at him.

  Viktor is no longer smiling. He looks upon her with pain and remorse and wickedness. Aramei chokes on the blood rising into her throat; her own blood this time and not Viktor’s. She gasps for air and reaches up her bloodied hand to touch his unshaven face. Streaks of red are left in the wake of her fingers as they fall weakly away seconds afterwards because she’s too weak to hold them up.

  “You will never die,” he says, the warmth of his lips hovering just inches from hers. He inhales her scent and cradles her head in his hand again to bring her lips even closer and he brushes them against his own. “As long as I live, you shall also live in my shadow.” He kisses her softly. “You will never die and you will never be his.” The chilling smile vaguely returns in his eyes, just enough for Aramei to see it.

  Viktor twists the knife in her stomach, gritting his teeth and flaring his nostrils. Aramei whimpers and tenses with the excruciating wave of pain burrowing through her body. Her eyes are completely glazed over by thick tears. Droplets of blood trickle from her nostrils.

  He slides the blade out and holds it up in her view and licks her blood clean from the blade. She sees that it is the same knife, her own knife, which she used to stab him with last winter.

  His naked form blurs in and out of her vision as he walks away from her body. The howls of the Black Beasts and the cries of the people sound muffled all around her until it all eventually fades. The dark sky is filled with a billion stars as she gazes up at it. And for a time that seems quiet and utterly still, Aramei finds her peace. The life drains out of her quickly until finally the stars blink out of her vision.

  ~~~

  There’s a rustling nearby, or perhaps it’s the shuffling of feet against the earth, but Aramei opens her eyes weakly to the sound of it. Everything is silent and still and surreal. She can see through the slit her eyelids have made that it is barely dark; the horizon is layered by a faint pinkish glow, indicating early morning just before dawn. The stench of the fires that have mostly burned themselves out through the night lingers heavily on the air, choking the back of her throat and stinging her eyes. She coughs; her chest rattles her body awake and she rolls over onto her side, her soft skin painted by dirt and blood as it lies pressed into the cool earth. Her vision triples and doubles before it comes together to create a single vague image.

  Tall black leather boots walk towards her. She’s too disoriented to try making out the rest of the figure. Her arm lays stretched out in front of her and she can see the figure coming closer through the hollow of her curled fingers. She feels like her body should be tensing up, fearing that it’s Viktor, but she’s still too weak even for instinct and so all she can do is lie there. She swallows down the last of her tears and shuts her eyes softly for a moment until the shadow of the figure, now standing tall over her, covers her body in a sort of calming darkness.

  He kneels beside her and she looks up at him; hair so long and dark falling about his rugged, unshaven face adorned with the darkest blue eyes. A scar fouls his chin and one above his left eye, but they distract nothing from the intensity of those eyes. He reaches out a hand, one stained by dirt and blood and where a ring encrusted with onyx stones and a crest sits on his finger. He lifts her into his arms.

  “Now I will repay your kindness and take care of you,” he says. She can feel his heart beating against the side of her face as she lies against his chest.

  Aramei doesn’t speak, but she finds that she feels completely safe in his arms and there is a great sense of familiarity in them, too. Only one other time has she ever felt this way and slowly she begins to make the connection. She had seen Viktor as a beast. She saw him transform before her very eyes into a man. And as she lies in this man’s dominant, yet gentle grasp, she knows he was the one in the barn all those nights.

  She begins to cry softly into the fabric of his shirt and he cradles the back of her head firmer in one hand. The smell of his long leather coat and the natural scent of his skin soaks up in her lungs and she just cries harder, letting the fear and sorrow and relief and confusion out all at once. And he holds her there for a long time, letting her cry, until she senses when his chest hardens that someone else is nearby. Her chest shudders to a halt and she feels his arms tighten around her small form.

  “Forgive me, Milord,” a woman’s voice says, “but I did not know that you loved her.”

  A low, almost inaudible growl moves through his chest.

  “I was only upholding the law,” the woman says, fear of retribution lacing her every word. “I thought it was Viktor that I was punishing.”

  “Did you bring your pack here?” the man says and the intensity of his deep voice reverberates through Aramei’s body.

  “It was my intention, Milord,” the woman admits, “but Viktor found out that my plan was to destroy this village and to…end her.”

  Aramei’s body hardens with the woman’s dark words.

  “But Viktor arrived first and claimed what he thought was his. My pack arrived minutes later but were confused by Viktor’s actions. They did not understand why he himself would order the village of the human he loved, destroyed. It caught them off-guard and they were attacked. Amid the battle and the fires and the infections, Viktor took her away from it all.”

  Aramei feels the warmth of the man’s breath emitting from his nostrils as
he tilts his head to look down at her.

  “Milord?” the woman says carefully.

  “Yes, Lord Nataša?” The man slowly raises his head once again.

  Nataša hesitates and her silence indicates something grave.

  “Speak.”

  “The woman…Milord, taste her blood.”

  Aramei’s eyes break apart again and she gazes up into the man’s face. He looks to and from her and Nataša; a sort of distressing alarm shifts the calm in his features as if he already knows now what Nataša speaks of. His strong hands begin to shake, his fingers trembling angrily into the muscles of her thighs and her back.

  “I am remorseful, Milord,” Nataša says, lowering her head into a shameful bow. “What will you have me do? Shall I kill him…once and for all? Do you want me to end this?—”

  “No…,” he growls. “Viktor must not be touched. Anyone who ends his life will forfeit their own life. Go. Now. Make it known that Viktor shall be protected no matter the cost or the circumstance.”

  “Yes, Milord.”

  Present Day – In the Cabin

  I wake up this time drenched in sweat and tears. I don’t even know where I am. I can smell the fresh cut wood the cabin had been built with, but I don’t recognize this place. I don’t recognize until many seconds later that I am in Eva’s lap. I shake my senses back into my head and lift away from her.

  Trajan is standing in the room and as I allow my eyes to scan all around me, I see finally that we’re downstairs. Servants walk back and forth, cleaning the furniture and pulling back the curtains on the windows to let in the morning light.

  “Has she still told you nothing?” Trajan jumps right in and instantly I sense the growing impatience in his voice.

  “No, Milord,” I say and realize I addressed him properly only because I had just experienced a real-life interaction between he and Nataša. I’m still feeling the effects of the vision.

  I rise up from the couch fully. “I’m sorry,” I lie, “but still it’s just stuff about her past.” I don’t want him to know anything and so I’m not sorry that I don’t have any ‘worthy’ information to give him, but I admit to myself that even I’m growing more impatient with these visions. I want to experience them, yes. I don’t want to miss anything she is showing me, but at the same time, I’m desperate now more than ever to know what this is all about, what Aramei has brought me here for.

  Because I know in my heart that it’s for something much more than reliving her past.

  Trajan’s eyes shift black momentarily, but he calms himself and the dark, majestic blue returns. From the corner of my eye, I see that all of the servants had stopped moving in that moment and only now that he is composed again, do they find it in their ability to breathe again.

  Trajan looks dead at me and I swallow hard.

  “You may return to my son,” he says, standing tall over me, “but tonight you will come back here where you will remain until I have what I need.”

  My breath catches and tears start to angrily burn their way to the surface. I hold them back.

  “But…I can’t stay here like this,” I argue, my body trembling. “Please—”

  “Those are my orders. I cannot risk you not being here when she might be able to speak to you.”

  I ball my fists against my thighs and my nails dig into the skin of my palms.

  “I had hoped to have the answers before the week was over. I must leave for Serbia in the morning and you will remain here with her until I return.” He walks over closer and looks down at me. “Do not think that I am unappreciative of your assistance. Once you give me what I need, you will be rewarded.”

  “But I don’t want a reward!” I cry, standing up from the couch. Eva flinches next to me and grabs my hand. “Tell me, Milord…,” I force his title spitefully through my teeth, “did you know that your daughter, Phoebe, was killed yesterday? Do you even care about her?”

  Trajan’s face remains standard.

  “Yes, I have been informed but no, I do not care.”

  His answer stuns me into total shock and denial. I feel like I’ve just been slapped across the face with the back of his hand. I dig my fingers into Eva’s palm and grind my teeth aggressively behind my tightly-closed lips. The only thing keeping me from lashing out at him unlike ever before has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with my body’s inability to move. I’m frozen in this spot; my feet are encased in the floor beneath me. I can’t move and I can’t speak.

  Eva slips an arm around the back of my waist and holds me gently beside her.

  Trajan leaves out the front door.

  I collapse into Eva’s arms, tears streaming down my face; angry, vengeful tears. Eva guides me to sit back down on the couch and I do without argument.

  “You must understand,” she says softly, “he is not who he once was, Adria. The many years of his existence and this relationship between him and Aramei, over time has altered his mind. It has taken him to a darker place.”

  I stare out in front of me, sniffling back the tears; my hands are pressed together in a steeple in-between my thighs.

  “It’s not an excuse,” I say.

  She touches a lock of my hair. “No…I suppose it isn’t, but he did once love all of his children. Perhaps not equally because their kind tend to love the Alpha’s in line, more than the others, but yes…there was a time when Milord would kill anyone for harming one of his own.”

  I turn my head to look at her beside me. “How can he be so cruel and heartless?” I bite my bottom lip, forcing the new tears back that burn my sinuses. She had already told me how, but I just can’t accept that.

  Eva suddenly retracts her hand from my hair and places both of them within her lap. She appears quietly nervous. And without having to say a word, all the servants in the cabin stop what they’re doing in the same moment and shuffle out the front door. It’s as if she had commanded them somehow, but that can’t be. I come to understand even more now how much of a trained collective they all are, how they know what is being asked of them simply by a gesture or the language of Eva’s body. To be a servant is to be as vigilant.

  When the last girl is out and the door is closed, Eva looks over at me and says, “For the sake of your kind, he must be dethroned.”

  And for the second time in less than five full minutes, I’m stunned into an unmoving shell.

  Chapter 25

  SHE PEERS IN AT me, her eyes soft but heavy with what feels to me like the weight of the world. She has done nothing less than seal her own fate by speaking those ten crippling words and although it would never be me who admitted to hearing them, she never would’ve said something so damning if she didn’t already believe that she would be dead soon.

  I turn away from her eyes because I feel like the longer I look into them the guiltier I will become.

  “It has been a long time coming,” she says. “Those who are loyal to him will always be loyal—Lord Nataša.” She glances at the door indicating those outside, “But there are many who only pretend to be and would follow suit when the time came.”

  “Shit, Eva!” I hiss through my teeth, “Why are you saying this?” My eyes dart back and forth between her and the windows; I worry that anyone could be listening.

  “Because it must be said. Because he has been destroying the lineage for the last two hundred and fifty years, since the morning he plucked Aramei from the aftermath. Since he forbade Nataša her duty as his Right Hand and the upholder of his own laws, to destroy Viktor Vargas and his rogue bloodline. Because in choosing love over duty, in taking something from a madman such as Viktor, Trajan’s reign became only to have power over her and nothing else. Everything he has done since that day has been for her and not the sake of his own race. He has been blinded by his love for her; his need to protect her…Adria, he became a rogue of a different kind. And a rogue with Sovereignty is a death sentence to all.”

  I let out the breath I had been holding in unknowingly and then I spring
up from the couch.

  “I don’t know why you’re telling me this,” I lash out, raising my hands up in surrender as I pace the floor. I stop suddenly and throw my gaze harshly upon her. “You really need to get out more.” I laugh a hopeless, disturbing laugh and start to pace again. “If you knew the crap that I’ve already been through with this family—what I went through just last night in losing one of my best friends and watching her kill Isaac’s sister—.” I kick the coffee table and stop to stare coldly at her, my teeth clenched so tightly that the skin around my lips crumples into a series of hard lines. “WHY ME?! Why couldn’t you…,” I’m searching my head for someone who could actually fit the bill and my hand darts out to point at the front door. “Why not Raul, huh? Why not any one of Trajan’s oh-so-loyal guards who have obviously been pinned under his goddamned boot heel for a couple hundred years? WHY PUT THIS ON ME?!”

  Eva doesn’t flinch as I roar at her.

  “Because you’re the only one I can speak to,” she says composed. “I am no longer even allowed to converse with Isaac.”

  I shake my head helplessly and sigh heavily.

  “He is the epitome of madness, Adria. You think that Viktor is dangerous, but Viktor is predictable. Milord is beyond anything you can imagine.”

  “Why do you stay here?” I say, exasperated. I think I’m just trying to find something else to talk about, but I know I can’t get any of this out of my head.

  I run over and thrust my feet down into my shoes, bending over and slipping my finger into the heel so I can get them on. I almost fall over.

  “You know what—I’ll be back tonight like Trajan told me to be.” I stomp over and stare down at her. “And when I come back, I’m ordering you not to speak a word of this anymore to me, or to anyone else. I swear-to-God. You got that?”

  Eva stands and bows to me with every bit of respect. “Yes, Milady.”