Undeniably Chosen

by Shelly Crane

  “Richard was tall, too, like you. He didn’t have your hair or your smile or wear those God awful clothes.” She laughed at her own joke a little and we all watched in wonder as she walked to the rail and looked out at the city skyline, lost in her reverie, not knowing or not caring that she was dropping bombs on us left and right.

  “Ashlyn,” I tried, my voice so weak. I didn’t understand it. It scared me, the hoarseness of it, and everyone’s head jerked to look at me—except her. “Please, Ashlyn—”

  “We stood here once.” She didn’t turn. She ran her hand down the railing, so sad, so lost. “Just once. We looked out at the city.” My vision started to blur a little. “I had come up here—snuck really—and he managed to find me. He came and stood as close as was proper.” The spots bounced in front of my vision, just like that night at the summit, when I saw the bird that no one else saw. I squeezed my eyes, but it was still there. I vaguely heard and felt Seth pleas, asking if I was okay, but all I could hear was Ashlyn talking in the background, as clear as a bell. “He told me to look out at the city, to imagine another life, maybe one where I found my significant and lived happily ever after.” As she said it, I could see it in my mind; him and her, as they were. Her so shy, him so taken by her to the point that his eyes never left her as he spoke. She turned to look at us. “This was the spot. I could see it in my mind, the way it would have played out if I had let it. This was the very spot where we would have bonded, where he would have touched my hand for the first time and our souls would have reached out, knowing that they belonged to each other.” Everyone had stopped whatever protest they had been doing for my safety when she started that story.” She smiled, but it faded quickly. “But we didn’t touch, because back then people didn’t touch for no reason, and we weren’t alone long enough for us to get up the courage. When he would have, the council had already found us and never let that happen again. It was the one and only time we were ever truly alone. And I regret it every. Single. Day of my existence, that I didn’t go with my gut and just reach out…” She stepped forward and my vision cleared a little. She reached us and Seth tugged me and put me behind him. It was a little comical that Seth thought I needed protecting from this little woman and it was also comical that he thought he could protect me from the previous Visionary if she truly wanted to hurt me.

  “I don’t want to hurt her,” she insisted. “That’s never what I wanted to do. Or you.” I looked around Seth’s arm to find them staring at each other, Seth in complete confusion. He glanced at me and then back at her.

  “How it that…possible,” he finally mumbled.

  I didn’t know what he was talking about. I tightened my grip on his arm as much as I could to get him to see that I was still here. He looked at me again, but his gaze once again settled on Ashlyn. He leaned in and took her chin in his fingers…the way he’d done me so many times. I took a deep, painful breath, looking away, but he released her just as quickly.

  “It’s you.” He looked at me. “It’s you.”

  “What?” I whispered.

  “She has your eyes.” He looked back at Ashlyn, suspicion all over him.

  “We both have brown eyes—”

  “No, Ave. Those are your eyes. I’m looking at you when I look at her. I’m looking right at you, right into your soul.”

  I blinked, not understanding, and then her comment about Seth’s eyes struck me. You have his eyes…

  “Oh, God… Ashlyn, what did you do?”

  She smiled sadly. “It’s not what I did, or what we did. It’s what they did. We didn’t get our happily ever after. Don’t you see? We never got our life. When there’s so much evil on a life it can’t leave this world without leaving a mark, without leaving an imprint,” she insisted.

  “Just like the first imprints were a product of rage—it trickled down from his blood in the well and affected an entire town, and oh, how that one instance, that one moment in time, one ripple, affected an entire world, an entire race of people. One man in a well!” She shook her head, awe on her face.

  “Ashlyn,” my mother said and we all knew it was about to go down if Ashlyn didn’t spill.

  “They did this to us, Ava,” she said as she looked into my eyes, and for the first time, I got her meaning, as she looked at me so sadly. She didn’t mean her and Richard ‘us’, she meant her and me ‘us’.

  I could barely breathe as understanding smacked into me. “Oh, God.”

  Seth’s arm wound around from behind, but Ashlyn was reaching for me at the same time, both of them trying to keep them in their worlds. No one won the battle. Her hand wrapped around my wrist, around my tattoo, and I saw what she remembered. I could tell that Seth was seeing it, too. Mom ran forward, understanding that we were seeing a vision, or something to that effect, and grabbed my arm, Dad right behind her, and we all tumbled down into it together.

  I watched the terrace as Ashlyn’s young smiling form bounced on light feet and went to the railing. She was carefree, she was free, she was happy. She closed her eyes and leaned over. I gasped. What was she doing?

  She was letting go.

  The edges around me shimmered and there were spots of light around us that didn’t belong. I could still feel Seth’s arms tight around my waist, my anchor, and Ashlyn’s hand around my wrist. This was just a vision, nothing more.

  A door opened behind us and I turned just as Richard passed through us. I gasped, feeling him, his every thought and desire as he passed through me. He had been searching for her for over an hour and a half. He wanted nothing more than to spend time with her and understand this urge to in his heart to be more than her subject. This hadn’t been a happy coincidence.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” he said, smiling and removed his hat.

  That scoundrel.

  I smiled, despite everything. Ashlyn, wasn’t the bitter, used woman she was today—no. She was a prim, proper, shy girl of the day with just a dash of spunk. She glanced at him quickly before looking away and smiling shyly. “Yes. Fancy that. Now what?”

  “Well, I…I don’t know. I guess we can just look at the city together before going down to supper. Do you mind if I walk you?”

  Her cheeks turned so rosy. “I’d like that.”

  He beamed and I caught a glimpse of his face when he turned a little. I hadn’t seen his face since he’d come out here and I found myself pulling away from Seth to see it more full on. He fiddled with his hat as he looked from the dark town below to Ashlyn’s face. Seth tried to keep me there, but I had to see.

  I finally pulled away and went to stand in front of him. It was as if he didn’t see me at all. Because he didn’t; I wasn’t there. This was a memory. Ashlyn’s memory.

  He was handsome. I could see why Ashlyn or any girl would be taken by him. But it was his eyes that made me want to shatter right there on the bricks under my feet. He looked at Ashlyn behind me, but he was looking right at me, through me. Those ocean blue eyes and the soul inside have looked at me what felt like a thousand times before. I didn’t move, I barely breathed.

  “Seth,” I whispered, not believing what I was seeing.

  A robin came and landed on the railing between them. She looked at it and began to spout about how the Robins were her favorite and she loved to come up there to listen at night. When more came, she laughed happily, giggling, and told him that she wanted to be one of those birds.

  “No,” I heard myself say. “It’s not possible.”

  She moved, chasing them further down, and he chased her, a smile on his face that said he would do just about anything she wanted. He went right through me once more before I could move out of the way. I turned, needing to see where this went, needing for this to play out. I finally felt Seth’s arms close around me from behind me, but he wasn’t trying to stop me or pull me away, he was watching with me—he just needed to touch me. I knew the feeling. I clawed at his arms around my chest to keep him there and felt his mouth press to my ear.

  “I’m rig
ht here, baby.” I took a deep breath, sighing, soaking his presence in, his voice. It didn’t matter if his touch wasn’t helping me physically, his touch helped me with him just being there. His touch made my soul sing and if we left here and his calm never seeped into my skin again, that would be okay. I wanted him, not what his touch could give me.

  “They like you,” Richard was saying to her and made a circle around her. The birds sat on the railing and some sat on the bricks around their feet. He was just flirting, of course. Birds were just being birds. They were hoping they had crumbs to throw out as most tourists in London did, I was sure.

  “I really do wish I was a bird sometimes.” She leaned down and held her hand out, her finger extended toward one. The birds near her hand flew away as she neared them. She sighed. “They sing their song,” she told him, “they can do whatever they want. They’re free. If they wanted to leave they could.” She looked at him from her bent position. “If they wanted to find someone to be with, they’re free to. Everyone doesn’t have that luxury,” she finished, her words barely breath as they stared at each other.

  He came a couple steps closer. “Some of us do have that luxury. Don’t you feel that?”

  She stared. “I…”

  “Ashlyn,” he said. Her name, just her name.

  I heard Seth make a noise from behind me, realizing as I did that this was more than a memory just for Ashlyn.

  Her chest began to move up and down rapidly. “Richard.” Then her lips began to lift into a smile.

  He cleared his throat and pulled something from his pocket—a folded piece of paper. He unfolded it carefully and showed it to her. “I, uh, did this for you.”

  We couldn’t see what was on it, but she said, “You drew this? Truly?”

  “Ahh,” I groaned as Seth gripped me tightly, understanding it all.

  “Sweetheart,” he whispered and turned me to face him instead, pressing me tightly into his chest, keeping me in the safe place that I loved there. If he felt the tears that were already soaking his shirt, he said nothing. He just kept me there, a hand on the back of my neck and one of the middle of my back and we watched.

  We watched knowing our lives were changing, they weren’t our own, and we didn’t know what the hell to do anymore. We’d thought the Watsons had been our only obstacle. How naïve we’d been.

  I shivered again as the cold seeped into me bone-deep and those hazy, ethereal spots in her vision returned. And then it was as if I could feel her, see through her eyes, feel her heart pounding a heavy rhythm in our chests, and I knew that something awful was about to happen…and I was going to feel it all just as Ashlyn had felt it.

  He smiled at her and then he held his hand out to help her up. Ashlyn reached for his hand slowly, knowing this was it, that her life would be different, that she’d get everything she ever wanted, that her fairy tale would come true with one touch, just like she was always promised. But a man came rushing through door, along with other council members, and ruined everything. She never touched her significant that day. If she had known what would have happened, how the council and the man staring her down now would have been so hell bent on keeping them separated, she might have just touched him quickly just to bond, reached out to him, made it happen, but she knew that would have just made things worse. Either way, they would have never let them be together, but at least she would have gotten to see the visions of their life together. It would have been worth it for that.

  When they took Richard by the arms and started to drag him to stand by the door, my chest ached so badly, I could barely breathe as I realized what was happening. We tried to keep our composure however.

  Both Ashlyn and I both asked as one, “What are you doing?”

  “Richard and I need to have a chat. That’s all. About boundaries. The Visionary is special.” He touched her arm. I felt it and shivered, disgust crawling through my veins. Bile seeped up into my throat. I tried not to gag on it. “You keep forgetting how special you are, Visionary. You aren’t some Virtuoso that can play house and have rendezvous on rooftops.”

  His breath brushed against my check he was so close. It was such a strange thing. I felt like I was being ripped in two. I could feel her world, yet I could still feel mine. The disgusting breath on my cheek and Seth’s arms still around me, holding me tight. And I wasn’t about to lose myself to Ashlyn’s world. No. I clung to Seth harder, even digging my nails and fingers into upper arms. I looked at her as she tried to come up with something to say to him and then looked at Seth. His face was right above mine, waiting. Just waiting for me.

  “Don’t lose me,” I begged him. “Seth, please, don’t lose me—”

  He cut me off with his lips—just pressing them against mine gently. One of his arms released me and his hand came up to hold my face and smooth my cheek.

  He eased away just far enough to say, “I’ve got you.” I could feel his lips move when he said it against mine because he was still so close, breathing life into those words. “I’ve got you, sweetheart. I promise you won’t be lost.”

  “But,” I protested, “I feel…I’m—” I looked at Ashlyn and then up into his eyes. “I feel so lost already.”

  His handed smoothed my cheek once more. “It’s not you. It’s her.”

  The cold came back, blasting through my bones once more. I shivered, my teeth started to hurt from clamping down to keep them from chattering. “I’m being pulled away. I can feel it—Seth.”

  His jaw was rigid. “I’ve got you. Ava, look in my eyes. It’s me. If you go, I go.” He huffed a little and shook his head. “I think we’ve proved that we’re a package deal.” He smiled which surprised me in the circumstances. “Significants belong to each other. Our souls belong to each other. I don’t care where you go or when or how. I’ll come with you,” he said hard and loud, almost yelling it, as if he wanted everyone to hear it. “And I’ll find you, always. Your heart belongs to me.” He took my hand and put it on his chest, his head rest against mine. “Safe. Right beside mine, right where it belongs. You’re not lost, little bird, and you won’t be.”

  I shuddered and leaned up, kissing him fervently, worried that this could be the last time. I pulled back, my body aching in more ways than one.

  “No one else saves me like you,” I whispered. “You bastard.” I raised my head, my eyes wide, shocked at what had come out of Ashlyn’s mouth. And mine. We turned to look at her.

  She was glaring at the carefully orchestrated hand on her arm that wasn’t touching any skin, only her jacket. “I can walk. Get your hands off me.”

  “Our Visionary is obviously suffering from a fit of some sort,” he said and nodded to someone. “Hysteria perhaps.”

  “Where are you taking him?” we asked.

  “Locked in his room, of course.” He smiled, but it was unlike any smile I wanted to be on the other end of. “Unless we should put him in the only place that he can’t get out of.”

  We gasped. “No.”

  “Didn’t I warn you about meeting him? A girl meeting a boy who isn’t her significant. Shame on you.”

  “He would have been,” we said and she turned to look at Richard. His eyes were already on her from his place on his knees. She locked eyes with him and begged. “You didn’t give us the opportunity. We hadn’t touched yet. If you never let me see anyone then how would I ever touch anyone to bond with them? Please, just let—”

  “You aren’t here to bond. You’re here to lead your people,” he dismissed and nodded to the men. They each came and grabbed a sleeved arm of hers.

  She struggled. “No. You don’t understand. I felt it. So did he. We would have bonded had we touched. If you’ll only let us—”

  “All the more reason to keep him locked up. In fact, to the dungeon with him.”

  “No,” we screamed and fell to our knees, grabbing our chest. We were both pulled back up, but in completely different ways—mine was in love and worry, hers was in hate and fury. He was dragged through the do
or and so was she. Then everything changed so quickly, we couldn’t even think, catch our breath or adjust.

  We were in the dungeons. It had been a while because the man I saw before me behind those bars wasn’t the same mad who’d I’d just seen on the rooftop. His hair was longer, curling around his ears, but not in a good way at all. His beard was overgrown, he was so thin. His fingers wrapped around the bars and his eyes begged her to come closer, to just reach out and touch him…but they begged her to go, to get out of there, to never come back.

  “Ashlyn, get out of here before they find you.”

  She smiled; I felt it on my face. “I made it. I actually made it to you.”

  “And now I want to you to leave,” he said as she came down the stairs toward him.

  “Richard, tell me what I can—”

  She never made it. We watched in horrified wonder as she was overrun.

  “Ashlyn!” he screamed. “Don’t you dare hurt her.”

  “No, get your hands off me,” we screamed. “Richard.” It was so strange saying someone else’s name, but it also felt…right in some weird way.

  Ashlyn and Richard reached for each other as Ashlyn was pulled away, fighting with everything she had in her. It was the most heartbreaking thing I’d ever seen in my entire life.

  “Stop fighting, Ash, you’re going to hurt yourself,” he said and the way he said it and the way he used her nickname reminded me so much of Seth.

  “Richard,” she cried, “please don’t. I can’t live in a world where you aren’t there with me.” She cried so hard in the guard’s arm. He realized that she had stopped fighting and so he stopped struggling with her.

  “Yes, you can. Go and change things. Show our people that these monsters aren’t who we are.” The guard chuckled at Richard’s dig and wasn’t prepared for Ashlyn to snatch away. She ran for the cell. It all happened as if in slow motion for us. For me at least. I knew the outcome. I knew she didn’t make it, but still, I waited with bated breath and wanted so much for her to reach him. Once again they stretched their arms out toward each other. Their fingers got the closest they’d gotten. The angry guard jerked her back by her arm just as their fingers narrowly missed each other.