Son of Ra

by Cyndi Goodgame

  “The place I was born.”

  I looked at him slowly to hide my interest. I was trying hard to be somewhat defiant. “This is where you…are we at the Valkyrie gardens?” A small sound of irritation came to the surface.

  “You’re safe,” he said quickly misjudging my reasons for asking.

  “I know.”

  “As young as five, I used to lay here and count every star in my head until I fell asleep. My father would pick me up and I’d wake up in my bed.”

  “And you never saw the sun after you turned?”

  He shook his head. "Mostly no." Sad! Ironic.

  “I used to lay here and picture you beside me counting too.”

  That was bit creepy, but the awe outweighed it.

  I felt conflicted. Lying down now in the soft grass I wheedled out, “I spent as much time dreaming about anything but what my court involved.”

  “You asked me not to give you half truths. I’ll admit that I don’t think you’re ready for all of it, but I will try to give you more of what you ask.”

  His face was beside me lying really close making me feel like my head was wrapped in a thermal blanket and muffled from anything else in the world. “Thank you.” If it weren’t for the fact that I knew more information was so close on his tongue and available if he’d just tell, I’d have been a little more elated.

  “I was told to continue to watch you after I changed and could stay safe with you. I watched you one of the first times you hid in the garden. Only, I was already there when you arrived. I’d counted the constellations twice when you came there just waiting to see you. I was as much enamored by you then as I am now. You were so passionate and free and I couldn’t stop watching you,” he blinked rapidly.

  I laughed at his way of describing my adolescent self, “That’s how you saw me?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t have described it that way then. It was a young boy who’d been sent to keep a child safe because one day she would be queen.”

  I jerked my head landing my nose in his shoulder blade. The truth loomed over us like a wavering cloud.

  “Yes. No half truth here, you will be queen. It has been foretold.”

  I kept complete control of my mouth that landed right beside his, “By who?” I crept slowly upward to look at his face closer. I needed to avoid those lips for anything other than letting its secrets flow. I fisted my hands behind my back to refrain.

  He didn’t tell me what I wanted to know. “They told my father, my father told me. They knew so much about you. It scared me. That was the day he and Lord Hathown told me when you were born.”

  Uh, oh! I didn’t see that coming.

  “And remind me that you know when that is?” I asked the stars letting his eyes lose their hold on me.

  “February 29th.”

  I sat up on my knees facing him and trying to remember if I'd told him that. He followed and sat sideways folding his one arm down to hold himself up, and laid his legs perpendicular to his weight. That one hand broadcasting a huge emerald stoned ring on his right hand that I know I hadn't mentioned yet.

  “Ask me?” I knew he meant me to ask his birthday.

  I nodded an ardent yes. “Yours?”

  “February 29th.”

  I stared. I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut.

  “Truths.” He was testing to see if I could handle more. If I showed any sign of TMI he was going to shut down.

  “What does it all mean?” I let my breath out very slowly thinking surely I’m some super villain who would soon find herself faced with Armageddon like proportions.

  “Mostly, that we were never really in charge with the possibilities, but ultimately we can choose to not follow our destiny,” he brushed a strong willed thumb gently across the length of my bottom lip.

  “Interesting way of slicing it. It still comes out in pieces.” Or some strange horrible demon that’s trying to make me go insane with the fact that my life is totally planned out and I have no control. And I seriously should get some credit for not saying everything I think out loud. I tried not to laugh at myself.

  “So philosophical!” he teased rubbing the top lip with the same thumb.

  “Likewise,” I looked up into his eyes.

  His hand shining just like so in the moonlight showed the ring on his finger. The slightest hint of ruby red sat beside the emerald. It matched my ring, yet mine seemed to have several colors inside the stone. Odd that I didn’t notice before.

  He lay back down.

  I watched his facial features in the moonlight. I watched him so much for two days that I could see the way his eyebrows arched up not in anger, but in some kind of conflict he seemed trying to overcome. “What is it?”

  “You don’t have to tell me, but do you like the Hunter boy?”

  No, I don’t. Not the same. “I do.”

  He was completely still.

  “But not in the same way…you have a way of… of making me so mad I want to prove myself. A way of…of making me melt ten times over just by looking at you. Your thoughts drive me insane, yet it thrills me to nothing to want to hear more. I think that Calum, he is my calm and you are my storm. I feel right around him. He makes me feel…” What did I want to say, “Like a peace that makes everything okay.” Describing it wasn’t easy.

  “What do you feel when you kiss me?”

  Such hard questions. Enraptured? To tell him means to give him secrets only my own heart knows or can’t define as of yet. I’m not sure I want to give that away just yet, though he knew most everything about me and could read pretty much the rest of it.

  “I don’t think I want to tell you just yet. I shouldn’t be boosting your ego.” I pushed his arm meaning to be apologetic in a sense.

  “Tell me?” He pouted his lip. He really needed to know. Wanted to know. Had to know. And I wanted to tell him.

  “My insides fall apart. I’m frozen there, right then with only you in my world.” I knew what he was waiting for. He hadn’t moved still. “And Calum, I can tell now that I’ve tasted your lips,” this felt awkward, but right, “I only feel a comfort when I’m with him. Like a brother.” There! I said it.

  He turned on his side and pulled my hand towards him to roll to my side. I waited for him to say more, but he didn’t.

  “I don’t know what to say with you sometimes,” he confessed.

  Confessions surround the air we breathe. “I have more to say than I’ve ever wanted to say to someone than I ever have, ever, in my life. But I’ve only just met you and I’m deathly afraid to say much more for several different fear driven reasons.”

  He smiled. I loved it. “Same here.” He paused. “What do you want to say?” his voice alone drew me in making me wonder if it was a Vampire thing.

  “Um, analog or digital?” Okay! That was stupid. But he avoided the real answers I needed.

  He scrunched his face up in confusion at my idiot question. “Analog, I guess.”

  “Sunglasses or hats?” I wasn’t sure where I would go from here.

  “Both!” No deliberating.

  “Boxers or briefs?” I didn’t just say that.

  His cheeks actually reddened.

  “I’ll never tell.”

  I freaking did say it. This is so not me. Change the subject fast!

  “Um, Jeep or sports car?”

  “1990 Bronco.”

  Hmm! I like. I thought a while on that dumbstruck with the face that we’ve flown, but not driven.

  “If we are playing twenty questions, then you have sixteen to go?”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “Or I could take a turn?”

  I nodded indifferently only to break the silence and pressure of not talking. I’d just said I had a lot to say, but somehow was rendered speechless. This boy really kept my stomach in knots. I’d have to get away from him soon just to untie them, but did I really want too?

  “Plane or train?”

  My voice cracked, “Train.”

&n
bsp; “Really, why?”

  “Well, a train can possibly stop anywhere on the tracks, a plane can only land where it is clear for a landing. I prefer an absolute more than the possibility of no survival.”

  He studied me, no doubt analyzing everything.

  “You’re afraid of dying?”

  “Immensely!”

  “And you’ve never told anyone?” he guessed again. I touched the ring to be sure. It was against my skin.

  He guessed my anxiety and chuckled under his breath. “Even though you heal?”

  I nodded yes twice.

  “Thank you!”

  “For what?”

  “My trust with your secret.”

  I nodded unenthusiastically. I seem to be good at least moving my head up and down in an attempt to look coherent, but it was a facade.

  “Movies or stargazing?”

  I gave him my best “you’re an idiot for asking” look.

  He smiled.

  “Grapes or strawberries?”

  “Grapes with cheese.”

  “Interesting. Red or green?”

  I turned to see his eyes wanting him to see me looking. “Do they come in gold?”

  He figured it out by the raise of his eyebrows. His eyes had already taken on the flames in the darkness of his eyes early on in the conversation.

  “Seedless,” I answered.

  “Wine, red or white?”

  “White. I like the way it rainbows in my glass.” That was a very childish thing to say.

  He was reaching in the satchel when I remembered what he said when we arrived. He was born here.

  Out of the satchel came green grapes, red grapes, two glasses, and a bottle of white champagne. My mother’s favorite. I knew this because my father told me at every holiday meal where we celebrated and he relived his memories of her after finishing the entire bottle save mine and Szar’s glass. I flipped my head sideways. “How did you know?”

  He didn’t say. He was sitting with one knee propped up and facing me. I sat my legs sideways to take up as little space as possible. I watched the bubbles in my glass turning this way and that to catch the rainbows dancing in his eyes.

  “Why were you born here, at my gardens?”

  He was waiting for it. He watched his own glass as he spoke, “I was born a Valkyrie. Here. In the same place as you.”

  My eyes were wicked large and waiting.

  “Remember your father knew about me?” He pointed to where the sun is. “We were born on the same night, your brother, you, and I.”

  I was overwhelmed even though he premised it earlier.

  “And when my mother died she left the same kind of letter that the gods had deemed enough for us. My real father killed himself later and left me behind. I stayed and grew up two floors down below you. The Vampire lord turned me in an attempt to protect me from the fate that the three of us were destined to that night but it was leading right into what would all play out anyway. Your father helped him.”

  I opened my mouth, but he slid one finger in front of me to stop me.

  “This may all come out jumbled up, but I’ve never spoken it aloud. My father turned me for various reasons. I lost my place in the Val court that day. I only returned the day your father resummoned me and asked for of my help only to fulfill the original destiny back to its place. Since my sired father was dead not many years after that, I was left alone to make decisions that were already in the making. I didn’t have any decision to make after that first night to watch you again. I knew.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” he was surprised, I guessed.

  “For all that you went through. No one should have to question where they belong or lose the ability to choose what or where or how to go anywhere.”

  “Thank you, but I did choose. And so did your brother.”

  “Szar?”

  “He chose to be taken, beaten, and withstand malnutrition for your safety. He is truly courageous and admirably underestimated. He will be a great leader.”

  “Were talking about my brother?”

  “Yes!”

  “And he knows all this?”

  “Most of it.”

  “What doesn’t he know?”

  “How I feel about you?”

  “Oh! So he didn’t know your motives?” I guessed.

  “Perhaps. But he knew what it would gain him to have you out of the way and at the same time, safe and not dead as you would have been the other night if I hadn’t been there. But there is no question in that, because I have been there all the time and would not have missed it.”

  When else had he been there? Kind of creepy to think about.

  “The court raised me. My sired father who raised me after childhood was just trying to protect me. In me he had awoken a fight for what I wanted. Before that day, I couldn't keep you safe enough.”

  “He must have been a great father.”

  He didn’t know how to answer that.

  He heard something above him. I looked at the way his face went up towards the sky. A nest of birds sat directly above us.

  Cas bent over beside him and picked something up off the ground. I couldn’t tell what he was doing, but it seemed like he was trying to handle something delicate and small by the way he cupped his hands.

  “A baby bird. Oh, my, is it dying?”

  He silently flew up three feet and gently sat the bird back in its nest.

  “I thought a mama bird wouldn’t take her baby back after it’s touched by human hands?”

  “Myth, but I’m not human either.”

  I laughed at the irony. Lots of that lately.

  We didn’t eat again. I wasn’t that hungry. My knotted stomach kept talking to me and screaming to keep everything clear to avoid losing my food. The other sensations were stirring around with it. Every sense heightened to a maximum level combined with nerves and the warm feeling he shot through my body every time he touched me just making me want to break down and scream.

  He lay down again but asked, “Are you ready to return?”

  “No.” I should have said yes. I was supposed to say yes. He knows I should say yes.

  On my back, I pointed to the night sky, naming every star I could name just to keep us there as long as possible. I only had hours till my friends would be there to take me back to my fake life at Hunter school and wait for what would happen next. When I’d run out of stars, I laid there wondering how to ask my next question. “What will the Hunters do when I return?”

  “Dr. Green has agreed to cover for your identity break and let you stay on at the school till the term is finished. You are welcome back into your court, but danger lurks there simply because every faction knows your secret now. You should—

  What was he going to say? Am I safe anywhere? “I don’t need protection. I don’t need anyone.” My heart hardened back into the callous protective shield I’d hidden behind my whole life.

  “Perhaps. But there are others who need you.” He let the last two words linger in the air.

  “I can’t go back to court. I don’t belong there.”

  “You don’t have to.” His voice was soft and sad.

  “If I go back to the school, I will be safe by means by means of warning signals before anything could happen. I don’t need protection, and if I did, they are a school of Hunters. Even in herds, they are strong enough to ward off most evils.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  No! “Yes!” But my voice didn’t sound reassuring. A surge of heat ran up the length of me like the lie had a way of revealing itself. The hair on the back of my neck surged up and stood on end. The stilted conversation left me at a loss.

  “If that is your decision.”

  What was he hinting at?

  He cleaned up all of the spread and stood clasping the satchel closed. His hand reached out to mine. I stared at it for a second too long thinking about not being able to touch him again. I wasn’t sure if I could leave that behind, but
I wasn’t sure I should abandon my friends who I hoped were diligently searching for me high and low.

  I felt his arm slide around my waist instead and I closed my eyes as we ascended into the night sky.

  Chapter Nine

  There are two things a person should never be angry at…

  We returned under an early morning skyline of bright stars and sad sighs as he walked me to the room I was staying in. I kept my back to him holding the doorknob tight making my fingernails bend against my skin and heard him swallow.

  “I still don’t understand why you brought me here really, but I can’t say to anyone that I was tortured and miserable. I will hopefully appreciate the gesture when I find out more of what happened at the school and see that everyone is okay and alive."

  I knew with everything I had that I should not have turned around. It would be my downfall and make every last part of myself fall to pieces like the old me would have never done. I knew that I would lose the small amount of credit left to my dignity when I looked up into his eyes. And I crumbled every bit of what I said I wouldn’t do.

  “I want you…to know that I will be here…if you need anything.” The door opened and I wanted to fly to the balcony to escape his words.

  My hand behind me held my body up with only the doorknob to keep me from falling. I touched his face with the other. Just touched. One more time. He stood stiffly not moving with fists beside him. Was he trying to avoid me? Perhaps keep from getting hurt?

  “I don’t know what to do.” Not very philosophical, but it works.

  His hand was on my cheek now as was mine still on his. He leaned in, and just barely, gently touched my lips with his. I never closed my eyes. I wanted to watch his face a little longer. His eyes never closed. How could one person intensely affect me?

  His hand went behind my neck and drew me close enough I could feel his warmth coming through the coldness of his skin. He inhaled deeply and met my steady gaze then returned my own words to me. How is that you affect me so?

  He stayed there close and then backed up leaving. I heard the door to the room beside mine open and close and let go of the longest breath I’ve ever held.

  I squeezed my eyes tightly shut, then showered cold and long to erase the feelings stirring inside me. My mind replayed the entire night lingering completely on the end moment. I couldn’t stay. I had to return and find out how all this plays out.