Morgana dropped limply to the ground and Drake drew back like she was a disease. I didn’t even feel David break away from me, didn’t notice he was gone until he appeared at Drake’s side, holding the lantern high over Morgana.
“It is over now,” Drake said, taking the lantern.
“What are you doing?” David asked.
“Setting things right.”
Quaid vanished from my side and reappeared behind David, moving him backward as Drake smashed the lantern down on Morgana’s torso, setting her alight.
“What are you doing?” I yelled.
“She must not live,” he said, stepping back to watch her burn. “A snapped neck will not kill her. She must not be allowed to return from this dark world she exists in now.”
My lips filled with so much blood I couldn’t close them, my arms and hands heavy and cold with shock. I stood by the wall and watched her body ignite from torso to head, the flames traveling down her legs and consuming everything in a fierce orange glow. I’d never seen a body burn before, but the smell of flaming hair and flesh entered a part of my mind that I knew it would never leave. I glanced at David, who watched on with a stiff lip, his fists curling in hatred by his sides, flashes sparking in his mind of my face, licked with flames, the image mingling then with the horrid corpse on the floor as it burned.
I moved over and slipped my hand around his fist, bringing him back down. “David.”
He drew a tight breath through his nose and looked at me.
“It’s over now,” I offered softly.
“Yes,” he said, his voice deep and cold. “It is.”
Drake looked back as David walked away, watching until he vanished in the darkness.
“I’ll go with him,” Quaid offered, “make sure he finds his way out.”
“Thanks.” I sighed, looking back at Drake, but he was gone.
“Amara,” he said, startling me as he appeared at my other side. “I’m so sorry for what she did to you.”
All I could do was nod, wishing that could fix it. And as if he seemed to know how I felt, he cautiously moved in and wrapped his arms around me, holding me in a way that no one ever had before. I realized, in that moment, that while Falcon may have posed as a father, he had never loved me as such. His love had always been so much more. But as this man embraced me in a warmth that only could be the love of a father, I felt fragile—like I’d come home without knowing I’d ever been gone. I felt it move up my legs and into my heart, weakening it and making it stronger, and as the feeling moved out over my chest, I started crying.
“Shhh,” he whispered, holding me up where my legs buckled. “It’s okay now, my sweet daughter. Everything will be okay.”
And I knew it would, but the past had just hurt so much that I didn’t want to see the future right now. I just wanted to cry. And so he let me. He stood here with me in the dark, smoke-filled cell, under the rotting stench of my sister’s death, and held onto me, erasing all the hatred I once had for him.
* * *
As we stood in silence for what felt like most of the day, I was sure that one or two times I had imagined myself barbecuing a sausage over the flaming corpse, but so many other things passed through my mind as I watched her burn that I wasn’t sure what I’d imagined after a while.
Drake said nothing the entire time. We were both just lost in our collective thoughts, processing a future that would never happen for Morgana against a past that had made her what she’d become. I saw myself in her as she burned, maybe because I’d burned in just the same way not so long ago. I saw the life I left behind, still not able to picture it but definitely able to understand it, and I saw the future I had once, before I knew any of my past. I woke up one day with my flesh burned and no memory of who I was. No memory of the things I’d done. And I expected to move on, clean slate—be who I knew I was inside and not the person everyone kept expecting me to be. I’d been given a fresh start, no matter what atrocities I’d committed in my past. It felt so final seeing Morgana die. I felt at peace in my bones, knowing how much she had suffered—more than I could ever have inflicted on her for what she did, and I was the one that she had done it to. It seemed she almost hated herself for it all more than I hated her. More than even David hated her. I saw it in his eyes as he left earlier. I saw the disgust, but mostly, I saw the disgust in himself for feeling the way he did. He wanted her to hurt, but not even he could’ve imagined such horrors for her. I knew he felt sorry for her and I knew it hurt him to feel that way, but I also knew I could help him come to terms with that.
As the flames simmered down and left an oddly-shaped pile of ash, a tunnel full of smoke that burned my irises, and a stench that would stay in my skin for weeks, I looked at Morgana with new eyes, speaking with my heart before my mind could step in and shake me. “She can be brought back.”
“Excuse me?” Drake said, his voice weak from disuse.
“Like me.” I faced him. His cheeks were black with soot, muddy lines running roads through the dirt where his tears had fallen all day. “We can bring her back—a new mind, new body, fresh start.”
His eyes widened, the whites so stark around the blue that, in a face so blackened with grief and soot, they stood out like gems. “You would allow that?”
I looked back at the charred remains, walking over to inspect the orange embers of what was once a being. What was once my sister. “I know I loved her at some point. I know David did, and if I ask only that part of myself if it feels right to leave her dead, she doesn’t think so.”
Drake let out a jagged breath, covering his mouth with a tight hand.
“When I first met David after Morgana killed me, all I wanted was for them to see me as the person I was when I wasn’t their Ara. I felt like I was new, reborn. I didn’t care about the past they said I had, and I didn’t see why I should have to.” I turned back to look at him, breathing the thinner air as the smoke began to clear, taking the fog in my heart with it. “It makes sense to me, Drake—a fresh start. She’d have no memory of what she’s done if she wakes, and if I deserved a fresh start—was given one by Lily after taking her soul all these years—how can I expect anything less for Morgana, even after all she’s done?”
“I… are you sure, Amara, because—”
“No. I’m not sure. But…” I looked back at the ash where her face would be. “If I can forgive myself for the things I did in the past, what right do I have not to eventually forgive her, especially if she doesn’t know who she is?”
“And if she does one day remember?”
“We can erase it. All of it.”
“She could be dangerous if she were to remember,” he warned.
“As could I have been if I’d remembered the wrong stuff first, like when I tried to take Harry to save him from David because I thought he was evil.” I laughed, the sound fizzling away. “But I had people there to support me—to bring me back down from it all.”
Drake seemed stuck at first for what to say, but he nodded after a while, moving to squat beside Morgana and me. “Burn away what was; burn to ashes all the mistakes of the past and scrape up what’s left of the heart that was hurting to begin with,” he said, as if he was casting some spell. “Nourish it and let it grow into what it was always meant to be—free of this tragic world it grew up in.”
“Just like with me,” I said, feeling a chill in the air as the last of the smoke was sucked down the tunnel by an unseen force.
58
David
Something dark had come over me in those tunnels. I wasn’t sure if it was the sudden release of so much hatred and revenge or if it was the need for more, but when I made it to the surface, I abandoned Quaid and found myself walking in to the old church at the center of town. If any early-morning joggers had stopped to talk to me, I didn’t notice them. If there were a priest at the door as I walked inside, I didn’t notice him either. I wasn’t sure what I was even doing here. I just needed some place to go that wasn’t a reminder o
f Morgana and all she had done to me.
As I sat beneath the arched ceilings, splashes of light beaming down on me through the stained-glass windows as morning settled into place, I felt a sense of calm that I’d not felt in years. It left me free to wander my thoughts without judgement, without incident, as though reflecting on them in this place would give me a kind of protection from the horror I didn’t otherwise have.
If I thought back to Morgana, a girl I fell in love with once—before I ever knew Ara—I couldn’t make any connections between that sassy, sexy woman and the damaged creature I just saw in the cells. Though my heart knew it, my mind never wanted to admit that she was the same person I once loved. The same person that hexed me, nearly cost me my marriage. The same person I beat bloody. The same person that killed my child.
All of those different personas mixed together sometimes until none of it made sense. Until I wasn’t sure if I should hate her, love her, pity her, or do to her what she just did to herself.
And now it didn’t matter. Her own father saw enough of the monster to kill her. Not only to kill her, but see to it that she would never arise. I could no longer blame myself for what happened to our child. It was clear to me now: I didn’t bring this upon myself by beating Morgana. It started long ago when her father placed her in the care of her grandmother and then killed his own wife in order to resurrect her immortal. None of this was my fault, and the man that started it had, finally, ended it.
The sun changed positions in the sky many times before I came up from my thoughts, and when I did, it was in front of a face I’d not seen in years.
“Father Sean.”
“Why if it isn’t our young David Knight,” he said, the word ‘young’ sounding more like ‘yoong’. It seemed the Irishman in him hadn’t withered in all these years.
“How are you, Father?” I said. “It must be, what—”
“Fifty years since I seen ya face,” he said. “And what brings ye to the good Lord’s house on this fine rainy day?”
“I…” I was unsure. I hadn’t set foot in a church since the days when I first met Ara. At some point in all we’d been through, I’d lost my faith in God. Completely. Wasn’t even sure I believed now.
“Ah, you’ve been t’rou a mighty rough trot, haven’t ya?”
I had to laugh. “I certainly have, Father.”
“And I hear ye all be finding this Morgana gar’l again this morn’n? S’that what’s got your panties in a twist?”
I laughed again. He hadn’t changed a bit. Not in all these years. “It has. I must admit.” But somehow, it all seemed a lot less consuming in his presence.
“Ah, I see.” He sat back, facing the front of the church, the cold wooden pew creaking as he moved. “Word’s got out, ye know?”
“What word?”
“The young queen. Er”—he grinned—“S’cuse me, former queen, has decided to let the gar’l live, resurrection, they’re sayin’.”
“What?” I growled, simmering myself down with a stern reminder from the good Father about where I currently was. “She’s resurrecting her?”
“Do you not agree then?”
“No.” I stood up, but a firm Irishman’s hand came down on my shoulder.
“Sit down, son. There’s things need sortin’ in your ’art here and running off to fight wi’ yur missus ain’t gon’ solve none today.”
I sat down. Reluctantly.
“Now you listen here. That Morgana gar’l, evil as she was, had a heart hurting bad as I seen any. Spent time in here wi’ me, talking things t’rou.”
“She did?”
“Before it all went to Hell,” he said, making the sign of the cross. “And let me put it to you like this, David. If that sweet wife’a yours deserve a fresh start, why on God’s good earth don’t the other sister?”
“Because she killed my baby, Father,” I said; how could he not understand?
“And am I not right in rememb’rin’ you did just the same to yur own brother?”
Oh God. It hit me so suddenly and with so much force that my skin crawled. He was right. So right I couldn’t speak, could hardly breathe. I hated Morgana. Wanted the flesh peeled from her face. But I was no different to her.
“There now.” He patted my knee as he stood up. “You sit ’ere a while and think on that then.”
I didn’t see him walk away. I didn’t even hear the door close, but I did feel empty and incredibly alone once he was gone. I sat with no words in my mouth, no breath in my chest, and rolled my face up to look at the cross on the wall—two forgiving eyes staring back down at me without judgement.
And there was nothing more to be said.
I got up and left the church, reaching the steps to the manor as it turned dark, with no recollection of how I got here.
“David!” Ara ran for me as she passed the Great Hall, the concern dropping from her sooty face when she saw me. “Where have you been?”
“Walking,” I said, but my voice was colder than I intended. Cold enough that as she went to throw her arms around me, she stopped. She was black with soot from head to toe and reeked of death, but I drew her in anyway and kissed her head, just glad to finally feel her form, the solidity, against me again. After seeing Morgana burn, it had brought a few memories too close to home for me—things I’d locked away so deeply since Ara’s return that I was sure now that they were only a nightmare.
“You’re angry at me,” she stated, though it sounded more like a question. “You heard, didn’t you?”
“Shhh,” I whispered into her hair. “I did. And it’s okay.”
“Are we talking about the same thing?” She looked up at me through round, fearful eyes.
I smiled in reply.
“But… how?” She almost couldn’t believe it. I could see the lengthy argument she had prepared just wither away inside her without a place to go. “I thought you’d be mad.”
“Let’s just say I got some insights from an old friend—someone I haven’t spoken to in a long time.”
She just smiled, throwing her arms around me. “I’m so glad you’re okay. I was so worried—”
“We’re both okay.” I hugged her delicate little frame tight, breathing her in. And then I coughed, choking on the fumes in her clothes. “God, Ara. You need a shower.”
She laughed, pulling back. “Yes. And I desperately need some food.”
“Why? Watching old witchy-poo cook made you hungry, did it?”
“David!” She gasped, her face lighting up though as she slapped me playfully. And as we walked back to our room, saying nothing, but comfortable that way, I realized that things would just move on now. We wouldn’t think about Morgana again. She would be raised from the dead and she would get on with her life, and Ara would walk beside me in our new life, freed by the remorse that Morgana showed before her death, while I would be freed by the knowledge that one could ask for forgiveness and that it could be given, as it had been with me so long ago when I took an infant’s life. This day had burned a hole in me earlier but now, it seemed, that hole had been filled with something I couldn’t touch. Filled with something I couldn’t understand. But it didn’t matter, because for the first time in my life, I felt cleansed. Felt like I could accept the forgiveness Jason offered me long ago. And in that, I saw myself as remarkably and perfectly human.
59
Ara
Sometimes I’d forget he was so mutilated. When we made love, or when he showered or changed his shirt, he did his best to hide the scars from me. And it worked. Most of the time I didn’t notice them. It was only times like these, when he’d forget and lift his shirt off in front of me, that I could truly take in the damage—see it for what it was. Morgana was dead now; her body allowed a chance to move on in another life—away from her past—but David still bore scars that would remind us of it all every day. It was time, I decided, letting my eyes explore the length of him and really drink in the damage. Jason had the blood of Lilith now to do all the testing
he wanted. He didn’t need to run any more tests on me or David. What he needed to do was turn my husband back into a vampire, cured of the curse or not. David had wanted to wait until I one day remembered who I was, knowing how much the old me would’ve appreciated the human him, but I would never forget the way he felt. I would never forget what he was like. Even if I remembered everything, the human version of him would never escape my memory. He didn’t need to hold on any longer for me. And I needed to tell him that.
“David.” I crawled up behind him where he sat on the bed, running my hands up over his shoulder blades and linking them around his chest.
“Mm?” he hummed, turning his cheek to mine.
“Call Jason.”
“Why?” he said with a laugh, motioning to his nakedness. “You want a threesome?”
As much as I didn’t want to, that stupid, sick joke made me laugh a bit. “No. I want him to turn you.”
“What?” He swiveled around to face me, taking my arms down from his shoulders. “Why now?”
My eyes drifted to his scars.
“You’re offended by them?” he said, defensive.
“No. Not even a little bit, but…” I reached over and touched his shoulder, tracing the raised skin there. “It’s a constant reminder, and—”
“It’s okay.” He cupped my hand and kissed it. “I get it. When you put it like that, it makes perfect sense.”
“I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“I’m not offended.” He shook his head. “I just misinterpreted what you meant, that’s all.”
I nodded timidly.
“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” he said, angling his chin down to catch my gaze.
“More than ready. I mean, I know you’re still hesitant because I don’t remember who I am yet—”
“It’s not that,” he cut in. “I know I said that the other day, but it’s not how I feel now.”
Bound by Secrets Page 62