by A. F. Dery
Grace was quiet for a long while, but she did not remove her hand from his arm. He wasn’t sure what that meant. He felt his heart racing, but he was afraid to say any more.
“He was running from his fate,” she said finally, with a humorless little laugh. “I’m almost certain I’ve heard this story somewhere before.”
Involuntarily, he smiled. “You know, I think I have too.” Just as quickly, the smile faded. “Grace, this is very serious. I don’t know how to keep you safe.”
“Maybe you can’t. But this is how it is, and we have to figure out how to handle it.” Her hand squeezed his arm briefly and then fell away. He suddenly felt the cold again.
“You’re shivering…we should go into the bedroom. I’ve managed to keep a fire going with the wood I had left in there.”
Hadrian frowned. “Was he keeping you prisoner in there or something?”
“Oh, yes. Apparently he feels that I’m safer with his uncontrolled magic than I am around you. He was willing to do about anything to keep me away from you, even sleep against the door.” He heard her hesitate. “Hadrian, I tried to come find you. I did. What I said-”
“No, please,” he said quickly. “You haven’t said or done anything wrong, Grace. Everything he accused me of was true, and you were right to react the way you did.”
“But I understand,” she insisted. “I understand why you didn’t tell me. I can’t claim to understand it all, and I can’t excuse it. But…I can’t bring myself to believe that you were pretending to be someone else all this time. This is you.” She sighed suddenly. “I’m not saying this very well.”
“It’s all right,” he said, his voice barely audible even to his own ears. He was finding it very difficult to breathe all of a sudden, and he forced himself to take another deep breath.
“No, it’s not all right. Hadrian, you could have killed him. I heard the noise out in the hall. You were using magic, weren’t you? You were fighting him with it. You could have killed him then, or in here once he was unconscious. You’re doing everything you can to save him instead. You’re not a killer, at least not anymore, and that means something.” Her voice was very earnest.
“I’m not sure what,” he said roughly. “It doesn’t change what I did. And once we figure out how to keep you safe, neither you nor he will have to worry about it anymore. Please, be at peace, Grace.”
Hadrian heard her gasp. “Surely you don’t mean…no, Hadrian! I told you before that’s not the answer, and it’s still not. Did you think I’d feel differently now? I don’t. The thought of you killing yourself-” Her voice broke, and after a tense moment, she said, “No, you can’t. How can it not matter when someone changes? Surely you can do more for those people in life than you could by just killing yourself out here. There must be some way to atone, some good you could still do.”
“Enough good to pay for hundreds of lives?” Hadrian said doubtfully. “I’m sorry, Grace. I shouldn’t have brought it up yet.”
“You shouldn’t bring it up at all!” she cried. “Tell me, what were you trying to research up here? What kind of ‘potion’ was it?”
He sighed. “It doesn’t matter now. I failed.”
“If it doesn’t matter, then it won’t hurt anything to tell me,” she said tartly.
“You’re going to make more of it than what it was, though.” His whole body felt heavy. He felt his shoulders sag. “I was trying to find a cure. But nothing I tried worked. The magic I used, when I killed those people…I didn’t fully understand it at the time. I still don’t. That’s the only explanation. I thought I did, but I didn’t. I consulted my old teachers, but no one could help me, so I came here, hoping to figure it out on my own before any more lives were lost.”
“That was brave of you, considering,” Grace said softly.
Hadrian’s eyebrows met. “Brave? How so?”
“Well, your lord couldn’t have been happy about you leaving to reverse the plague, since it was meant to be a weapon, right?”
“Weapon?” Hadrian shook his head. “Is that what this man told you? That it was a weapon? I suppose in a way, it was, but it was supposed to wipe out livestock to aid in laying siege to the territories my lord was about to invade, not kill the inhabitants. It was never supposed to infect people. Something went wrong, I don’t know what. I was using magic beyond my true level of skill, in an effort to prove myself…an incredibly stupid reason for so many people to suffer and die. My lord certainly did not object to me seeking a cure for it. What good is land without people to keep it? To say nothing of the possibility of his own subjects being infected, if and when the plague traveled. He is the one who supplied me with most of what I have here.”
“What?” Grace sounded astonished. “I think…I think this has all been a horrible misunderstanding…good grief, Hadrian, I thought you had deliberately tried to kill those people, and I think this man thinks so too! How can you not see this is different? It was a mistake!”
“Mistake or not, it doesn’t bring those people back, and it doesn’t change anything,” Hadrian said heavily. He pressed a hand to the side of his head. It still throbbed where he had struck it, and he was feeling more and more tired. He was no longer accustomed to using magic, and it had worn him out more than he thought possible.
“No, it doesn’t, but you dying wouldn’t bring them back either. And as long as you’re alive, maybe there is something you can still do,” Grace said. He felt her arm around him, as she nudged him toward the hall. “I’ll help you, Hadrian. I helped you make that potion, didn’t I? I’ll help you. You can’t give up yet.”
“I’d like to keep arguing with you, but I’m too tired,” Hadrian mumbled. He felt like he was shuffling more than walking as she guided him from the room, but she felt warm and soft at his side, and it was all he could do just to focus enough attention on his feet to shuffle.
All too soon, she was urging him to lay on the bed. He tried to protest, but she was stubborn. “I’ve had plenty of rest, given that I’ve been stuck in here with nothing else to do. You lie down and sleep. I need to prepare something for us to eat anyway.”
“Just be careful, Grace,” he murmured as he laid down. “The potion should keep him sleeping for some time, but his magic may make it burn off more quickly than it would otherwise. It’s hard to say. Check on him often and if he shows any signs of stirring, wake me.”
“I will,” was the last thing he heard.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Grace was worried.
Two days had passed since they’d begun to drug the wolf-turned-man. They spent every waking moment between potion doses making more sleeping potion and resuming Hadrian’s research as best they could, though there was little true progress on that front.
Their supply of meat was also beginning to dwindle, though they at least had the cold to preserve what the wolf had last brought them, and meat was the bulk of what they had to eat.
Of more immediate concern, however, was that the time between the wolf-man’s potion doses was growing shorter and shorter, as though his body was already adapting to it. She tentatively made that suggestion to Hadrian and he nodded.
“Yes, that seems to be what is happening. Soon it may not work at all, at least not to keep him completely unconscious, and partially conscious might be even more dangerous in his condition than fully awake would be. At least if he is awake, there is some chance he could try to control it, as he did when he first lost it in front of you.”
The words haunted her. When she fell asleep later that night, she dreamed she was running again.
But this time it wasn’t to find a village being devoured by flame. It was into the storm again, as it had been when she’d run from the warlord, only this time it was not the warlord or his men that she feared was chasing her, but the wolf.
Every time she was forced to stop, panting and freezing cold, he would howl, the sound piercing her through and pushing her back into a run. The bare, ice coated trees were growing more
and more densely together as she ran from him, until she was forced to slow down to move through them.
At last she was forced to stop, unable to squeeze through anymore. When she turned to retrace her steps and try to find another way around, the wolf was there, sharp teeth bared, ears flattened and snarling, not an arm’s length away.
She cried out, throwing up her arms to protect herself as he lunged for her throat-
“Grace, Grace, wake up!”
She jerked awake at once, her heart pounding. She looked around wildly, half expecting to still see trees and ice everywhere around her, or the glowing dark eyes of a wolf. Instead she saw Hadrian, sitting on the edge of the bed with his hands on her arms, shaking her. He was leaning over her, squinting very hard, and his face was close enough to hers that she could feel his breath on her skin. She was suddenly mesmerized by the curves of his lips, entirely unable to look away from them.
He shook her once more and opened his mouth to call her name again and she quickly said, “I’m awake, sorry…I’m awake…it was a bad dream, that’s all.” He let go of her arms and started to move away but on some wild impulse, she threw her arms around his neck and pulled him closer, burying her face against his neck. She held very still, squeezing her eyes shut, her heart somehow beating even faster now than it had been during her dream. She waited, for what she didn’t know, shivering like she was still running in the woods.
After a moment…ten moments…an eternity…his arms went softly around her, so softly they barely disturbed the cloth of her shift. Another moment, and his hands were ghosting through her long hair, the suggestion of a caress. She felt his mouth press gently against the side of her head, then again, warm and soft, at her bare temple.
“It’s all right, Grace. You’re safe, for now.” His voice was barely a whisper, tickling her ear.
“I’m safe with you,” she murmured back.
“Grace-”
“Shhhh, I’m listening to something important,” she interrupted, opening her eyes and placing a hand against his bearded cheek. Rather than squinting, his heavy lidded eyes were now as wide as she’d ever seen them. She pulled back a little, causing his hands to tighten on her shift in surprise, and nudged his face to hers.
He opened his mouth to say something else, and she quickly pressed hers against it, her heart feeling like it was going to leap from her chest.
He froze at first, but she’d expected that. He always seemed surprised, by any contact, no matter how casual, and unfair or not, she had not warned him; she stayed where she was, and again she waited, her suffering keen. Then to her own surprise, his arm suddenly tightened around her, and he was kissing her back with the intensity of a drowning man who had just broken the surface and found his first gasp of air. His beard tickled her face, but she barely noticed.
Grace had only ever been kissed on the mouth once before, by a neighboring farmer’s son, supposedly on a dare from his friends. It had been nothing like this. She was almost as frightened as she was excited, but all the same, she didn’t want it to end. All that existed was him.
But too soon, and with the same suddenness as it had begun, it did end, with Hadrian turning his head away and lowering it to rest against her shoulder, his breathing as shallow as hers had become.
“Grace,” he murmured huskily. “I can’t do this to you. I won’t ruin you.”
“A kiss won’t ruin me,” she protested breathlessly.
“No, but what it leads to will, and I won’t have it on my conscience.” He sighed heavily. “You’re going to leave here, Grace. You’re going to go home, or find a new home somewhere else, if you don’t want to go back. But I’ll never leave this place again.” The words were very certain, his tone very firm.
She knew at once what he meant by that.
“No, Hadrian, don’t say that.” Grace blinked back sudden tears. “Please.”
“I won’t say it again, then, but this is how it is.”
“It doesn’t have to be, you know that.” Her voice was pleading, but he said nothing.
They were quiet together this way for a long time, Grace trying desperately to think of some new argument to persuade him as Hadrian gently stroked her hair with one hand, until at last he said, very softly, “I wish I’d met you before all this happened. I wish we’d known each other when it could have made a difference.”
“You wouldn’t have looked twice at me,” Grace said with a shaky little laugh. “You wouldn’t have noticed me at all, if you’d even had occasion to come to some remote little village you’d never heard of. I’m no one, and you’re someone.”
“I hope that’s not true, though. I hope I would have gone, and would have seen you, and taken you away before either of us could do anything we regretted. If I could fix everything for you, Grace, I would.”
“I know you would,” she said quietly, not bothering to wipe at the tears now spilling over. “I don’t really understand why, though. You know what I did.”
“And you know what I did, but I’m to believe you still want me to kiss you. Are you just lonely?”
“I think not. I see you, Hadrian, as you seem to be unable to see yourself. Are you just lonely?” she countered, stiffening, her face burning at the suggestion.
“I am,” he said, lifting his head. He carefully brought a hand to her face, and cradled her cheek. His thumb stroked her skin and a shiver raced down her spine. “But that’s not why I want to kiss you. I don’t know what you look like, but I know you’re beautiful. I know it like I know my own name. What you’ve done doesn’t change that. You’re beautiful in a world full of ugliness, and you make me feel like there is some point to it all, some hope. Maybe I’ve thrown that away for myself, but it still exists out there for someone, and somehow knowing that makes the darkness…less dark. I hope you will find someone worthy of such beauty and the happiness you deserve someday.”
Grace tensed, an odd chill running through her. “You think you want me, but you don’t really want me,” she said finally. She wasn’t sure how she managed to keep her voice so steady. Inside she felt like she was quaking. “You don’t want me enough to want me to stay with you, or to leave with me. You’ve just been kissing me, and already you wish for me to be with someone else.”
“I’ve told you, what I want isn’t possible. I wish it was, but it isn’t.” His voice sounded genuinely regretful, but she pulled away from him, his hand falling away from her face.
“I don’t believe you. It only isn’t possible because you don’t want to even entertain the idea that it could be, so how badly could you really want it? I’m just an idea to you, that’s all I am. An idea of something you don’t think you can have, but only because you don’t think you can have it. But even the idea is worthless to you. You can’t see past what you did, even though it was an accident. One mistake blots out everything else you’ve done in your life, and even what you’re trying to do now.”
“And that’s not true for you?” he asked with an edge in his voice.
She left the bed from the side opposite him and pulled on the rest of her clothing with shaking hands.
“What are you doing?” he asked, his eyebrows knitting together in confusion. “Where are you going?”
“What does it matter? I mean, really. Whatever I do, wherever I go, you’re never going to leave here, right? So what difference does it make to you?”
She only just stopped herself from slamming the door behind her. The only place she really had to go was the kitchen. Hadrian went downstairs as seldom as possible, perhaps due to the precariousness of the steep stairway when he couldn’t see anything to start with and had nothing to hold onto as a guide. She’d forgotten to grab the lantern, but she had no desire at all to either return or retreat into the workroom with the drugged wolf-man.
She took the stairs by memory alone, going as quickly as she dared even though she did not expect that Hadrian would even attempt to follow her. In his mind, everything to do with her was futile. She wa
s so angry she felt flushed, and the chill in the air as she descended felt all the keener for it.
Somewhere in the midst of her angry ruminations over how frustrating and utterly stupid he was being came a single plaintive cry from deep inside herself: he doesn’t love me. If it were possible, her face felt even hotter at the thought.
Of course he doesn’t, she chided herself. Why would he? Why would I ever even suspect such a thing? Am I so naive that I would think a stranger could somehow just fall in love with me? Me, just another one of the sheep? And do I even love him? Am I so pathetic that I would just fall in love with a man because he was nice to me? What other choice did he even have? He’s not the kind of man to just abandon someone to die, no matter who they are. Hell, he even set the wolf-man free when for all he knew, he’d try to kill us both.
The thoughts made her chest hurt terribly, a lump forming in her throat that she could barely swallow past. It was true. He’d just done what any person who wasn’t downright malicious or cruel would have done, and like an idiot, she’d let herself develop feelings for him, as though his help meant something singular, as though she were special to him, when she was no such thing. She was just someone forced on him by fate for a time. The things he had said about her being beautiful, even the kiss were probably just his way of trying to spare her pride when he’d realized she had feelings for him.