by Kallysten
The world seemed to be rushing past Chris, leaving him to feel both slow and a little lost. Lily had predicted a week ago, before he’d even met Marigold, that he’d want to move in with her right away? And Kit, who’d cared for her for a year, was okay with that?
“You’d just…” He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. “You’d just leave her to me? That easily?”
Or had a year been too long already for Kit?
“Why wouldn’t I?” she asked. “I’m gonna miss her to bits, but I’m not her mate. You are. I didn’t help her get any better. You did. Don’t you think you’ll be able to help even more if you’re with her constantly?” After a beat, she added wryly, “And you’re her freaking mate. It’s not like I have to worry for even a second that you’ll hurt her.”
And just like that, it was decided. The day after next, Chris would move in with his few possessions. Kit would let Lily and Zita know, and she’d move out.
“But I’d like to visit, sometimes, if that’s all right,” she said in the end. “I mean, she never actually talked to me until today, but she’s my friend, in a weird sort of way.”
Chris was too stunned about the whole idea to do more than nod his agreement. Moving in with Marigold probably was the best way to accelerate her ‘treatment,’ yes, but it still felt odd. He’d be living with his mate after only a few days, when he still knew so little about her.
But then, he already knew the most important thing, didn’t he? He knew the most important thing in his life now was to take care of her, protect her, and make her happy again. If that wasn’t love, he didn’t know what was.
*
Marigold woke up to the most wonderful smell.
Blueberry pancakes. She was sure that was what it was. It had always been her favorite food, and she’d made some too many mornings not to know exactly what they smelled like.
Her mom used to make them for her on her birthday as a special treat; after she’d passed away, eating some had always reminded Marigold of those easier times when she’d been there for her.
Part of her, a large, loud part, the same part that had dominated her for a long time, didn’t want to move at all. By not moving, she’d once thought, maybe she would go unnoticed… and never mind that this theory had proved wrong from the start. After a while, it had simply become easier to follow that instinct and retreat more and more deeply within her own mind.
But a small, insistent voice, a voice that sounded just like Chris, rebelled against this apathy that had already lasted too long. That little voice said it was time to break free. Free of old habits, free of the ‘easy’ path, free of the cage she’d built for herself within her own mind… free of the past and the shackles it had placed on her.
Little by little, she managed to push the covers off her and move closer to the edge of the bed. As she lay here, she had to convince herself she could do this. Of course she could. And she did.
A bathrobe hung behind the half-open door. It looked soft. It was soft; Marigold had worn it often enough that she should know. But putting it on right now, figuring out the sleeves and the belt, felt beyond her abilities. Instead, she grabbed the blanket from the bed and wrapped it over her shoulders so she wouldn’t get cold in her night shirt.
And then she followed the smell of pancakes to the kitchen.
She blinked repeatedly when she found Chris by the stove rather than Kit. She started thinking she might be imagining it all, maybe it was a dream, until he noticed her standing there and smiled at her.
“Good morning! Have a seat, I’m just finishing this last batch.”
The table was already set for two, Marigold then realized. Two plates, each with a stack of pancakes, two forks, two steaming cups of coffee, a bottle of syrup—no, not syrup, honey, just like she preferred.
“How?” she asked, still partly convinced this was all a dream.
“How what?” Chris said, his smile turning softer. “How did I know about the pancakes? I asked Isolda. I got in trouble for talking to her, but it was worth it. How am I here instead of Kit or Zita? Because I live here now. With you. If that’s okay?”
She could tell just a hint of doubt had entered his words, right at the end, but she had trouble making sense of the words themselves. Where was Isolda? Why would Chris get in trouble for talking to her? And most importantly, why would he think Marigold might object to him living here?
Expressing any of this seemed much too complicated, so she just nodded, then just to make sure managed to force the word “Okay” past her lips.
Chris set one more pancake on each stack, then drew a chair for her. She sat automatically. The bottle of honey was heavy and she couldn’t quite lift it, but Chris’ hand closed over hers and together they guided it to her plate and poured generously. He cut the pancakes for her, but allowed her to feed herself, for which she was grateful.
“Are you cold?” he asked suddenly, and she realized she’d dropped her blanket before entering the room.
She had to think about that. Was she cold? No, she realized. She felt warm, inside and out, from his presence, the delicious food, the warm coffee with just a touch of sugar.
“I’m glad,” she said, and while it didn’t really answer Chris’ question, it left him with a smile.
They ate in comfortable silence. Chris finished before Marigold did, but he let her set her own pace. Only after she was done did he ask, “So, what would you like to do this morning? Rest for a bit? Go for a walk? Try to get out of the maze some more?”
Again, an answer required some thought. She knew what he meant by maze. He’d been guiding her through it for a few days, now. But she still couldn’t figure out how she could be stuck in the maze and here at the same time. Maybe he’d explain soon, or maybe she’d understand by herself eventually. But for now…
“Clothes,” she said as decisively as she could. “Sit outside. Then the maze.”
Chris nodded at her. “Sounds like a plan.”
Then again, she thought as once more he smiled at her, why did she need the sun when she had his smile?
*
Every day, after breakfast, Chris took Marigold out for a walk. At first, he had to coax her to get off the steps of the house. She wanted to be outside, that much was clear, but he soon realized she tired easily and walking felt like a daunting task to her. So, they’d go slow, he told her. He gave Kit a call, and asked if she might find them a portable chair and bring it over the next time she came to visit. She was there two hours later with light, folding chairs. Marigold looked happy to see her, and it made Kit happy to see her smile.
The next time he asked Marigold to come out for a walk, he pointed at the chairs.
“We’ll bring those. When you’ve had enough walking, we’ll just sit in the sun for a little while, until you’re ready to come home. All right?”
Although still a little reluctant, she agreed. After two days, she was the one asking for walks. After a week, they were walking three times a day, after breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It took them two weeks to make it all the way to the end of the driveway. Two weeks more, and they reached the meadow on the other side of the road. By then, they didn’t need the chairs anymore: a handful of large, flat boulders were perfect for them to sit on, right in the middle of a field of wildflowers. Marigold loved the place so much that she started walking a little faster, just so she could spend more time there. And Chris loved the way she always relaxed when she sat on her favorite boulder, her head tilted up to the sun so much that her hat usually fell right off her head.
When he told a visiting Kit about it, her eyes filled with tears.
Unfortunately, this progress didn’t extend to their trek through the maze. A month onward, then two, they were still very close to the center, as though the glass walls rearranged themselves every time Marigold conquered one of the monsters that haunted her. And those monsters weren’t really conquered, were they? She battled the same ones, over and over, every few days. Chris was beginni
ng to wonder if she could ever truly vanquish them.
On one hand, having her mind still trapped in the maze didn’t stop her fully from functioning, as demonstrated by their walks, and the fact that she very rarely needed his help to bathe, eat, get dressed, or do other common things anymore. On the other hand, she continued to do all these things slowly as they required her full focus, and she’d managed to get through to him how frustrated she was that she couldn’t express herself as easily as she wished to. That particular conversation had only frustrated her a little more because she’d had so much trouble explaining it to him with spoken words, whereas in her mind she could speak to him more freely.
Unsure whether he’d taken the right approach, Chris decided to ask her, point blank, one late summer day as they were still sitting at the kitchen table after their breakfast. Taking her hand, he joined her into the glass maze, where she’d be able to answer him more easily.
“Marigold?”
“You’re sad,” she said as she sat on the edge of her bed and looked at him. “Why?”
When she tilted her head toward him, he could see his own reflection on the glass wall behind her, and his carefully neutral features.
“No, I’m not sad, I—”
“Sad,” she repeated, frowning a little, “and… worried. Yes, that’s it, worried. Why are you worried? I can’t quite see.”
“You’re… reading my mind,” he said in surprise, suddenly understanding.
“Is that what I’m doing?” Her eyebrows rose a little higher. “Is that what you’re doing?”
He nodded, a little wary. He’d tried to explain to her that this was all happening in her mind, but she’d never seemed to understand… not until now.
“I can enter people’s minds. That’s my power, like yours is to be a dragon shifter. You were trapped in your own mind for a long time, so I had to come here to help you out. Do you remember when you were a dragon here, watching over Isolda?”
Now frowning, Marigold shook her head. Chris sat on the bed next to her, his body angled toward her, and took her hands in his.
“When I first met you, every time I came in your mind, you were a dragon. You didn’t talk, you didn’t let me close, you were just… scared, I think. You couldn’t shift for so long in the real world, I think maybe you remained in your shifter form in your own mind to compensate. Then when you did shift in the real world, things changed in your mind. This maze appeared, and you were human within it. And I’ve been trying to help you find the way out. Does any of this ring a bell?”
Marigold looked at their joined hands, then back up at Chris, meeting his eyes.
“I… guess? It’s all very fuzzy. Like it happened to someone else, not me.”
Chris hated himself for what he wanted to ask next, but he couldn’t see a way around it.
“What about… the images? When the monsters attack. Do those feel like they belong to someone else, too?”
At the mere mention of the monsters, a few of the most painful images resurfaced. Somewhere, not very far from them, a grotesque, inhuman hand was tapping against the glass as a monster slowly made its way toward them. Marigold shuddered.
“I know they’re mine,” she murmured. “I know they’re my memories. And I know now I can’t erase them. They’ll always be there. But I can control them, put them away. Sometimes they come out again, but I’m getting better at pushing them back. You’ve shown me how.”
Her quiet admission took him aback. With the same memories resurfacing in cycles, he’d thought they weren’t moving forward at all, but if she knew all this…
“Marigold? If you can control the memories, at least to some degree, why aren’t you finding the way out of the maze?”
The strangest of guilty looks fluttered over her features before she looked away. Chris couldn’t fathom a single thing she might feel guilty about, so he pushed gently, repeating his question.
“I do want to get better,” she finally murmured, not quite meeting his eyes. “But I’m afraid… I don’t want to lose you. I can’t lose you. I think… I’m afraid it would break my mind again.”
“Lose me?” Chris repeated, now even more confused. “Why would you lose me?”
“Why would you come here when I’m all better?” she countered. “Why would you stay with me outside, and take these walks, and—”
She ended with a quiet cry when the monster banged against the golden dome that surrounded them. It was the first one she’d ever battled here—again. He seemed to reappear more often than any of the other ones. Then again, he’d certainly hurt her, both her body and her spirit, more than anyone else.
“Of course I’ll stay,” Chris said, a little baffled. “Why wouldn’t I? Maybe I won’t enter your mind quite as often anymore, but that’s a good thing. Your mind should be your own. What you want to share with me, you can tell me in words.”
“But it’s so hard to talk,” she protested, a little teary. “And Kit went away when I started getting better. You’ll do the same, won’t you?”
Chris’ heart tightened at how frightened she sounded. He’d never picked up on this fear before. He wished he had, just so he could have reassured her.
“It’ll start getting easier to talk when so much of your mind isn’t trapped in the maze anymore.” Or at least, Chris certainly hoped so. “As for Kit, she cares an awful lot about you, but she doesn’t have this on her skin.”
He showed her his wrist, then, and in the mental representation he had of himself, the tattoo of her name emitted a faint, almost magical glow. She stared at the dark lines of her own name for a long time, finally tracing them with a finger and asking without meeting his gaze, “Is that why you’re helping me?”
“Yes and no. I helped you at first because the person who saved me asked if I would try to save you. Then I learned your name, and I decided to try to help you because you’re my mate. But now…”
“Now what?” she prompted when he had a hard time finding the words.
He tried his best to explain.
“Now I just want you to be well. No one should go through what you went through. You deserved better. All of us paras do, but I’m not… I’m not a fighter. I can’t go out and free people. Right now, all I can do is try to help you. And so, I’m not going anywhere.”
Did it make sense? He wasn’t sure it did, wasn’t sure he’d explained it right, especially when she watched him for a long time without a word, without anything showing on her expression, except for her eyes burning with bright flames. Then, very slowly, she leaned over and kissed him. A few feet away from them, the monster just ceased to exist—but neither of them noticed.
*
Somehow, after not understanding for so long how she could be here, in this maze, but also at the same time seated in front of a half-full coffee mug, Marigold thought she was finally figuring out.
Here, Chris had showed her he could create things, like the bed or the golden dome, with just a thought. Also, here the memories of what had happened to her could surge forward and overtake everything, fill the entire world with their images. So here was a place of thoughts and memories—but here wasn’t a place at all. It was a mind, her mind. And the other place, with the coffee mug, the little cottage and the walks in the sun, was the world in which her body existed.
Out there, she would never have said nor done what she did or said next—or at least, she wouldn’t have done and said it so soon after meeting Chris. She’d have waited to know him better, would have allowed him to court her and would have flirted with him in return until the time felt right, until they both wanted it.
But in here… In here, in her own mind, in this place where so much pain lurked behind every corner, where monsters from her past only waited for her to stumble to attack her again, she could be bolder. She could ask for things her body wasn’t ready to receive. And she could seek to bring in a tiny bit of pleasure to shine upon her fears and make them shrink a little.
She only needed to
know if it was something Chris could and wanted to give her.
Pulling back from a kiss that was as sweet as it was brief, as gentle as it was deep, she held on to Chris’ shoulders and watched his eyes, searching for she wasn’t too sure what. In the end, she had to ask.
“Do you want me?”
Chris blinked twice, his expression sweetly confused.
“I want you to get better,” he said slowly.
“But do you want to…” If this was her own mind, she thought, a little amused, how could she feel herself blushing? “You know.”
He did know, she could tell that much on his features and in his burning eyes, and yet he shook his head.
“I can’t deny I’m attracted to you. Walking through this maze with you, I’ve started getting to know you, seeing how strong you are—”
“Strong?” she interrupted him. “I’m not strong. I’ve been hiding in here for so long, I forgot what it even meant to live.”
“Surviving is not hiding,” Chris said, taking her hands from his shoulders and holding them between his own. “Do you know that two other women were freed when you were? I was told both of them died. But you… you lived. You’re here. You’re getting better, day by day. And the last thing I want to do is hurt you in any way that will compromise your healing.”
“You won’t.” She was startled at how confident she suddenly sounded. “You’ll help me replace ugly memories with something I’ll actually want to remember. And something I’ll look forward to becoming true.”
Chris observed her for a moment longer before finally nodding very solemnly.
“Won’t you undress me?” she asked before she could lose her nerve, and this time she wasn’t just blushing. Her cheeks felt as though they’d been on fire.
She ignored her own embarrassment and took his hand, leading it to rest on her shoulder. She didn’t have a lot of experience in this area, but it wasn’t why she felt nervous. Instead, what troubled her was that the last times a man had touched her—