by Quil Carter
I didn’t move away, but I did, strangely, feel my tensed body begin to relax.
When our lips parted, Silas’s eyes, which had closed, slowly opened. “There we go,” he whispered. His hand, now on the back of my neck, stroked the nape, and he leaned in and our lips met a second time.
This time, my mouth automatically opened to accept him, and though I was still breathing quickened breaths through my nose, the act was injecting a steady dose of calm into my blood stream.
What’s going on? What was he doing?
He broke the kiss again, and our eyes opened at the same time. I stared at him with confusion, attempting with a low burn of desperation, to understand just what was happening. I was so confused, and that emotion being added to the panic and hopeless desperation, had me not knowing whether I was going to cry, or go insane.
“Your heartbeat is slowing,” he said quietly, a hand resting against my heart. “At least we have… we have all the time in the world to undo the damage I’ve done to you.”
The… damage he’s done to me?
I continued my dumbfounded gaze, at a loss for words.
“Elish, listen to me,” he said in the same subdued tone. “Are you listening to me?”
My eyes didn’t leave his face, but I managed a nod.
“I’m sorry,” he said, the hand resting on my chest began to rub it in slow, caring strokes. “I’m sorry I’ve been such a fucking monster to you.” His eyes deflected, and the way his face succumb to pain, the twisted clench, made this god-king look like a vulnerable child. “I’ve…” He choked and cupped a hand to his mouth. “Oh, god, look at what I’ve done to you.”
What could I say to that? What could I possibly say? He’d apologized before for certain things, but then the shapeshifter would change his form and before his warm words had a chance to cool, he was hurting me again.
And there was another glaring fact…
“It wasn’t you this time,” I whispered. “It was my brothers and my sister… it was Julian. You didn’t know.”
Silas swallowed through what I suspected was a tight throat. “I didn’t know,” he admitted. “But that was a single straw on an overloaded back. I was the one who filled Julian’s head with dreams of him winning you back, and my annoyance because I suspected Finn was preventing that from happening. I was the one who had you already damaged in the first place, so damaged you were afraid of loving Finn because of what you thought I’d do to him. It was because of me that your brothers and sister knew you wouldn’t be able to handle the truth.”
He shook his head, tears escaping his drowning eyes. “I’ve been in denial for twenty-five years, Elish,” he admitted. “But the day I murdered Cristo in front of you…” I tensed under his words. Silas felt it, his hand began to stroke my chest again. “I lost you. You were never the same after. I drove a little boy to a nervous breakdown at eight, and the reality of that crippled me. I knew I’d made a mistake, but the prospect of admitting that, after Cristo had almost gotten my boys killed, and my jealousy over your attachment to him. I felt like if I told you it was a mistake and apologized… not only would I be admitting that what Cristo did was okay, I felt like I would be giving him power over you from beyond the grave.”
I stared down at his arm, counting the white buttons on his dark green dress shirt. I nodded slightly, absorbing his words and… appreciating them.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “I… I understand denial and guilt, and I understand just how much both can rule your life.”
Silas sighed. “I know all about both emotions, love,” he said back. “They will be our downfall in the end, unless we are able to train ourselves to look past our own stubborn nature and see what we’re doing. I’m… this reality check I got… it finally pushed me to do just that.”
The hand on my heart rested upon my leg. I was still staring at the buttons of his shirt. I didn’t know what I was feeling. This had never happened before; Silas had never been this… honest with me.
There was no mask. I’d seen it slip previously, but this was something else. There was not a strip of armour on front of me.
“When I woke up in that laboratory, surrounded by my groggy babies, all three of them confused and frightened, I had never been more terrified. You had scared me before, the many times I drove you to attempt suicide, but this time… I knew, Elish.” His voice broke again, and it was my hand then that slipped into his. “I couldn’t feel your presence anymore. I knew my baby had done it.
“The ride on that elevator was the longest and most terrifying. Your brothers and sister and I walked into your apartment and I saw Julian dead and the urn gone… we searched the house but only found Loren hiding under the bed in the middle of an anxiety attack. He told us… he told us you’d left, and my heart told me… you were above our heads, you were on the roof.”
I squeezed his trembling hand as Silas stifled a sob. He was doing all he could to contain it but his heart was racing. “Nero ran ahead… Oh god, the scream… Elish, I’d never heard him scream like that before. I ran… I ran and he tried to grab me, he tried to prevent me from seeing you. But it was too late… I saw my precious boy with a gaping crater in the back of his head, surrounded by his beautiful blond hair. There was blood and brain splatter on the statue behind him. Oh, my poor baby.” When he began to cry, I pulled on his hand, and he crawled into my arms. I held him to me tightly. “We all blamed ourselves. Every one of us held onto that blame, and the pain of knowing that the four of us were immortal, three immortal by the hand of our golden boy, but his agony was too great to join us. We would have to spend eternity, not only without you, but with the knowledge that we’d driven you to do it. Myself most of all.”
“Was it Perish who told you he’d made me immortal?” I asked.
Silas shook his head. “Your body was still hot. I had to touch you one last time, I had to be near you…” He lifted a hand and placed it against my cheek. “And when I felt the heat coming off of you… I lost my mind.
“But…” Silas lowered his hand. “I was also scared, love,” he admitted. “Because I knew when you woke up… exactly what happened earlier would happen. You would be inconsolable, so upset for the reasons you told me. I was a monster, and after your breakdown and what you did to your siblings, you would fully expect me to punish you. And not only that, you’d have to live with the guilt of what happened to Finn, the betrayal of your siblings… I knew then… that if you were going to be immortal, that I was going to have to be a good master and face some hard truths. I was going to have to stop being in denial, stop being so uncaring and cruel, stop threatening you. You had been such a perfect heir, a perfect descendant, a perfect brother… you’d changed so much for the better, and you didn’t deserve what happened to you.”
“Thank you,” I said quietly. “When we were getting along, it was… wonderful. I was happy.” I wasn’t going to touch upon the fact that it was a desire to manipulate and control him that triggered me pushing down that resentment. The end justified the means and I wasn’t going to taint this moment with those feelings. They were unnecessary, I was tired of plucking out the negative in everything. Right now, I was speaking from the heart.
There was no mask on my face either.
“After those implants…” I paused, there never were implants. “After I was off of those pills and the fog cleared, and I started learning who Elish was, I realized how happy it made me to get to know my family. Those six years before Finn died.” A lump grew in my dry throat. “They were the best I’d ever had.”
Silas’s face crumpled, my own was hot and tight. “I’m sorry, baby,” he choked.
I sniffed, and gave out a pathetic laugh. “And I now know you really were sorry,” I said, rubbing my nose. “It… it killed me when you told me it was you. You were my rock after he died. The support, everything… that’s what made me realize I was falling in love–” I caught my words just in time, but not before a coldness swept me.
Silas�
�s body froze, his heart jumped. Embarrassment flooded me and I tried to shift backwards, giving him the hint to get off of my lap. “Please, just forget–”
“How can you love me after all I did to you?” Silas whispered. He looked at me, suddenly too close for comfort. I felt as if he could read my mind being this near to me, read the emotions coursing through me. Emotions that I didn’t even want to admit that I had.
Because I played myself, I thought. I pretended to be everything you wanted me to be, to save Finn, to save my own sanity. And eventually I realized I was no longer pretending.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I can only guess that… it was the first time in my adult life that you actually treated me like a real person, not your slave, or some vessel to accept your disappointment and scorn.”
Silas was quiet, but I could feel the aura of guilt around him. “It crushes me to think about our past, and to realize you were right,” he said. “For almost all of your life we’ve been stuck in a never-ending cycle of me hurting you because you hated me, and you hating me because I hurt you.” He laughed pathetically. “And once we stopped that cycle… look what happened? We… we ended up becoming so close.”
I nodded. “We did.”
Silas hesitated. I felt his pulse begin to speed up and he swallowed hard.
Then he raised his hand and touched it gently to my chin, he turned my head towards him and kissed me.
What was happening? It was like I had woken up in a different dimension. This couldn’t be the life that I had left behind with the taste of metal in my mouth. How could this be my reality?
The Silas in front of me was a world different than the tyrant who had tormented me for almost my entire life. I would never forgive him for what he’d done to me, and I would always be vigilant when I was with him, but I could look past it. For my own mental health, I would put aside the hatred that had grown into a beast of its own, and allow these strong feelings of love to grow.
I was immortal now. Whether I liked it or not, I would walk the earth with Silas forever. I had to do what Julian had taught me: go with the river, don’t swim against it, and continue to learn it… just like I’d been doing.
And it had been proven to work. Yes, I did end up falling for him, but being the man beside the immortal king… his second-in-command now, his king later, was an alluring prospect that excited me.
Silas separated our lips slowly, and his green eyes rose to mine, an expression on his face that shot all the plotting thoughts from my head.
I don’t believe… I had ever seen him look at me like that.
“I can see myself falling in love with you,” he whispered. “I can see us ruling this world side by side.”
Every muscle in my body froze, and my heart tightened as if a fist was clenching it.
His hand rose, and he began to stroke my cheek, his eyes taking me in and flickering back and forth as if he was seeing me for the first time.
And he was… I believe he was looking at me with new eyes. No longer seeing the source of so much frustration and disappointment, he was seeing the man who could one day be his husband.
“There is such an explosive chemical reaction between us. There always has been,” he continued. “Just imagine, gelus vir, what would happen if we used our chemistry to help each other, not hurt each other?” His head shook just slightly. “Oh, my love, wouldn’t we be powerful?”
Gelus vir… ice husband. He called Nero bellua which meant beast, and Garrett was savis which meant wise. I’d never gotten the special Latin nickname he eventually affixed to his chimeras. I was honoured, and the words he had spoken to me…
“We would be powerful,” I whispered. “Unstoppable. I know… I would make you proud as your heir, and I would make you happy as your husband.”
I can’t believe I was saying this.
And I can’t believe I meant it.
“If this is the path that we were to take…” he said slowly. He moved off of my lap and sat down beside me on the bed, his hands folded across his lap. “We would have to do it carefully.” Silas turned to me, and I to him. It was both exhilarating and terrifying having these dark desires pushed forth. It had enraged me when I’d realized I was developing feelings for Silas, and those feelings had remained a dirty secret that I locked away in a dark room. Now they had been brought to the light, and the king himself was viewing them.
No masks, no ulterior motives. The man who had a thousand and one faces, was sitting beside the man with a garden full of seeds, a garden of ulterior motives and underhanded plans. The two of them were, in all respects, facing their greatest enemy, but yet they were exposing their hearts to one another, putting trust in a single emotion that had burned the both of them severely: love.
“This isn’t something we can rush into,” Silas continued. “The day you become my husband… there will be no going back, we will be married until the universe ends.”
Silas’s head lowered, and his eyes became downcast. “Elish… I’m very sick right now,” he said. “I am not well… and right now I would not be a good husband to you, and you would not be a good husband to me.”
His words stabbed me, and I was ashamed at how hurt I was by them.
Silas’s hand slipped into mine. “Love, you’re immortal, remember that. You will celebrate your ten thousandth birthday one day. We literally have all the time in the world. We’re not going anywhere. Like I said, if we were to do this, we have to do it right… we need to make up for these years butting heads and hurting each other, and in these next few years, we will form a bond that will eventually lead to us being together.”
He held my hand firmly. “You deserve to have all of me,” he said. “And right now… my heart is still with Sky.”
My jaw clenched, and an overwhelming swell of anger took me.
“Elish.” Silas sensed it. But how could he not? The rage was consuming me. “I would be outright lying to you if I said I could just forget about him because of your feelings for me. You wouldn’t believe it, and neither would I. If we were to marry now, you’d only be my replacement until he came back, and I would never do that to you.”
My teeth pressed tighter together. I realized in the back of my mind that I no longer had my porcelain implants, new teeth had grown.
“We need time together to repair our relationship, to learn how to work together, be powerful together, time for the love between us to flourish. You need time to grow into your own, to leave your mortal life behind and create your immortal one. And I need time to prepare myself for this next phase of my life.”
I knew he was right, but the hatred for Sky Fallon was still there. He was the obstacle in my way; he was preventing Silas from moving on from his past.
Sky. Fucking Sky.
Dead for decades, and he’s still controlling Silas from beyond the grave.
I hated that man. Oh, so much did I hate him.
But the other things Silas said… I did agree with. I was immortal now, and though my heart told me to rush, my brain was telling me that we did have to do this right. Our love would be powerful when we were together, and we had to learn how to channel that into good and not bad.
“You’re right,” I said with a nod. “We will do this correctly and we will do this right.”
Silas’s eyes flooded with pride, and I swelled under his gaze. “I’m glad you understand, love,” he said. He rose, then leaned down and kissed me. My chest filled with his love, every kiss he laid on me was better than the one previous. “I’ll make you a deal.” He took my hand and I rose from the bed, my legs feeling weak, but strong enough to allow me to walk. “In thirteen years… I want you to ask me to marry you.” He smiled. Was he smiling at the thought?
I smiled back, then it was I who kissed him. “It will be done.”
“Come on,” he said. He took my hand again and we walked towards the door of my bedroom. “Your brothers and sister are eagerly waiting for me to bring you upstairs. They’re so excited to see you
.” We stepped into the hallway, and as we walked towards the open door to the stairwell, I heard laughing and talking upstairs.
“I do owe them apologies…” I said.
“Oh, they forgave you,” Silas said. We began to ascend the stairs. “They’re just… happy we’re all a family again.” But he stopped, and gave me a crooked smirk. “But when we tell our family this story, years from now… we will be making up a new, much more acceptable story.”
I chuckled. “Agreed.”
“Eenie-Meenie!” Nero’s booming voice suddenly rang out. I looked to the living room as I stepped foot onto the light grey carpet and smiled when Nero, Garrett, and Ellis burst to their feet.
There were… tears in their eyes.
They ran to me as I entered the living room, and all three of them wrapped their arms around me. I laughed as I was consumed, and felt my own eyes burn.
“Hey, guys,” I said, my voice choking. “You… you all look great.”
“We feel great!” Garrett exclaimed. He was to my left, Ellis to my right, and Nero was enveloping all of us with his impressive wingspan. “It’s amazing. We look the same but yet… I swear it’s like I was reborn.”
“How do you feel, Elish?” Ellis asked. One by one my brothers and my sister released me from their hold, each of them smiling “I feel… better than ever,” I said. But the smile faded. “I’m sorry, Ellis. I’m sorry to all three of you for what I did.”
Nero scoffed and waved a hand. “We’ll call it even. How’s that? The dude who is to blame is dead. Life’s too short to hold grudges.” He snorted at his own joke.
“We’re just relieved you’re alive,” Ellis said. “That… we’re all alive.” She sniffed and hugged me again.
We all turned when we heard a stifled sob. Silas was standing behind me with his eyes glistening with tears and a hand on his mouth. He looked so small as he stood in that hallway. How could a man of such magnificence seem so vulnerable?
I would protect him.
Me, not Sky, and certainly not a manufactured clone.
“My babies,” he choked, his shoulders trembling. “I have my babies forever. Oh, god, I’m so relieved. I’ve never been so happy.” I wrapped my arms around my king, and held him as he cried tears of relief.