by A. M. Hudson
The cuts and bruises on my bare feet healed as I sat, and the scrapes and gashes on my arms, hands, and cheeks tingled as they sealed themselves shut. My hair was frizzy, I could actually feel it, and I was sure my face was covered in dirt and blood because, when I wiped my tears away, my hands came back brown.
“I couldn’t save him, Eve,” I said, feeling her spirit beside me.
“Don’t cry,” she said.
“I’m trying not to.” I wiped my face again and held my hands out, showing them to the forest. “But I can’t stop them from coming. How do I do that?”
My heart jumped then, when her small, almost transparent hand landed in mine. “The apple holds the key,” she said.
I looked up from our locked fingertips and into her bright blue eyes; they were just like mine—her face heart-shaped and so youthful it hurt to look at her, knowing she was dead—almost as if my soul quivered, bleeding inside. “What does that mean, Eve?”
She reached out slowly with her other hand and placed it flat across my belly. “The apple holds the key.”
“Do you mean the child?” I said, cupping my hand over hers, but the tiny, cold touch of Eve was gone. I looked up to the place beside me where she sat a second ago, hearing the birds sing louder as the pink light across the trees turned bright yellow under the late morning sun. I knew I’d sat here longer than I thought. I knew David would be looking for me, worried. I knew I’d get a lecture from him and everyone else who treated me like a baby when I returned, but I didn’t care. I hugged my knees to my chest and laid my cheek against them, thinking about the keyhole in the golden apple.
“Mike?” I called to the lone figure heading toward the lower west wing.
He stopped in the darkened entranceway just below the stairs, watching me descend. “What you doin’ up so late, b-Ara?”
“Bara?” I laughed.
“Yeah, sorry.” He shook his head at himself. “I gotta quit calling you baby.”
I stepped off the stair and stood beside him, feeling suddenly so much smaller at the base of his bulk and height. “David threaten to tear your arm off, huh?”
Mike slowly folded one arm into his body, then the other. “I dunno what’s gotten into him lately. He’s, to put it bluntly, he’s scary.”
“No, he’s the same David he’s always been. We’re just meeting the councillor.”
“Well, I’m not sure I like King David.”
I smiled, pushing his arms down from their fold. “Give it time. He’s been through a lot the last few months.”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “Fine. So, what did you want?”
“Oh, um.” I looked back up the stairs then at Mike again. “David ran off the other day because you had a problem with the Damned. Just wondering—”
“It’s okay.” He touched my shoulder. “It was just Harrison. He wet his bed and wanted King David.”
I covered my mouth slowly. “Poor baby.”
“He’s all right. He didn’t want you to know, though.”
“Me? Why?”
Mike’s sideways smile warmed his whole face. “Duh! You’re a girl.”
“Oh.” I nodded, but my face still wrinkled with confusion. “But—”
“Never mind it, Ara.” He turned slightly and started walking away. “It’s all sorted now.”
“Okay,” I called to the back of his head. “Well, thanks for the chat. Nice to see you. Hope we can do it again sometime in the next century.”
I heard him laugh softly, throwing his hand up in a gentle wave goodbye. He must have been really busy. But I meant those words as more than just a joke. Since I’d fallen off the lighthouse, he and I had spent less and less time chatting casually. He really had stepped into the role of employee and not so much friend.
“Miss you,” I added quietly and turned to walk back up the stairs.
The whole manor was quiet, almost desolate. The Lilithian people finally at rest. They had their queen, the possibility of an heir—one they still believed was foretold to transform vampires into humans—and they would soon be rid of their immortal enemy, even though this meant losing their king, it was, to them, a worthy death. And a king could always be replaced. It was replacing the love of my life that I had a problem with. But, all that aside, those living in the manor were finally free. Morgaine had achieved nearly everything she set out to do centuries ago, yet her success made me feel hollow. My life so far had been lived around fulfilling this prophecy and freeing my people from the darkness of Drake’s reign. Now that had been achieved, what was next? Day-to-day, right? Just ruling, eating and sleeping. Wake up, rinse and repeat. Over and over again for the rest of forever, alone.
I turned the corner into the openness off the great library, and as I started up the stairs to the second floor, stopped and put my foot back down on the ground. The secret door to the Scroll Room was open, candlelight and laughter lilting up the stone stairs from within.
“Hello?” I called down the hole, coming to stop on the cusp, with my arms folded.
“Down here, sweetheart,” David said.
“Can I . . . is it okay if I come down?”
“Of course.”
My head led the way toward David and the other voice, my fingertips trailing the bricks behind me. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping? You have a long trip tomorrow.”
“Vampires don’t require as much sleep as your kind.” David placed his arm around my waist, pulling me close to his body, keeping his eyes on the notes in front of him.
“I found it!” Jason popped out from the door to our right and stopped dead when he saw me. “Ara?”
“Jason.” I nodded politely.
“Hi. Um…what brings you down here?” He walked over and laid a scroll out in front of David, but his whole body was kind of stiff, tiny particles of tension clinging to every inch of his skin’s surface.
“Woke up alone, went to get something to read, heard laughing, thought I’d investigate.”
He smiled at me, eyeing David carefully after to see if he noticed. “Did David fill you in?”
“On what?”
“Look.” David pointed to a page of indecipherable scribble, made less visible in the flickering candlelight. “We found out more about Morgana.”
“Really?” I turned the corner of the page, leaning over it as if I could actually read that language. “And . . . what does it say?”
“It’s a birth record. See?” His finger moved along the page, marking the words. “Morgana LeFay. Born on the Sabbath day to Lilith of Loslilian and Lord Callon LeFay.”
“LeFay? But . . . I thought Christian, Lilith’s first husband, was the father of Morgana.”
“Evidently, we were misinformed.” He stood back from leaning over the table. “Ara? Do you know who Lord LeFay was?”
“No.”
“He was a very powerful witch,” his voice pitched in an interested tone on the last word.
“What’s wrong with him being a witch?”
“Nothing, but it explains why Morgana never survived.”
I groaned, rolling my eyes. “That still doesn’t make any sense to me.”
“Witches are mortals,” Jason explained, handing me a piece of paper. I unrolled it and the face of a stern-looking man stared back up at me in lines of grey and black, his long hair framing his face, falling around a frilly collar. “According to Natural Law, those with the Power of the Earth cannot be immortal. Any who’ve attempted spells or rituals to prolong life have met consistently with severe and often hellish consequences.”
“Right,” David cut in. “So, what would happen to a child conceived of a mortal witch and an immortal vampire?”
My eyebrows slid across my forehead, nearly meeting in the middle. “So you think Morgana died before her body made the change?”
“I’d bet my life on it,” David said, and Jason and I both looked up at him quickly. “What?” He shrugged.
“Distasteful, David,” I said, laying the picture of Lord LeFay do
wn.
David, having realised he just made a pun about his own, now inevitable demise, laughed softly to himself and started rolling scrolls.
I let myself digest this information, thinking about so many random other bits all at once, that when two of them crashed together, a conclusion sparked. “What if she’s not dead?”
“What do you mean?” David said, tying a ribbon around an old, yellowing scroll.
“I mean, what if she lived? What if she couldn’t be immortal but maybe aged at a slower rate than a human?”
Jason and David exchanged glances.
“How old would she be if she were actually alive today?” I finished.
David scratched his nose, bending down a little to lean his elbow on the chair back. “Why, Ara? What’s your point?”
I held my smile for a minute. “What if she’s Drake’s witch—the one you know as Safia?”
“What do you know of Safia?” Jason practically gasped.
“I…” I looked up at David, not sure if I was allowed to say anything. “Arthur told me.”
David turned at the shoulder to look at Jason.
“Ara, did Arthur say if he’d ever actually seen Safia?” Jase asked in tone soft enough for a child.
I shook my head. “All he said was that she’s very old and very powerful, and that he wanted to get his hands on her.”
“So she’s real?” Jason looked at David.
“So it would seem,” David said, playing it like he and Arthur had never discussed such things.
“What’s the big deal if she is real?” I asked.
“I’ve only heard rumours of the Great Witch Safia Demente. But, none were good,” Jason said. “Some say she conjured curses and plagues, killed babies—that she corrupted and influenced the church back in the days before Christ, and there have been rumours that she can change form and become something else.”
“Like a snake?” I asked, remembering my Walk of Faith.
“Any creature.”
“But . . . she’s Drake’s prisoner, right?”
“Or friend.”
“And…is that bad news for us?”
“It’s bad news for any vampire—even Drake—if he gets on the wrong side of her,” Jason said.
“Her mere existence is bad for the entire human race, Ara,” David added. “She’s unnaturally old—been around longer than us.” He motioned between himself and Jason.
“And, rumour has it, as hideous as a millennium-old steak sandwich,” Jase said.
“Which is a perfect example of what happens to witches when they meddle in the natural order of things,” David said.
“In what way?”
“Well, aside from being so old her skin is as thin as paper, her soul is also demented from the inside out, like rotting fruit, Ara,” Jase said.
“Witchcraft eats the body and the soul when used for dark purposes,” David finished. “But she is much too old to have once been the child Morgana.”
“Oh. Well, there goes that theory.” I moved my shoulders in a noncommittal gesture. “So . . . if her soul is so rotten and dark, what would happen if she sanctioned herself a youthful, immortal body to occupy?”
David went stiff, growing taller, his hands stopping short of the scrolls they were about to grab.
“I knew it,” Jason said. “You two know more than you’re letting on.”
“When it’s your concern, brother, I will include you.”
I slapped David’s arm. “Be nice. Jason can know if he wants.”
“Well, Safia won’t get the chance to insert herself into our child. Here.” He handed a pile of scrolls to Jason. “Put these away.”
Jason just groaned, grabbing another stack of paper off the lamp table as he walked away.
When the storage room door closed behind him with a high squeak, David turned to me. “Ara, for Safia to insert a soul into a living being, she would need to untether the one already in place—something that can only be done with the Dagger of Yahanna. Once I use it on Drake, its power will die with him.”
“And with you.”
He leaned in and kissed my brow, closing his eyes. “Give me an alternative, my love, and I’d take it.”
“But, we could—”
“A real alternative,” he said sharply and walked away, not noticing Jason behind him until they bumped shoulders. “Sorry,” he said, and closed the storage room door gently behind him.
Jason walked toward me, his steps graceful and light as the wind, and leaned against the table, folding his arms. “Don’t keep pressing him about jure uxoris, Ara,” he said. “He’ll never agree to it.”
“I know.”
“Then why do you keep bringing it up?”
“Guess I’m just hoping.”
“Do yourself a favour—” We both looked over at David through the windows, rummaging around in the storage area. “Stop hoping.”
“I can’t.”
He sighed, standing up again. “He’s worried about you.”
“In what way?”
“He knows how bad you’re hurting.”
“Good,” I said, smiling. “Maybe he’ll stay then.”
“No,” he said casually, packing away scrolls. “He won’t. He’ll just go to his death with the burden of your aching soul on his.”
My arms dropped to my sides, but I plastered a smile on as David came back in.
“We good?” he said to Jason, laying his hand on my arm.
“Yup. I’ll finish up with these and lock the door on my way out.”
“Thanks, bro.”
“Any time.” Jase waved and headed into the storage room, leaving us alone in the total silence. The seconds-hand on David’s watch ticked, keeping time to the beat of my heart, offering the comfort of noise in a completely wordless moment. I held my thoughts back from David, and he did the same with his own.
When he realised I was practically paralysed, unable to speak for fear of saying something he didn’t want to hear, he slid his touch down my arm and scooped up my hand. “Bed?”
I squeezed his fingertips, deciding right then that any pain I felt for losing him had to be felt alone. This was hard enough for David without me adding my broken heart to it. “Yeah. But I don’t wanna sleep.”
“What shall we do then?”
“Uuum, well, I have a few things I want to try out before my only company is a cat.”
“A cat?” David looked utterly confused.
“Yeah.” I started walking. “You don’t expect me to get married again once you’re gone, do you?”
He stayed behind for a second, but a burly laugh broke the silence in the room. It seemed like forever since I’d heard him laugh in such a carefree way, maybe even as far back as our last day by the lake. “Right. Well, in that case,” he said, stepping up to take my hand again. “There are a few things I’ve always wanted to do to you, mon amour.”
“Mm.” I closed my eyes, feeling the tingle of his words. “Speak French to me, and you can do whatever you want.”
He leaned in and whispered something in my ear, and I didn’t care what it was, didn’t care that the squeeze of his hand on the small of my back sent a thousand hot ideas into my mind because, whatever he said, it was definitely not in English.
Chapter Five
We stood against each other, arms by our sides, the backs of our fingers touching only by the finest hairs between them. We were like two individual flames meeting before blending as one—the heat intense but our skin immune, our bodies two, but our souls completely intertwined.
My cotton nightdress felt like air along my craving skin—like a breath I wanted to exhale so I could feel the closeness of David’s soon-to-be naked body against mine. We both knew what we were about to do wasn’t just for the sake of being close or fulfilling primal needs: it went much deeper than that. The first time we ever made love with the hope we might fall pregnant, I was scared and unsure that’s what I really wanted. And every time after that I’d eith
er been afraid it wouldn’t happen, or afraid that, if it did, it’d mean losing him.
“You okay?” David asked softly into the crown of my head, his warm breath forcing my eyes closed.
I laid a hand across my belly, shaking slightly.
“My love?” He lifted my chin. “What is it?”
It had all changed. Every reason I ever had for wanting to make love to him had changed. I could finally hope it would bring the blessing of a little girl, and I wasn’t scared, not about anything, not about being a young mom. Not about going it alone, without David. I wasn’t even scared that I’d mess it all up and fail as a parent.
I opened my eyes and smiled, melting the concern in his. “I can imagine it,” I said.
“Imagine her?” His hand cupped mine.
“Yeah. I can finally imagine what she’ll be like.”
His hand moved from my belly to wipe a tear from my cheek. “Let’s not imagine anymore, Ara.”
“I . . . I’m afraid, though, David.”
“Of what?” His green eyes searched mine, so intense with depth and wisdom and strength that I felt silly for feeling fear when I should be thinking of nothing else but this moment. I was afraid it wouldn’t happen, though—afraid our baby wasn’t possible, no matter what we did. But something in his eyes just made it all okay, like he’d take care of it. Like nothing was impossible while I had him.
“Close your eyes,” he whispered in my ear, guiding my hand onto his heart. “Let me make love to you.”
“Only if you let it last for forever.”
“I can’t promise you forever, Ara. You know that.”
“Then at least make it last until the dawn.”
“That,” he said with a slowly shaping grin. “I can promise.”
I leaned back a little and took all of him in: he looked magnificent as king, as if he’d grown an inch taller since he was sworn in and maybe even jumped a few points on the sex-appeal-o-meter. The stubble tracing his jawline had grown in over the day, shadowing his face like immortality’s version of a Calvin Klein model. The white shirt he was wearing had been sewn from a fabric so soft it was almost a part of his body, falling over the contours of his chest like skin, leaving all the warmth on the surface as if he were naked already. I felt him under my hand, his chest moulding the cup of palm, the shirt parting at the buttons, inviting my fingertips inside.