by AJ Brooks
“I didn’t tell them I was planning on bringing you in person.” I scratch the back of my neck feeling extremely stupid.
“Well I don’t want to go then.” She pulls her hand from mine and crosses her arms in front of her stomach. “Why are you taking me if you can’t even tell them?”
“Whatever is happening with you, it’s big. You shouldn't be able to paint what you paint. Those things are real, Zarah. No one wants to talk about you. I’m scared, okay? I’m scared to death of what we’ll find out. I would be fine with not going to see the Fates. And if you can think of any other option that isn’t, pack up and run away together, please let me know.” I step up to her and take both her hands in mine. Her gaze softens, and my chest fills with hope that she feels the same thing.
“You’d run away with me?” Her eyes catch mine and all the cracks on my skin deepen and widen as she sucks me into her gaze. I shift my focus to the sunset. The horizon stretched out in front of us feeling endless.
“I would. I would wrap you up and tuck you away and keep you safe. Keep you to myself forever. But that doesn’t help us. I’m still a god, and you’re...not. We’re still being hunted. I can’t protect you by hiding you. You deserve more than that.” I’d given that plan way too much thought since meeting Helena and no scenario led to a happy ending.
She tightens her grip on my fingers then lets them go to reach for my face, running her fingers over the invisible cracks. Across my cheek, down my neck and her hands settle on my chest. My skin burns for her, but my heart aches for us.
“If we go to these Fates, we’ll learn potentially awful things?”
I nod.
“That might destroy both of us? The people I love?”
I nod.
“That maybe we can’t stop any of this from happening?”
Nod again.
“But it’s all real?”
My heart breaks that this is what she’s worried about most.
I reach for her face and pull it so close to mine that foreheads touch. Her pulse races like mine. We’re nothing but crashing waves and swelling hearts.
“Everything is real. This is all real.”
Her breath comes sharp and fast. She presses in closer, sliding her hands to the back of my neck almost as if she’s experimenting. Testing what I feel like.
“You’re real.”
I run my thumb along her chin and tilt her gaze to mine.
“I’m very real.”
She closes her eyes, leaning in and I don’t move, giving her all the control. Zarah presses her lips to mine. Gently. Tentatively. Like she expects me to disappear. I feel like I’m going to. But not disappear on her, disappear into her.
This small kiss is where I should stop, but I’ve weakened to her. I no longer want to shield her, or save her, or fix her, but help her find the strength to fix herself. I want everything for her in this moment. This is what scares me. Even more than the Moirai.
My arms wrap around her waist and pull her tighter to me. Her body fits perfectly against mine, and I have to remember not to pull her to me as tightly as I want to. God strength. Mortal strength. I don’t want to break her.
Her lips are like fire, burning through my entire being and it’s painfully obvious how fast and how hard I’m falling. I fully relent and let her choose. The speed, the strength, the urgency. I match everything she gives me and lose myself in the incredible feeling of our mouths together, our bodies together, her hands pulling, keeping me close.
The sound of a throat clearing rips us apart and we both jump backward. Curo stands on a rock, jutting out of the beach with that wide pompous grin he always wears because he knows all our secrets. Curo is bound by his responsibility to keep those secrets, but I always know when he has a new one because the grin gets wider and more arrogant.
“Sorry to interrupt, kids, but I’ve got places to be. We doin’ this or what?” He gestures with his arm to move closer to him.
“You.” Zarah’s voice is disbelieving and she looks to me. “I know that guy.”
“The knife?” I ask and she nods.
“Yeah, your lover boy didn’t want you knowing it was from him, but it looks like someone spilled the beans anyway, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. Actually, I’m surprised I’m here.” Curo disappears and reappears right in front of us, making Zarah jump.
“Don’t be like that.” My voice is flat because I caught so much hell when I asked, and it’ll continue until the end of time, I’m sure.
“This is a terrible idea, Cassius. Terrible. Mortals can’t come to our world. You don’t even know what this will do to her.” Curo gestures to her like she isn’t part of this conversation. I pull her closer to me, tucking her underneath my arm.
“Um, what?” Zarah speaks and steps between us, away from my protective hold and I’m already proud of her. “As in it could kill me?”
“No, no,” Curo says and waves dismissively which Zarah answers with a scowl. “We just live a little...differently. Our laws are not like your laws and mortals have trouble understanding things that don’t follow their laws.”
Curo’s eyes widen, giving me a knowing look. Helena. He helped me then, and he’s helping me now, but he still doesn’t approve.
Zarah shakes her head and digs her boot into the sand. “You don’t know half the shit I’ve had to understand in my life. Don’t judge me with the rest of them.”
Her glare deepens as Curo smirks at me. “Hot damn. I totally get the lure, Cy. I would be all over that attitude.”
I push him off the rock he’s standing on and he laughs.
“Well if you weren’t already just on it.”
“Put it away for two seconds and do your job, okay?” I say before reaching for Zarah’s shoulder.
“Curo is going to take you to the entrance to my world. Then he’ll come for me. When you travel it might make you sick, so when you get to the other side just sit down and breathe. This isn’t meant for mortals.” I push her hair from her face and cup her cheeks. Her eyes are back to scared, but her jaw is set. I force my gaze away from her eyes to keep myself from turning to stone.
Even though she’s shaky on her own reality, I’m amazed that everything I tell her is absorbed and understood. She’s taking this a lot better than Helena did. Worlds better. And every second I’m around her, I’m in deeper.
“I’ll be okay.” She nods, but I’m sure she’s trying to convince herself as much as me. “I’m ready for answers. Any kind of answers.”
This girl is stunningly amazing. I just wish I wasn’t terrified about who she might be.
Curo reaches out his hand and waits for her to take it like I told him to. She watches him with uncertainty.
“It’s okay Zarah.” I reach out and touch her shoulder, sliding my hand down her arm to take her hand, and I place it in Curo’s. “I’ll see you soon.”
I lift my fingers off hers and she and Curo disappear.
A surge of panic courses through me.
Watching her ripped from my grip like that and how it makes the world feel like it fell out from beneath my feet is all the proof I need.
I’m not in it deeper. I’m in it completely.
< - - - >
I have to put my hand on the small of Zarah’s back to guide her through the cave system. I feel more comfortable now that I’m back with her. Mostly I have to touch her to make myself feel better, but partially because she’s stumbling around in the dark rocky cave and needs the support. Her neck twists and bends as she tries to look at everything, making her off balance and a walking accident. It doesn’t help that she retched after her trip with Curo so she’s already off. Her eyes are wide and her hair swishes over my fingers making me constantly aware of how much I like touching her. I still feel the kiss on my lips, and I’m going to hold on to that feeling because I’m terrified of how she’ll feel about me if my theory is correct.
If she remembers.
I pull her close so we can duck through a small opening in the rock. We'
re plunged into complete blackness and she grabs at my shirt with both hands. Curling her into my side I make my way to the back of the smallest cave. Curo agreed to take her to the cave but refused to be responsible for her entrance. I couldn’t argue with that. I could have brought her here to this series of caves under a mountain outside of Vancouver but it would have taken time and that’s not a resource we have in abundance. Curo will come back to get us when I call, but he left with a scowl so there’s a good chance we’re walking.
There are entrances to Olympus all over the world and some of them are annoyingly hard to find. This one is one of them.
All I have to do is put my hand against the rock at the very back of this tiny cave and we'll be granted access, but her body against mine is enough to make me pause, just to feel her for a little while longer. Because after we cross this line, we can't ever go back. I have no idea how see the Moirai is going to affect her. I have no idea what the Fates will say, if anything.
“Where are we Cassius?” Her voice echoes off the damp rocky walls. I sigh and reach my hand out to place it against the cool stone.
The light is dim at first but as the stone disappears revealing a long pathway lit by flaming torches that to me are completely normal but Zarah looks up at me with a look of childlike astonishment and steps away from my side to enter. I love how much of an independent soul she is in the face of everything she’s been through.
I smile at her back as she wanders further into the passageway, running her fingertips along the bumpy walls. She stops and looks over her shoulder, her expression has shifted to confusion.
“I know this place,” she says more to herself than to me. “I've been here before.”
I catch up to her and we continue down the path.
“Your painting?”
“Yes, I’ve painted this.” She sighs. “But it’s more than the painting. Now that I’m here... The walls and... This all feels familiar.”
Frigid ice slides along my shoulders at her words and I think of the day I took Helena to a tunnel just like this one. How she trailed her fingers along the rock in the same say as Zarah, her eyes as wide. We walk in silence for a moment, and then she says exactly what’s on my mind.
“What if I’ve been to all the places I’ve painted. What if I’ve been here before?” She swallows hard. “That’s not possible is it?”
I don’t have an answer, because it’s yes and no. Maybe running away with her is the best option. I take Zarah's wrist, spinning her to face me.
“We're almost there. Are you sure you want to do this?”
I'm worried about what will happen to her if she is a reincarnated soul, if she turns away from me when she finds out the things I’ve done. Her dependence on drugs seems to intensify when she's in stressful situations. I'm worried because her need clouds her judgment and gets in the way of her usual take-shit-from-no-one attitude. I’m worried because I’m selfish and I can’t handle our situation if she’s Helena and both remembers and hates me for my choice.
Zarah slides her wrist from my grip and takes my hand, stepping so close she takes my breath away.
“You’re the one who brought me here. But now that I’m here, I feel it. We need to know what's happening, Cassius. I need to know why there is a world parallel to my own that I am somehow part of. That I can paint, but only sometimes see. I need answers. We have to keep moving forward.”
She leans toward me like she’s going to kiss me again, but stops just short, and I breathe her in, unable to close the distance. Kissing her here doesn’t seem right.
I squeeze her fingers in mine and guide her into the meadow at the base of Olympus. We’ll save the kiss for later, if she wants anything to do with me after this experience. A misty fog swirls around us and she clutches my hand tighter. She’s tough, this girl, but I doubt how well anyone would handle a meeting with the Fates.
Sunlight sifts through the mist and we step beyond it into my world. Zarah gasps at the sight of a small little meadow with a tiny little cabin that looks straight out of a fairy tale.
Here come the questions.
“I can’t feel you anymore.” Zarah’s voice is low, confusion laces through her words.
“You can’t what?”
Her face flushes but she doesn’t look at me. “You feel... I can feel in my heart who you really are. It’s hard to explain, but it’s the reason I believed you.”
“You believe how I feel but not what you see with your own eyes,” I add, and then wonder if I should have. The last thing I want to happen now is for her to think this isn’t as real and as serious a situation as it is.
“Always trust feelings over eyes.” She’s scanning the home of the Moirai with awe. She’ll be even more shocked when we go inside.
I lift her hand, bringing her attention back to me. “Do you trust this?” I ask as I press my lips to her palm. Her eyes close and she nods. Pulling back, her fingers curl into a fist as if clutching my kiss in her hand as proof.
Her eyes cast down again.
“I want to see you,” I say. “I’m safe here. I won't turn.”
I press under her chin until we’re eye to eye. Her brown eyes feel a century deep. Maybe more. I memorize the flecks of chestnut and gold. She does the same. Her hands find my cheeks, tracing the cracks that I can feel, but can’t always see. She does. She sees so much more than she should.
“Your eyes are beautiful,” I whisper.
A corner of her mouth twitches, as if she might smile again—even in this crazy situation I’ve dragged her into.
“Nothing compared to you.” She takes a slow breath in.
“You are more beautiful than I could ever be.” And I don’t mean that she’s pretty. Here and now in my world under my rules I see it in every part of her. A beauty and grace that’s greater than any I’ve known. She might not be able to feel me anymore but I feel her in more ways than she’d ever understand.
I don’t think about the minutes ticking by in her world because I’m not ready to leave this moment. Her cheeks turn a pale rose and she finally looks away. I forget that she doesn’t have forever to stand here like I do.
“Where are we?” she asks. This is the question I was expecting.
I think about it for a second before I speak. “We’re everywhere. And nowhere. At the same time.”
Her reaction is to be expected. Her face is blank as she decides whether to laugh at me or believe me.
“Like Curo says, my world is much different than yours. We have no location. We are nowhere specific, but at the base of a mountain. You could not point on a map to show where we are. There are accesses to my world all over yours and wherever I want to go is where the access will take me. But you must be like me to enter. Or be with someone like me.”
“A god,” she mutters, still saying it with that half sarcastic tone. I would too. The stuff they learn in human schools is absolute garbage. We are not that fascinating.
“You ready?” I ask, pulling her toward the cabin. Her chest rises and falls deeply.
“Tell me again that I’m not crazy?” Her eyes fill with that intense sorrow that so often takes them over as she questions all the confidence she had ten seconds ago. I reach out to her face and cup her cheek in my hand. She leans into me, as if trying to feel something.
“No, Zarah. You’re not crazy.” I let my fingers slide along her jaw as I drop my hand.
“This shouldn’t be real.” She’s mumbling behind me as I lead her to the door. “It’s probably not real. I hate that I ever got started. I hate that after this experience, I’ll sit at home and wonder if it actually happened.”
I reach out to her again, taking the hand that still holds my kiss in a clenched fist and I press my fingers through hers. She relaxes only a little, but the connection of holding her hand seems to help her. I feel as if I’m about to lose everything.
Her fingers, so perfectly molded to mine, could be the last touch we share.
PART III
; Using love to gain power, no matter the intention,
is not love at all
but lust in its’ most deceptive disguise.
London, England
1788
The light trickled in through the old loft window and Lena leaned forward to push the rickety shutter open all the way. The breeze was cool for July, but Cassius welcomed it as the sweat dripped from his brow.
“You’ve decided, have you not?” Lena’s voice had taken on a much more harsh tone but still, she never refused him when he wanted to see her. He visited as often as he could and she would put her arms around him and smile when he said I love you.
Cassius ran his fingers along the scratchy straw beneath him and thought back to the time they’d made love here. It seemed so long ago but it was mere weeks. In that loft, Cassius had fallen more deeply in love that he thought possible. But he still had not accepted mortality for himself as a sacrifice to obtain that love.
“I have, my lady.” His eyes moved quickly over hers and there was already a sadness there that said she suspected his choice.
“Before you speak. Father has invited the Duke for tea. He wishes to please my mother by introducing us. I want to tell you that I am going to meet with the Duke. As my father has no sons, this could save my family. It is my obligation.” Lena’s hands were placed in her lap and she wrung them nervously.
Cassius swallowed hard and moved closer to his love. “But Lena? You have not heard my decision.”
“You are not going to give up your status, Cassius. We both know this. You are a god. I am not. We don’t belong together and you know that.”
“But I love you.” Cassius became desperate as the sound of a carriage bumping along the old dirt road flooded his ears. His heart beat faster but became smaller, tighter, which made it painful to bear.
“And I love you. There is no doubt in that. But when will we stop being foolish and see what needs to be done.” She took his hands in hers.
“Maybe we could make it work?” He knew his words would not help and by the way she threw his hand from hers, he knew he was pushing her farther and farther.