He might not have slept with them after I left his room, and while Jason figured that was because, somewhere in David’s mind, he wasn’t ready to move on, the fact was, he still had those girls in there—naked, touching them, probably enjoying their very un-pregnant bodies in ways he could never enjoy mine—moving on, or not.
I still had to live with seeing that, with knowing that side of David existed and that he’d never revealed it to me. Which meant he’d never shown me his authentic self. Not really. I’d met the vampire, but I’d never truly known all of David.
And the other fact was, I’d still seen his erect penis wedged firmly down the throat of another girl. I could never erase that from my mind. Not to mention, he only ever let me do that to him once. Once! And he stopped me before I could really even get started, as if maybe I wasn’t good enough to even suck his dick.
Jealousy?
Maybe.
No! Hell yes. And a whole bunch of other not-so-noble emotions, too.
“God!” I slammed ten fingers down in a horrid blast of clashing notes, drowning out the calm feel that the afternoon sun and Chopin’s soft lullabies had bestowed upon the Great Hall thirty seconds ago.
No man ever riled me up as much as that damn green-eyed, spunky, irritating, sexy-as-sin vampire. I came in here in a good mood! I was happy, smiling. Until I managed to get twenty straight minutes alone with my thoughts for the first time since I reversed a vampire, and now couldn’t stop the pendulum of emotions that came with them. No matter how much common sense I tried to talk in to myself.
I mean, why should it bother me that he polished some cheap tart’s throat?
Why should it bother me that he so easily moved on, while I was left feeling pathetic because I hated him and yet simultaneously wished he’d love me again?
No, scratch that. Why did men find it so easy to accept the end of a relationship!? So easy, in fact, that they could just have sex with other people again and not give it a second thought!
“You love my brother, what’s left to say?” I said mockingly, screwing my face up like a troll version of David.
“Maybe I don’t love him!” I hit a low D. “Maybe.” I hit the A up from that. “Just maybe, I’m only allowing my heart to see him because I’m trying to accept my new single life.” I whacked a B. “Maybe. I. Don’t. Want. To love anyone else, David!” I said, striking a string of random keys, ending on a sharp.
“Men,” Falcon scoffed from behind me. “Complicated things.”
My cheeks flushed as I turned around to see him standing there with his arms folded, wearing the same smug grin from Mike’s know-it-all face. Everyone was right: they could be mistaken as brothers.
“I didn’t know anyone was there.”
He laughed and sat beside me, his warm eyes taking on a more serious note. “What happened, Ara?”
My shoulders slumped so far forward I could almost have passed for a boulder. “That night I went to get David for the lab thing?” I said, then looked at Falcon to see his reaction. “He had girls in his bed.”
“He did, huh?”
“Mm-hm.” I bit my pouting lip. “My first vision as I walk in the door is his penis in this dumb blonde’s mouth.”
“Hey now”—he wrapped his arm about my shoulders—“not all blondes are dumb.”
I nudged him with my elbow. “If she was smart, she wouldn’t have been in bed with two other girls and a vampire.”
“I dunno, I think that shows a higher intelligence.”
I raised a brow at him, prompting an explanation.
“If he turns out to be a creep, she can make a run for it and leave the others as bait.”
I scoffed. “Stupid if she thinks she can outrun a vampire.”
“My prey outruns me sometimes,” he challenged.
And my curiosity was suddenly very aroused. “You hunt?”
He held back a grin, his eyes full of cheek but also guarded. “Yes. But I don’t kill. I have a little Falcon Fan Club of vampires that let me feed on them—among other things.”
“Girls?”
“And a few guys.”
“And you don’t just feed on them?”
He shook his head, biting his grin.
“You have sex with them?”
“If I feel like it.”
My eyes widened in amazement. “I always thought you were, like… a vault. You know, that you didn’t really interact with anyone socially.” Or have sex.
He looked down to where my eyes accidentally landed on the bulge between his thighs. “I just keep my private life very separate from… everything else.”
“So, do you… I mean, is it serious with this human guy, or—?”
“Not yet.” He laughed lightly. “Just a bit of fun.”
I nodded, drifting off to thoughts about relationships and their complexities: how it was so acceptable for guys to have several girls interested in them; to be sleeping with them; to be open and to embrace their sexual needs and preferences, yet when it came to me, I was judged and shunned, told I’m too “pure” for “that sort of thing” and called a slut for being in love with, or confused by, two guys at once. It wasn’t fair.
And the fact that no one even batted an eyelid at David’s behavior was really unfair. The fact that I told myself I had no right to feel upset by it was stupid and made me mad at myself and everyone else.
“It really upset ya, huh?”
“Hm?”
“This David business?” he said. “Seeing him like that.”
“Yeah.” I closed the piano cover gently.
“Because you still love him?”
“No. I mean… maybe. I don’t know.” I huffed. “I guess, I kinda hate him right now, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love him.”
He laughed. “Then, have you told him yet?”
“Told him what?”
“How you feel—about seeing him with those girls.”
“Oh, God no!”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “Didn’t really have time, I guess—not that I thought of it. I went for total denial.”
He laughed again, tipping back a little. “What’s the worst he can say?”
“Um … ‘I hate you. Go away, you’re embarrassing yourself.’”
His laughter eased to a smile. “Do you really think he’d say that?”
“I’m just not totally sure what he’d say and, to be honest, as you know, I have reasons why I can’t actually allow myself to have those feelings.”
He watched me for a second, reaching down to where I’d planted my elbow on the piano cover, and cupped it until he had my attention. “Have you told him about the talk you had with Lilith?”
I moved my head in a slow no.
“What do you think he’d say?”
“I think he’d say Fate was right. I always did love his brother more,” I said, as if repeating the words in David’s tone. Okay, so he didn’t sound like a schoolgirl singing through her nose, but Falcon got my point.
He rubbed his head fiercely. “You’re still mad at him. And while you let that control your actions, repairing the damage done in your relationship will be impossible.”
“I’m not letting it control my actions.”
“Yes, you are. Ask yourself why you didn’t tell him you were upset about those girls in his bed.”
My lip sat between my teeth, helping me think. “I don’t want him to know how I feel.”
“Why?”
“Because he doesn’t love me anymore, Falcon. He won’t care.”
“And what then?”
“What do you mean?”
“If you tell him how you feel, and he doesn’t care, what does that mean for you?”
“It means I get humiliated. Rejected—”
“Like David when he found out, in a room full of people, that his wife had betrayed him?”
My whole body wanted to run and hide me under the bed upstairs. “I didn’t know there were people there.”
“No, but you understand how he feels, surely. He has to maintain his sense of pride and, with David, that will always come first. It’s how he is. You say you love him even when you hate him; well, know that about him—know thy enemy and the path to peace will be clear.”
“You’re saying I need to relinquish my own pride to save David’s?”
“I’m saying that one of you has to extend the olive branch. And it won’t be him. If you tell him how you feel, he might initially laugh and say it’s too bad—that maybe now you’ve had a taste of your own medicine—but if a girl told me she loved me after I did half the stuff David’s done to you lately, I—” He shook his head, smiling. “I think I’d ask her to marry me.”
A small speech formed in my mind then—things I wanted to tell David and, physically, could tell him. But it was all very well for Falcon to give advice, another thing for me to actually have the courage to follow it. “Nope. No way. I can’t.”
Falcon shrunk with exhaustion. “Well, looks like you’re not gonna get anything good out of yourself this afternoon, kid. Maybe you should do something to take your mind off it all.”
“Like what?”
He cupped my hand in my lap. “Go upstairs, take a hot bath, and every time you go to think about David, or anything else related to that topic, smack yourself, or picture a… I dunno, a cat in a bucket.”
“Why in a bucket?”
He drew his phone from his pocket and, when he showed me, I couldn’t hold the sulkiness in place anymore. I’d seen plenty of cat pictures on the Internet, but this one was actually pretty darn funny.
“Okay?” He stuffed it in his pocket again. “Think of that when you’re about to think of David.”
“Okay.” I wiped a few tears of hilarity from the corners of my eyes. “Thanks, Fal. I know it’s not in your job description to be my BFF, but… sometimes I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“It’s not in my job description to love you like a little sister, either, but I do.” His arm came up and all the way around me, pulling me close in a nice, brotherly hug. “And for the record, I am also on your Private Council so, technically, I am supposed to advise you on stuff.”
I snuggled in for a second then drew away. “Well, I really appreciate it—more than you know.”
“Any time.” He stood up. “And, Ara?”
“Mm?” I looked up from my lap.
“If you ask me, what’s really bothering you has nothing to do with David and a blowjob.”
I frowned, waiting for him to elaborate.
He put his hands up instead and backed away. “That’s all I need to say.”
And it was all he needed to say. I sat for a few minutes, confused, but when I got down to the nitty-gritty of it all, I wasn’t mad because David had his dick in another girl’s mouth. I was mad because he was moving on, which only made me mad because I didn’t want him to move on. I didn’t want to be without him. I never did. No matter what happened. No matter what he did. No matter what he said. I loved him. I had successfully denied that all this time for the sake of my own heart and for the path of Fate that Lilith said I had to follow, but I just couldn’t fight the burning in my chest anymore—the burning I felt every time he smiled at me or looked at me kindly.
And that was the real truth at the core of it all: I wanted things between David and I, even if they were never the same again, to at least have a chance. If I was forced to be with Jason because he would someday save us all—I waved my hands around in the air at my own melodramatic thought—well, that just wasn’t a good enough reason to let go of this eternal love.
The fact was, I wasn’t confused about who to love. I just hadn’t wanted to admit it for fear of causing some kind of great havoc, both to Jason’s heart and to the world I ruled. But it was time to let the girl inside me, who was screaming out for what she knew was right, to have her turn on the podium.
And that was that. It was simple, really. I knew then what I had to do, even though it meant the world would fall down around me—possibly on me.
* * *
“Mother,” I called, walking through the forest clothed, but with bare feet. “Lilith?”
“What is it, child?” Her ethereal human form wavered like pink steam on the path up ahead. “Why do you call to me as if the world will burn should I not appear?”
“It will anyway, Lilith.” My knees shook as I drew closer, the fire of things to come scorching me to my core, making my feet and hands so hot they curled inward. “I have to let it burn. I have to—”
“Amara.” She moved back as if the heat around me would set her ablaze. “Calm yourself.”
“I can’t do it,” I said, falling to my knees at her feet. “I have so many voices in my head right now. So many telling me what I should do, and I”—I pressed my hand very firmly into my chest, folding over as if it might block out the world of reason and responsibility until all that would matter was what I felt, what I wanted for me, kingdoms and prophecies and my peoples’ needs aside—“I can’t hear what my heart wants anymore. I want to want Jason, you know I do, for the sake of everything, but—”
“My dear child,” she said soothingly, leaning down to take my hand. “You have what you always wanted. You are free to be with him now—”
“But that’s not what I want. Not when I listen only to my heart.”
She drew back, fierce fog cooling the air. “Explain yourself.”
“I love David too much to be with Jason,” I said, looking up at her through sparkling tears. “And I won’t, I simply won’t string Jason along like that. He could be happy. He could have a good life. But if I tear him apart with a love that’s just not there anymore, he won’t recover.”
“But that’s just the point, my dear.”
“What is?”
“He needs to offer his life to save th—”
“No.” I pushed up off the ground and got to my feet, brushing the dirt and twigs from my palms. “I don’t want to know. I can’t take any more predictions or clues or prophecies. I am sick to death of it all!”
“You must hear it, though—must accept all that comes with being queen. This is your life now, Auress, and will be for the rest of eternity. Sacrifice, of your heart, your soul, your—”
“No.” I shook my head. “I won’t change fate at their expense.”
“Then it will be at yours, or your child’s.”
I nodded once, my arms dropping in relief as the heat simmered in my core. “Then so be it. At least I can live with that.”
“With sacrificing your child?”
“No. Myself,” I said. “When the time comes, I will choose what to do. But I will do it with a clear heart and a clear conscience. I will not trade Jason’s soul for David’s, nor the same in reverse. Those boys deserve better.”
“Then you will die—”
“I don’t care,” I said, cutting the air with one hand. “With all due respect, Mother, I don’t want to know my future. I will do the right thing, and let the pieces fall where they may.”
“You are changing things, Auress, even now as you speak,” she warned, glancing up at nothing, as though a story were written there in the energy around the trees. “What may come could be a change you’re not prepared for; one not even a goddess as powerful as I can predict.”
I nodded once and turned to walk away. “Then I welcome the change.”
“Then you’ve chosen to love the king?”
“Yes.”
“He will not choose you in the end, Auress. You will be alone.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” I smiled as I walked onward, wrapping my hands over my belly to feel the small life that occupied the space within. “I won’t be alone.”
“Then so be it.” Her voice changed to a low, inhuman growl, and the wind rushed up past my ankles, sweeping my hair back toward the goddess.
I spun around. “What does that mean?”
“It means you will bear a reminder of your choice
.” Her arm straightened, a long finger aiming toward me. And a single shot of heat pierced my hand, snaking down from my heart to the very tip of my ring finger. I folded in on the pain, my knees buckling, while the flaming form of the goddess moved slowly like a ghost around me. Her hair and gown lashed in wild, snakelike forms in the volcanic wind; the cage of her teeth, set below narrow, fierce eyes, made me feel small and suddenly unsafe.
“Burn for your sins, Auress,” she snarled. “Burn for what you destroyed, for what you seek now to restore. Burn and feel this as a reminder every moment from this day forth that you have chosen a path against the wishes of Nature—against God!”
“No.” I pushed hard against the ground, sweat breaking across my brow as I fought not to crumble. “Nothing I want with all my heart will ever be wrong in the eyes of God!”
“Betrayer,” she yelled, her long, bone-white finger aiming at my soul. And the burn in my hand intensified, the wind taking the tranquility out of the forest, turning this sacred place into a fiery hell. “God does not love those who sin. You are on your own now, Auress—and you will suffer for that.”
I screamed as the fire wrapped the base of my ring finger, bubbling it like molten lava, charring the skin with a slick blackness. “Stop. Please.”
“Every time you look at your hand now you will not only see a Mark, you will see the wedding band that is gone—that will not cover it—and it will be an eternal reminder that you chose a life without love.”
“It’s not without love.” I found the strength inside to stand against the pain and look her square in the eyes. “I will always love him—”
“And he will turn you out when you tell him that love will cost you your life.”
“I’ll never tell him.”
“You won’t need to. I will.” She turned and started floating away, taking the shadows along with her while the hot wind melted into the trees around me.
I looked down at the blackened finger, and there, like a tattoo in a singular ring, was a Mark I’d have no way of explaining to David: a band fixed in place where my wedding ring once had been, now serving as a permanent reminder that he would never love me again—a fact I would one day die with heavy on my heart.
Echoes & Silence Part 1 Page 25