But she jumped for the guilt she felt—for the pain she knew she’d caused me after what she did but, most importantly, she jumped because she didn’t want to love Jason. She could have died, and I would never have known she loved me so much that she would let me hate her that way, as long as I was alive. And what makes me smile as I sit here writing this is that … she’s not so very different from me. She’s strong-willed and, in all honesty, if it were in reverse, I’d have done the same thing. I would not have hesitated to fornicate with another to save her. I could handle her hating me as long as she was still alive.
Of course, the two of them are a pair of fools. They should have checked their facts first. Ara, I expect this from. But Jason should have known better. They were wrong. Completely wrong and I’m not sure where they got their information, but I bet they both feel pretty stupid now for blowing apart an entire marriage and all its history on a misguided notion that Jason’s child in Ara’s womb would make him king and give him the power to wield the dagger. We’ve all been misled by this ancient and well-constructed lie over the centuries, but this is the worst example.
As soon as she told me tonight that she was just trying to save me, I nearly grabbed her and hugged her right there on the stairs. Then she said she still loves Jason. And what hurt most was that I could see the love had grown. The damage I’ve done since that day has hardened her against me. She let him inside her heart and his love has taken hold.
My mind keeps going back to the private conversation I had with Lilith when she warned me of a fate line that would see Ara and Jason together no matter what. If I stood in the way of that, terrible things would happen to Ara and, until now, I was happy to stand back and let her be with Jason—eventually, after torturing them both a little in the process—but when I realized she loved me, that she slept with Jason because she loved me, I just wanted her back. Like a toy given to my brother in a bad deal that I later regretted.
She isn’t a toy I can snatch back while he’s sleeping, though. She is the woman I love, and nothing, not even her betrayal has ever changed that. Yet nothing, not even my heart on a silver platter, will ever make her forgive me. I do catch her sometimes—thinking that she wants me back, even though she hates me. But then she hates herself for feeling that way.
I asked Lilith not to tell Ara what I knew about her fate line, because I know also that I need to push her into Jason’s arms. I need to play this betrayal out like it bothers me beyond repair and use it to make her hate me. If she knows that I know about her fate, she’ll know instantly that I’m hurting her to push her away. She’ll know exactly what to say to convince me that Lilith is wrong—that we should be together at any cost, because I don’t really need any convincing. It’s how I already feel.
But I can’t ask her to accept the fiery repercussions just because I’m willing to. She loves Jason enough to be with him and eventually be happy with him. And that has to be enough for me.
However, it’s much harder now my hatred is completely gone. I forgive her for what she did with Jason. I forgave her back when I thought it was a vulgar betrayal, but now this new information has come to light, it’s taken all the hatred I had left and replaced it with a longing so bad, I feel the only thing I can do now is leave and let her get on with her life.
I locked her in her room tonight. I had to exude extra anger and hatred. I couldn’t let her see the love in my eyes. I couldn’t let her know how heartbreakingly beautiful she looked in that dress or how lovely her skin looked under the candlelight, making me glance her way the whole night. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. I had to take her upstairs and lock her away so I could concentrate.
I saw her heart break just that little bit more as I closed the door on her, and I knew there was no going back. I heard her sobbing. She was so hurt and, as much as she needs to be, I am also fearful that it may have been the last straw—that she won’t come to love me again now. But I can’t hope for that either.
I stood outside her door to wait until she calmed down. I heard Jason leave his room and climb through her window. I knew he took her dress off and held her half-naked body against him for a moment. And I wanted to trade places with him more than I wanted once to save the Damned, but he is what she needed. He is what she deserves. He can love her a million times better than I ever could, and she needed someone to hold her after what I did. After everything I’ve done over the last few weeks.
How can I look at her tomorrow and pretend to hate her?
Truth is, I can’t. I feel weak and worn from it. I just can’t watch her cry anymore. I don’t want to. No matter what our fates are, I think perhaps it’s time to tell her I forgive her, and I love her, but that she needs to be with Jason for the good of all our people. She loves the people and she would do anything to save them, protect them; even deny her own heart. I can trust her to do that. I can tell her. I have to tell her, because I cannot bear this another day. I want so badly to dry her tears, to talk with her for hours about nothing, to place my hands on her beautiful belly and feel the fullness, the roundness of a life inside that she and I created. I want to tell her I love the way she looks in that pink dress she wears when it’s sunny, the way it flows in the wind and shows the top of her thighs sometimes, the way it falls softly over the tiny bump—how much I already love that child, even though I’ve never even met her. I love her because I love her mother.
But I guess that’s why I can’t tell her the truth about Lilith’s prediction, because I love her, and I love that child enough to give her the father she deserves. The father only my brother can be. They’re both better off if I’m out of their lives.
Tomorrow, I’m leaving. I’ll give back the wedding band and ask her to give it to our daughter one day. I’ll tell her I forgive her but that I can never love her again. It doesn’t have to matter that the word ‘can’t’ will have a different meaning to her than it will to me, because at least it won’t be a lie. She’ll take it to mean I don’t have it in my heart when, all along, I will know it means simply that I’m not allowed to. I can never let myself forget that.
I lowered the journal slowly into my lap and stared up through a coat of tears at the painting. How could I possibly process any of this? All along, we’d been on exactly the same page. Well, right up until Morgana hexed him. She ruined everything! Everything. We could have resolved this months ago. I could have been lying in his arms instead of crying myself to sleep every night. He could have felt his baby’s first kicks. That bitch has taken everything away from us.
“Ara?” Dad said softly, opening my door.
“Dad.” I wiped a line of tears from my chin. “I know she’s family, but I can’t let her live.”
“Who?”
“Morgana.”
He closed the door and came to sit beside me. “Why do you say that?”
I showed him the journal. “This is all her fault. All David suffered—all I’ve suffered. I hate her and I just so badly wanna go down there to those kill suites right now and rip her damn head off.”
He cleared his throat.
“I’m sorry, Dad. I know—”
“No. It’s fine.” He held my gaze for a second, his blue eyes cold, then stood up. “Look, you need to come down and close the night. Your people expect a speech.”
“I know. I’ll be down in a sec.”
“Right.” He nodded. “And clean yourself up first.”
I covered the flour marks with my hand. “I will.”
“See that you do,” he said stiffly, and he turned away, closing me in my room with the iciness he left behind.
I looked at the journal again, then my dirty hands, and put it aside. If I got stuck in to the last pages now, I’d never get downstairs in time to close the night.
With David’s voice circling my thoughts the whole time, I shut myself in the bathroom, turned on the faucet and cried. What right did she have? What right did any of them have to interfere? What broke between us should have been up to him and m
e. Not anyone else. Morgana justifies it by saying she couldn’t let him forgive me—for his own good. But who is she to decide? I ruined things with David, and it was up to him to choose how he dealt with that.
“Ara?” Mike called through the door.
I ceased the tears with a snivel and composed myself quickly, twisting the faucet off. “Um. Yeah?”
“You said to come get you at quarter to.”
“Thanks. Dad already came in.”
“Okay. Want me to wait for ya? We can walk down together?”
I looked at my red, blotchy face and the inky mascara running in four blurry lines down my cheeks, and grabbed a tissue. “No. You go ahead.”
“Ara?” His voice vibrated through the wood, as if he spoke right into the door. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t sound fine.” The handle jiggled.
I appeared at the door in a vampire flash and locked it into place.
“Ara.”
“I just need a moment.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t lie to me.” He jiggled the handle again. “I may not be around so much anymore, but I am still your best friend and I know when you’re crying. Let me in.”
“It’s the journal,” I said, leaning against the door.
“What journal?”
“On the bed.”
He went quiet. I wandered back over to the mirror and started tidying up my face, and just as I found the happy queen beneath the blubbering mess, Mike knocked on the door again.
“Yeah?”
“I don’t know what to say, Ar.”
I opened the door, a face of composure greeting him on the surface while my empty eyes revealed the truth beneath.
He stepped back and opened both arms, the leather-bound book still tucked into his palm.
“It’s all her fault, Mike.” I curled myself into him. “She is the cause of all this pain we’ve suffered lately.”
“Yes, but…” He kissed the top of my head, repositioning my crown after. “You’ll sort it out with him. I know you will. He clearly loves you.” He held up the journal to make a point.
“But he wrote that before the hex. I mean, the spell’s taken hold now and I don’t think he still feels the same.”
Mike frowned. “So you didn’t read all of it?”
I shook my head.
“Here.” He placed it in my hand. “Read the last few pages.”
My brow stayed contorted long after Mike closed my door and left me alone, but the ticking clock reminded me I had only eight minutes left to be downstairs. So I flipped the journal open and my eyes danced sideways over the words, trying to process them faster than I was capable of.
I woke to the broad Paris sky this morning, but instead of feeling the gentle breeze of a new day brush my skin in the early hours, I felt a sickening twist in my gut as the nightmare I suffered the last twelve hours left my system like a blast of air being forced from within me. I threw my legs over the side of the bed and vomited on my own feet, reliving the nightmare over and over again—the way the life left her eyes, the feel of her neck snapping between my hands—what I did to her cold, dead corpse after. I could never do that. I could never bring such harm to her. So why did I dream it in such graphic detail?
The first thing I did, before even wiping the vomit from my toes, was call Falcon and see that she was all right. He sent me a picture of her sleeping peacefully in her bed and only then would my dormant, lifeless heart settle. I thought I killed her. As I woke, I honestly thought for a moment that I’d killed her.
I flipped over a page and the next entry was a short one.
The dream returned last night. This time it was worse. This time, I cut a line down the center of her body and forcibly removed the unborn child from her womb. While she screamed my name, I licked the tears from her cheeks, savoring the mix of blood and fear.
But in my bed under morning light, as I lay absorbing that dream, feeling it warm my hands as if her flesh were still stuck to them by the blood, the memory did nothing so mild as to make me shudder, but eased the new ache I’d worn in my chest since the day I arrived here. All my regrets, all my fears over what might happen to her in Jason’s care seemed to simmer away like milk over a burn.
Something is changing. And it scares me as much as it pleases me. This is, after all, for the best. The more I hate her, the easier it will be to live without her for the rest of my days.
The grandfather clock down in the library chimed eleven. But the guests could wait. Dad could look at his watch all he wanted. Mike could rock on his heels, his hands gathered at his front, worrying. I didn’t care. I needed to know if there was hope, or I couldn’t go down there and hold my head high. Not for anything.
I’ve never been so clear about anything in my life, he continued. As time has passed, my being away from her has allowed my hatred room to grow and develop as it should have by now, and I feel I’m ready to return there without falling into the trap of her heart again.
Lilith Marked me as a reminder that hating her is for the best, and I can finally be at peace with that. She can have Jason. Jason can have her. She’s tainted and ugly to me now, and I just wish I’d had this kind of clarity while I was standing in front of her, because I feel it in my hands now. I feel this undying, unending need to see her cry at their mercy—to see her whimper for Jason and beg him to save her from the suffering I cause her. I long to hear him cry in the corner, beg for the restraints to be removed so he can just hold her and make her okay.
But he never will. Let them suffer. Both of them. When I get back, she will know what sorry feels like.
I drew back with a little gasp. I could actually feel the hatred within these pages, like a stagnant kind of energy that had a life force all of its own. And it was dark. And brooding. And dangerous.
The difference between the two Davids was so savage and so sudden that I stopped reading and just let time expire, trying to absorb it.
“Ara,” Falcon said, appearing in the doorway. “What are you doing? People are waiting. You were supposed to close the festival at eleven.”
“Tell them we’ll finish at twelve,” I said into the journal.
“Why?” He moved in another step. I could feel the worry in his eyes burn a hole in my neck.
“I need to finish this. I’ll be down soon.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” I nodded, turning my head to offer him a forced smile. “I’m fine.”
“Okay. I’ll be outside if you need me.” He pointed to the hall.
“No. You go downstairs. I’ll meet you there soon.”
I looked back at the journal, basically cutting him off, but he stood there for a few more seconds then quietly slipped away.
Toward the end of the journal were a few well-laid-out pages, with perfect penmanship and well-structured sentences. He wrote about the moment I said I hated him, how he was so taken aback by it that for a moment he felt a familiar feeling of love for me, even underneath all the hatred. But a shard of agony filled his body with heat then, and reminded him he had to hate me back. That he did hate me, with all of his heart. So he let it go. But it happened again, and it happened often, and every time he offered me comfort or friendship, his agony was more severe than the last time. I could see the pressure of the pen on the page had weakened as time went by. He wrote about rejecting first Lilithian blood and then, a few weeks after, human blood too. He thought he was being punished for failing to hate me, said that he had clarity when we were apart and being cruel was easy, but sometimes just a simple look I’d give him or a random brush of my hair from my face would remind him all over again why he fell in love with me.
It’s the same thing day after day after day. I can’t—no matter how much I hate her, I can’t stop feeling for her, and every time I do, I am punished so harshly I can only slip deep into my own imagination and dream up ways to hurt her just to sto
p my own pain.
“Ara?” Falcon said, opening the door again, holding on to the frame to lean in. “I have to insist that you come down now. I’m getting heat from your dad.”
I slowly put the journal down. “Okay. I’m coming.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, his eyes wide with concern. “I know what’s going on.” He nodded to the journal. “Mike told me. But I promise, as soon as you’ve made your speech, you can come back up here and I’ll leave you alone until dawn.”
Something about seeing Falcon all concerned made everything I just read not seem quite so daunting. I smiled. “You don’t have to worry about me, you know. I’ll be okay.”
“I know,” he said, but he didn’t believe his own words.
“It was just a shock, that’s all.” I motioned to the book. “He’s not the David I thought he was. In any way.”
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” he asked as we headed out the door.
“Both.”
11
“Do you remember the speech?”
“Of course,” I said. “Pity most of it’s a lie.”
“I know.” He cupped my shoulder affectionately. “But Drake did say he’d go along with anything to cover up the real story. So he will sign the agreement next month and, being a man of his word, he will stick to it.”
“I hope so. Because…” I cradled my precious bundle in both hands. “I won’t let him take my daughter. If it comes to it, we will go to war.”
“We won’t need to. Blade assured me he’s weaved that part of the agreement so deep into the wording of the contract that not even David could find it if he was wearing the most lawyerly head he owns.”
Echoes & Silence Part 1 Page 53