Avow taoa-3

by Chelsea Fine

  Gabriel groaned. “Is this what my eternity will be? Empty of love and companionship, and filled with greedy damsels?”

  “It could be worse,” Tristan said. “It could be filled with those who enter your house without knocking and eat your food.”

  Nathaniel shoved a very deliberate piece of bread into his mouth and looked at Gabriel. “You have me as a companion. What more could you want from eternity?” He chewed with his mouth open.

  “Something prettier,” Gabriel said, “and less disgusting.”

  Nathaniel swallowed. “If it helps, I’ve never been in love either. I’m beginning to think true love might not exist.”

  Tristan turned his eyes back to his dagger with an amused expression.

  Gabriel sighed. “I am doomed.”

  “No,” Nathaniel said. “You are cursed.”

  “Are they not the same thing?”

  “Not at all. Doomed means there is no hope. Cursed means you will have to struggle to find hope, then struggle to keep it, then struggle to undo said curse with the hope that you have kept.”

  Gabriel blinked. “Being doomed sounds less taxing.”

  “Indeed.” Nathaniel smiled.

  “Relax, Gabriel,” Tristan said. “Do not be impatient for companionship.”

  “This coming from the man who breaks hearts he’s never even met before. Women flock to you and beg for your attention, and you ignore them all.” Gabriel hung his head.

  While Gabriel spent his days drinking and gambling, Tristan devoted most of his time to helping townsfolk. Providing food to the orphans, giving money to the churches, letting whoever and whatever find shelter in his large home for indefinite periods of time. It was truly impossible living alongside a brother with such a bleeding heart. And that bleeding heart was like a beacon for women everywhere, drawing them to his presence only to be sent away.

  “It’s truly sickening, brother,” Gabriel said. “You, at the very least, should marry one of the poor girls.”

  “Why, so I can lose my horses?” Tristan smiled.

  “Yes! Then you could join me in my misery,” Gabriel said.

  Tristan went back to his knife. “I have my own misery to bear.”

  Gabriel rolled his eyes.

  Poor soul, indeed.

  CHAPTER 7

  London 1684

  Immortality, Tristan decided, was only magnificent for those who had a reason to breathe and, for him, that reason was lost somewhere in-between worlds. Until Scarlet returned, his every breath was just a laborious means to an end.

  So he existed. But he did not live.

  Waiting on love will do that to a man; keep his heart suspended in a state of thin hope—just bright enough to want to live and heavy enough to envy death.

  Music played into the large, ornate room where he and Gabriel stood among dozens of other well-dressed Londoners.

  Laughter, merriment, movement.

  Life, breath, hope.

  Mortality.

  Tristan was envious of it all.

  He stretched his neck, trying to ignore the mysterious pain in his limbs.

  “Remind me again,” Gabriel leaned into Tristan to be heard above the music. “Why are we at the Trevena Ball?”

  “Because we were invited,” Tristan said.

  Gabriel took a deep swig from the goblet in his hand. “Yes, but why did we come?”

  “Because we are young, wealthy gentlemen and that’s what young, wealthy gentlemen do.” A woman across the room batted her lashes at Tristan and he stifled a sigh, his lungs pulling uncomfortably tight.

  “I feel that is a poor reason.” Gabriel took another drink.

  A group of ladies by the back doors stared at them in between their whispers and giggles.

  Tristan exhaled. “I think us standing side-by-side is drawing too much attention. People do not know what to do with twins. They see us as a circus show.”

  “They do not,” said Gabriel. “Now, maybe if we both had tails, we’d be a sideshow. But we do not have tails. We have strong bodies and godlike faces. If we’re a show of any kind, we’re a show of beauty.”

  Tristan shook his head. “Your confidence is disgusting.”

  “A hundred and fifty years of female affirmation has made me this way.” Gabriel’s smile faltered for the briefest of moments and Tristan felt heavy, knowing who Gabriel was and who he wanted to be were warring enemies.

  His brother’s behavior had not changed much in the last century: drinking, gambling, breaking rules, breaking hearts. He embraced his immortality as an opportunity to exploit life as a whole and Tristan acted as his peacemaker and babysitter, trying to keep the wild Gabriel from causing more damage than could be undone in a lifetime.

  Tristan had considered leaving London and moving someplace far from his brother, but his conscience never allowed him to leave. Gabriel was a reckless star, casting about wherever he may, exploding into whoever made him feel alive, and burning casualties in his wake.

  Lord only knows what that star would burst into next if Tristan were not there to remind Gabriel of those annoying bits of humanity called morals.

  Gabriel’s fruitless search for love had left him a bitter brute who swam in booze and slept beside whoever welcomed him, his mood always bleak.

  Tristan was worried for his brother’s state of mind and wished, more so now than ever before, that he could change Gabriel’s circumstances.

  Reaching for his wine goblet from the nearby table, Tristan winced. He’d been experiencing a pain that came and went, sometimes sharp and cutting, other times a dull ache, for some time now. It had come on suddenly nearly two years ago, and the pain he’d experienced that first day had felt like death itself was ripping him apart.

  But it slowly subsided and he’d been living with an on-again-off-again ache ever since. Tonight, however, his muscles were throbbing and growing tighter by the minute. And he had no idea why.

  “That young lady seems to admire you.” Tristan pointed to a girl in pink who was smiling at Gabriel, and tried to ignore the pressure building in his head.

  He nodded. “She does.”

  “You might ask her to dance.” Tristan took a sip. “Less people would probably stare in this direction if there were only one of us standing here.”

  “I could ask her to dance.” Gabriel took a drink from his own cup. “I could also feed my heart to wild boars.”

  He rolled his eyes. “You cannot completely give up on companionship, Gabriel. That’s absurd.”

  A slicing pain cut through the center of Tristan’s chest and he clutched at his heart.

  “What is wrong?” Gabriel asked.

  “I don’t…know.” He couldn’t breathe. It was as if all the air in the room had been replaced with fire, filling his lungs with a merciless burn.

  “Let’s get you outside.” Gabriel led Tristan out the back doors and into the night air.

  Once outside, Tristan crumpled to the ground. Every piece of his body was wringing from the inside out, killing him for certain.

  “Tristan.” Gabriel crouched down beside him, panic in his voice. “What is this?”

  Heat, ice, fire, knives, everything born of hell was ripping through Tristan’s core. And the Devil himself was clawing away at his head.

  Tristan gasped. “I can’t…breathe….”

  Gabriel swallowed and pulled Tristan up from the ground. “We need to get you out of here and…”

  Tristan didn’t hear the rest. The pain closed in on him and pulled out his insides. He was dying. There was no other explanation as the world around him went cold and black.

  ***************

  Two weeks later, Gabriel shook his head as he looked down at Tristan’s face contorted in pain. “He’s dying, isn’t he?”

  “I highly doubt that, considering he is immortal,” said Nathaniel.

  Tristan shoved his face into the bed and groaned against a pillow.

  Nathaniel twitched his lips. “Where is the doctor
you called on?”

  “He should be here soon.” Gabriel shifted his weight as Tristan punched the bed with a howl.

  The pain had not let up for several days, rendering Tristan mad with torment and Gabriel completely helpless to relieve him.

  Nathaniel rubbed a hand across his face. “This is not normal. I knew that he had been experiencing pain off and on for quite some time, but how long has it been like this?”

  “Three weeks,” Gabriel said.

  “Three weeks and four days,” Tristan corrected through gritted teeth.

  Nathaniel said, “Ah, yes. Since the night of the ball.”

  A knock sounded at the door.

  “Finally,” Gabriel muttered as he hurried to the front of the house.

  “Sorry I am late.” The doctor was a round, balding man with a bright red nose and spectacles that were too thick and large for his face. “There are too many patients in this area lately. I am all but dead myself from all this running around and add on top of that all the cats that roam these streets making me sneeze with their dirty hair, not to mention the stench—“

  The doctor continued mumbling as Gabriel led him back to the room where Tristan lay in agony. “The last patient I called on was allergic to peaches. I had never heard of such a thing, though I do suppose that isn’t too great a problem around here. I’ve never really cared for peaches myself, though my mother was fond of peach pie. Oh, dear!” The doctor exclaimed. “What is the matter with this young fellow?”

  Gabriel glared at the doctor, already annoyed with his presence. “We don’t know. That is why we called you.” He explained to the physician how Tristan had been in agonizing pain.

  “Oh my.” The doctor pushed his spectacles up further, pressing them into the skin between his eyes, and began examining Tristan. “The human body. So fragile. So many sick people everywhere. Just the other day, I treated a woman named Agnes who gave birth to the largest baby I’d ever seen and her pain, while quite intense, did not seem as debilitating as what this gentleman suffers from here.” The doctor raised Tristan’s arm in the air and dropped it. It crashed down to the bed, before forming a fist and punching the sheets again.

  “Hmm…” The doctor shuffled about, checking Tristan’s pulse and his forehead, looking in his eyes and listening to his chest. “Very odd. Very odd.” He shook his head and then—foolish man that he was—the doctor pinched Tristan’s bicep. For what reason, Gabriel was not sure.

  Tristan lashed out from the pillow and pinned the doctor against the wall, wrapping a hand around his throat and squeezing until the man’s face turned purple.

  Slow and low, Tristan bit out, “Do. Not. Pinch. Me,” before releasing the stunned physician and returning to his miserable groaning into the bed.

  Coughing and gasping, the doctor hurried away from the bed and looked at Gabriel and Nathaniel with wide eyes. “My, my. He is not well at all. He seems healthy—at least healthy enough to kill a man. Lots of muscle. Healthy skin color. But this apparent pain he suffers from—and his violent temperament—is perplexing.”

  Nathaniel looked at the doctor. “Do you have any solutions?”

  The doctor sighed. “None other than lavender water and prayer.”

  Doctors were useless.

  “Then I believe we are through with your services.” Gabriel tried to sound polite.

  “I must say,” said the doctor as he gathered his things, “this has been a most perplexing month. I treated a monkey with a liver infection, if you can believe that. Monkeys make the most atrocious sounds. And I had to perform surgery on an old bloke named Henry who thought he could cut out his chronic toothache with a knife—that one was rather gory. The human mouth is madness.”

  Gabriel wanted to strangle the man for all his nonsensical chatter.

  The doctor continued, “And then there was the young girl without her memories. Poor thing was lost, scared, and completely mad. I put her in a carriage and swiftly sent her far away. Named Scarlet, though I thought she looked more like a Mary. I nearly missed the ball because of her and I hate missing a good ball feast. And now I have this young man with an invisible pain, punching the bed sheets and choking me—”

  “What did you say?” Tristan whipped around, obviously forgetting about his great pain as his wild green eyes stared at the doctor.

  The doctor scoffed. “I was merely stating that I am mystified by your impossible pain and a bit offended at your attempt to kill me—”

  “No.” Tristan sat up in the bed. “What did you say about the girl named Scarlet?”

  The doctor paused in the doorway. “Oh. She was found wandering the woods a couple of years ago, quite close to here. Sad, really. She does not know anything but her name. I gave her some lavender water, but I hardly see how that will help her remember or help her temper. She was a mean little thing—”

  “What was her full name?”

  The doctor rubbed at his beard in thought. “I believe it was Jacobs. Yes. Scarlet Jacobs.”

  Gabriel was lost for words.

  Could it be?

  “She was a pretty thing,” the doctor said. “But feisty and not ladylike in any way. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she were raised in the wild.”

  “Neither would I,” Tristan said slowly.

  Gabriel saw the raw hope in Tristan’s eyes and felt a similar emotion stir in his own chest.

  Was Scarlet truly alive?

  CHAPTER 8

  Tristan’s heart was pounding. Joyous, terrified, excited, nervous—there was no emotion within the spectrum of human existence he wasn’t currently experiencing.

  He knew it. His heart, his soul, his pain-stricken body knew Scarlet was alive. And she was close.

  Gabriel, Nathaniel, and Tristan rode in Gabriel’s carriage to a small inn far outside of town where the doctor had said Scarlet would be.

  Tristan rolled his shoulders, willing the ache from his bones as they rode along. When they’d first left, Tristan’s body had been so filled with pain that he’d groaned at every jostle and bump in the road. But the longer they rode toward Scarlet, the less he hurt. It was as if the mere idea of Scarlet being alive was curing him.

  He ran both hands through his hair, his nerves jumping like feet on hot coals.

  When the carriage finally pulled up to a large inn, they jumped out and headed for the front door of the old building. Upon entering, the three of them stopped in their tracks.

  There were people. Everywhere.

  “Brilliant,” Tristan muttered.

  “The inn-yard must be hosting a play today.” Nathaniel strained his neck, trying to see above the crowd to the courtyard beyond. People lined the halls and outside balconies drinking, singing, and laughing. It was chaos.

  “How will we find her in this mess?”

  “We’ll split up.” Nathaniel looked at Gabriel. “You take the right wing. Tristan, you take the left. Since I do not know what she looks like, I‘ll ask the people upstairs about the girl without her memories.”

  Gabriel nodded and headed down his designated wing, while Nathaniel clutched Tristan’s shoulder and gave him a brief smile, as if he understood Tristan’s desire to run around the inn and knock people over until he found Scarlet. “Deep breath, my friend. If she is here, we shall find her.”

  Before Tristan could respond, Nathaniel headed upstairs.

  Tristan strode through the left wing of the inn. People, people, people.

  No Scarlet.

  At the back of a large gathering room, he found the innkeeper counting a handful of coins he’d collected from play-goers, dropping them into a pouch one by one.

  “Pardon me.” Tristan hoped his smile looked warm rather than impatient. “I’m looking for a young girl named Scarlet Jacobs. I believe she was sent to work here a few weeks ago.”

  The innkeeper looked up. “The mad girl?”

  Tristan almost hit the man. “The very same.”

  “What do you want with her?”

  Li
fe. Love. A reason to breathe again.

  Tristan said, “I have something of hers.”

  This was true.

  The innkeeper waved toward the right wing. “The back of the washrooms.”

  Tristan gave a nod and turned away, fighting through crowds of people lining the right wing. He picked up his pace.

  Gabriel was going to find her first, dammit. And he would probably say something wildly inappropriate or have the poor girl drunk by the time Tristan’s feet carried him to the washrooms.

  Bloody Gabriel.

  As he hurried along, a strange sensation came over him. Strange and warm and…wonderful.

  Love.

  A happy love—a safe love—blossomed in Tristan’s chest, spreading like serene fog through his body. Love for…Gabriel?

  Tristan stopped walking. Maybe this was part of his illness. Maybe he’d contracted a sickness that began with excruciating pain and then morphed into a ridiculous love of one’s sibling.

  No. That did not sound right.

  And come to think of it, he was no longer in horrific pain. Very odd. In fact, the atrocious pain he’d suffered just that morning was almost completely gone from his veins.

  Shaking his head, Tristan moved forward, nearly running as he made his way to the other side of the building, rounding corners and knocking into people shamelessly.

  Soon, he found the washrooms and skidded across wet floors until he managed to connect his feet to the solid ground. He paused and headed for a small room off to the side. Why, he wasn’t sure, but something was pulling him that way.

  He turned into the room and his heart stopped. And then it sang.

  Scarlet.

  He sucked in a long, deep, God-given breath of redemption and miracles and all things heavenly. Never was there a better sight than this.

  She was more beautiful than he remembered, her face flushed and her dark hair loose and wild around her face, but her eyes were the same. Blue and severe, showing the strength and stubbornness she housed inside.

  As he suspected, Gabriel had found her first as was speaking to her in hushed, comforting tones. The room was empty, save for the three of them, but Scarlet had not yet seen Tristan.