by Tenaya Jayne
Philippe walked down with her to the little room where Gahu was still guarding Syrus. Syrus looked a little better, able to stand on his own. Forest thanked Gahu and pulled Syrus behind her by the wrist. Philippe sent Gahu ahead to clear the way for them so random wolves didn't spot them, and to send the order that any and all wolves in the Wood were to return to the Lair immediately.
Everything around the Lair was quiet, devoid of prying eyes when Philippe and Gahu walked Forest and Syrus down to the edge of the Wood.
Philippe smiled broadly at her in parting. “I’ll see you soon.”
Forest only nodded and turned her back on them, the two of them disappearing into the trees.
Philippe waited for a few moments. “Get a team and follow them, Gahu.”
The sun was setting as Forest and Syrus reentered the wood. The pain around the collar throbbed and made her whole arm feel heavy. The words had not yet formed inside her head before then. I’m going to die in the morning. Syrus followed her as he had at the Lair, silently and with his head down. When she felt they were sufficiently away from where Philippe had sent them off, she turned to him and wrapped her arms around him.
“I’m sorry, Syrus. I’m so, so sorry! I should have never left you.”
He made no reply and was like a dead weight in her arms.
“Please, Syrus. Please forgive me.”
“What difference does it make?” he said in a low flat voice. “It’s all over now anyway.”
“It’s not! I found Maxcarion when I ran away from you. I know where he is. It’s not far at all!”
She stepped back from him, and he raised his head a little. “How did you get us out of there?”
“I told him half-truths, and he believed letting us go was in his best interest.” Forest turned and began walking again. She couldn’t tell him about the collar. She just had to get them to the wizard so he could have his sight back. When she had thought about this time before and how she would say good-bye to him, she didn’t realize how final it would be.
“So that’s it? You’re really not going to tell me the whole of it?” he asked incredulously.
“I’m tired, and we have to move quickly.”
Syrus didn’t push the issue further; he seemed too weak and dejected to argue. The shadows stretched along the ground as the sun sank below the treetops and the sky slowly undulated with its dusk colors. Forest looked up at the sunset, realizing with a sharp pang that it would be her last and she couldn’t even sit and enjoy it. She pushed ahead; she had to complete her mission. It was the only gift she could give Syrus. She wouldn’t die whining and crying. She would die with the stiff upper lip of a warrior.
Forest slowed her pace. They would be there soon enough. She reached for Syrus’ hand. He moved away from her. A sob rose in her throat. She couldn’t let it end like this. She reached for him again. “Please,” she whispered. “Please, hold my hand.”
He raised one eyebrow, but his face softened, and he held out his hand to her. She made sure to grasp it with her right hand. Her left felt so heavy now. She would have to hold it up with the other one before much longer.
The Dryad graveyard loomed in the distance ahead, and she couldn’t stop the tears in spite of her determination not to cry.
“What’s wrong?” Syrus asked. “I can smell your tears.”
“Oh, I’m just so happy,” she lied. “We’re here.”
The stone trees gave off a faint green glow in the darkness. They stood in the center of the graveyard. There was no noise here. The silence of the dead was absolute.
“I can feel his presence,” Syrus said quietly. “My magic recognizes his.”
“It’s time to say goodbye,” she said facing him.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not going in there with you. You don’t need me anymore.”
A number of different emotions flashed across his face. “Fine, don’t go in with me, but don’t leave yet. Please don’t leave before I get a chance to see you with my own eyes. It’s not over yet, Forest.”
“All right. I’ll stay right here and wait. You go. Do you need me to show you the door?”
“No. I can feel where it is.”
He framed her face gently with his hands. “Forest,” he whispered leaning his forehead against hers. “I do need you. Don’t run away.”
She could say nothing as he left her, knowing her voice would betray her; her words would confess the truths she’d hidden from him. She watched his retreating back disappear through the optical illusion into the tree. Her heart sobbed for him to come back.
Forest sank down on the ground with her back against a broken stone tree, cradling her screaming arm in her lap and listened to the tortured cries of her heart as the darkness of her last night closed in around her.
Chapter 19
Syrus walked slowly into Maxcarion’s home. He didn’t want to come off threatening, especially since he was unarmed. The wizard calmly allowed him to approach, pausing his Wii bowling. Maxcarion’s home overflowed with various kinds of magic and magical objects from many different worlds. If Syrus could have seen it, he would have found it beautiful, fascinating, terrifying and occasionally disgusting.
The wizard himself, ancient and wizened, had lost some of his edge over the last century, mostly out of boredom.
“Well, well, well.” Maxcarion’s voice was dusty from lack of use, and he had to cough and clear his throat before he could say more. “Prince Syrus. It’s about time you showed up.”
“You were expecting me?” Syrus asked.
“Oh yes. I have the power to see the future. I know all about you and Forest. A more bumbling pair of lovers I’ve never seen.” He chuckled.
“Forest and I are not lovers.”
“Ha! We’ll come back to that. You’ve changed so much since the last time I saw you, all of it for the better, I might add. Even your hairstyle is better. I don’t know why vampires insist on wearing their hair so long. But anyway, as you have guessed, I am the wizard who attacked you five years ago.”
The excitement of this confirmation bubbled up inside Syrus. “Then you can restore me! You know what it will take to fix my eyes!”
“Not so fast, my boy. I’m sorry to tell you this, but I cannot restore your sight.”
“But…but…you’re the one who did this to me. Surely you must know a way.”
“I’m sorry. The damage is permanent.”
All of Syrus’ hopes crashed like glass falling on marble.
Maxcarion sighed. “Look, I’m a mercenary through and through. I was hired to kill you. Something I could have done easily. I took the job and intended to see it through, but when I came in contact with you, mere seconds before I blinded you, I saw what great potential you had. So I spared you, and I did you and everyone else a huge favor. By taking your sight, I took from you that which truly blinded you: your arrogance. I gave you a chance to become who you were meant to be, and you have.”
Syrus was numb. “I came all this way for nothing.”
“Now, now. Don’t make me take that compliment back. What about Forest?”
“What about her?” Syrus spat angrily.
“She’s sitting in that graveyard crying tears for you as she prepares to die.”
“Die? Why would she die?”
“Philippe collared her before he let the two of you go. The collar will kill her unless you die tonight.”
“I don’t understand,” Syrus said.
“Your mate has traded her life for yours.”
“Mate?” the word fell stupidly off his tongue as if he did not understand it. “Forest is my mate? My destined life mate?”
Once he said it aloud, Syrus didn’t need confirmation. He knew it was true. Now it all made sense. The desire and the pain, the fiery lightning that snaked inside him, their first kiss. Syrus threw his head back and laughed before smacking his forehead.
“I’m so stupid! She knows, doesn’t she?”
“Y
es.”
“How long has she known?”
“Since the time you first touched her face. She saw her true form reflected in your eyes.”
Syrus considered the amount of unfinished business between them, but that would have to come later. Her life hung in the balance.
“You can stop the collar can’t you?” Panic seized him at the thought of Forest dying.
“Certainly I can, but I told you, I’m a mercenary. What do you offer me as payment?”
Syrus swore angrily. “I’ve paid you already! You took my sight. You owe me!”
The wizard scratched his nose unconcernedly. “I suppose I could do you a favor. Or would letting her die be better? She’s not really suitable if you’re going to be king, you know. I mean that’s really why she’s hidden it from you all along.”
“You disgusting little…” Syrus proceeded to call Maxcarion names that even he had never heard before. The wizard listened amusedly to his rant, unaffected.
“All right, all right,” Maxcarion said in lazy retreat from Syrus’ anger. “Since you love her so much.”
“I do!” he said defiantly. The admission made in the midst of vehement anger gave it concrete validity. He did love her.
“The collar will be disabled by the time you go out to her, but I require that you give it to me once it is off.”
“Deal.”
The wizard smiled to himself, “Now go do what you’ve gotta do.”
Chapter 20
The pain in Forest’s hand generated all the way up her arm so terribly, she was on the verge of dementia. Her vision blurred around the edges. Cold sweat ran down her face and back. It would be many hours yet before the sunrise when she would actually die, but these were her last moments of lucidity. She wished she’d had the chance to see Syrus’ eyes healed, to tell him all that was in her heart, and say goodbye. She closed her eyes as a shadow slithered up behind her, wrapping its black hands around her, pulling her down. She sighed, leaning back into it, letting it take her.
“Forest? Forest! Wake up!” his voice alarmed her, loosening the shadow’s hold.
Then the shadow ripped away along with all the pain, waking her completely with a burst of adrenaline. Forest opened her eyes and looked down at her hand. The collar was gone.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Oh!” she said breathlessly. “Yes.” A laugh burst out of her. She was alive! This was not the end of her life. “Where is the collar?”
“The wizard took it. Stand up, Forest.” Syrus ordered rather rudely. He took both her hands and pulled her up.
With a nasty jolt, she saw his eyes were the same. “Your eyes?” she asked desperately.
“Yes. My eyes, let’s talk about my eyes, Forest.” He took a few steps back from her and squared his shoulder, his face taut and somber. “I need to tell you a little story, and I need you to not interrupt me.”
“Okay,” she said slowly.
He gave a deep sigh, pulled out the little flask he always carried, and began turning it in his hands. “Back when I was a terrible person, before I lost my sight, I was addicted to human blood. I never went to Earth, but I made Redge get it for me. I never asked him how he acquired it. I didn’t care. I was the worst blood junkie ever, or so many told me. For an entire year, I gave myself to it without the slightest restraint. My parents finally intervened. I mean, really, what kind of a king would I be if I didn’t kick the habit? Getting clean was…difficult.”
He drew a deep breath. “But I got clean, and I stayed clean. Then I lost my sight, and I told you how broken I was at that time, before I took the Kata back up. In a moment of weakness, when I felt I had nothing left to loose and longing to anesthetize my pain, I drank human blood again. It had a strange and different effect on me…It opened my eyes.”
“What?”
“Shh!”
Syrus took another deep breath continuing to twist the flask in his hands. “One drink of human blood restores my vision perfectly for a short period of time; only a matter of minutes. And naturally you’re wondering why I don’t drink it all the time. Because having my eyes opened by human blood is painful. It's painful in a way there are no words strong enough to describe the excruciating tearing of it, and it leaves me physically weakened.”
He paused for a long, thoughtful moment. “So that’s what’s in this flask. I always keep some human blood with me in case the need arises that I must have my sight. I don’t have to worry about falling back into addiction because the pain is too great to tempt me in the slightest. And I’m sure you’re wondering why I didn’t use it before we had that battle with those werewolves who came to our camp.”
She was indeed wondering just that.
“Because I needed my strength more than my sight right then. But more importantly, I never wanted to confess to you that I had ever been an addict. It’s something I’m ashamed of, and I didn’t want it to taint your opinion of me. But now here we are, and it’s time for confessions. Mine and yours.”
Forest gulped hard.
“Aside from human blood, I have developed my own way of seeing for a short burst of time. I use my mage powers and an incantation I designed, but the vision I get from that is weak and blurry. I have used it twice since you and I have been together. I went to the falls alone and looked at them and…and once when we were back at your house. I came into your room at night while you were sleeping to look at you.”
"Really? You snuck into my room?" She chuckled. "Perv."
“I just wanted a mental picture of you, even if that picture was not your true form. And what I saw, well, it knocked me to my knees, literally. I couldn’t breathe. I kissed your hair, and then I ran away, fearing I’d lost my heart completely. It has tortured me, thinking that all I saw was some random shift you had created. But now I know, weak and blurry as it might have been, I saw your true face.”
Forest’s chest tightened. He knew.
“I think I understand why you didn’t tell me we were life mates when you discovered it. Your own prejudice against me, the difference in our stations, the racial bigotry you’ve suffered your whole life, and Leith. Am I right?”
“Yes, but there is more.”
“What?”
“I was afraid you wouldn’t want me.”
“Oh, Forest,” he said sadly shaking his head.
“I have endured all these years being tied to Leith and having my emotions scrambled by the lovers mark he forced on me. The last thing I wanted was to end up finding my life mate and always questioning my feelings for him and his feelings for me. Was it real love or just the unbreakable connection? And would I end up torn in two? How could I be mated to one and forever tied to Leith? I thought it would be better to leave our connection incomplete.”
Syrus nodded gravely. “I, stupidly, just discovered that you are my destined life mate. I didn’t know before now. What I did know was that I wanted you more than I have ever wanted any woman. I knew your friendship had become more important to me than even Redge’s. I knew I respected your skills as a warrior. You are a badass with that sword, baby.”
Forest giggled like a little girl.
“And now,” he continued. “I know that I need you. I don’t have to think about needing you. Just like I don’t have to think about my need for the air. The knowledge is innate and primal. The need just is, and it’s too vast for me to question. I asked you earlier today for your heart. I meant it then. I mean it now.”
“You know I want my freedom.”
“I know. I want my freedom as well. I only want you if you come freely, just as I come to you. That’s why I’ve told you all this.” He unscrewed the cap on his flask. “I’m going to drink this. It’s your last chance to turn away from me.”
Syrus put the flask to his lips. Forest had only a second to decide. Instinct stomped reason into the ground. He asked for it, she thought. She would be his Cinderella, and his Juliet, but she would be much more than that. She would be a raging for
est fire, an all-consuming crisis, too big to be ignored, too powerful to stop, and too hot to put out. She would be herself, and she would be his. It might be surrendering one desire for another, but life was far from perfect. You can’t have everything.
Forest held herself still as she heard him swallow. Then she gasped and made to go to him, but he held out a hand to stop her. He’d said the pain was excruciating, it certainly looked like it. He doubled over, his eyes shut tight. His whole face clenched, and a cry of pain escaped his lips. It was torture for her to watch him going through such pain while she was unable to stop or soothe it.
Then all of his muscles relaxed while all of hers seemed to tense. His straightened up, his eyes closed. “I love you, Forest,” he whispered.
He opened his eyes.
All the breath was pulled from her lungs as their first eye contact was made. The fiery whip of pain that she had lived with ever since their first kiss, uncoiled and exploded through her whole body. They came together without seeming to have moved their feet. Looking into each other’s eyes, their foreheads pressed together. There would be no more questions of turning away or choosing. A spiritual bridge formed between her irises and his; a bond that only death could break. But this bridge was only the first of many. His eyes, her eyes. His lungs, her lungs. His heart, her heart. His hands, her hands. It was done. The power that tied the knots between them and had taken control of their bodies now relinquished control back to them.
Forest and Syrus stumbled backward gasping. There was no more pain, and they looked openly at each other. Finally looking into Syrus’ eyes and him looking back into hers was one of the most amazing moments of Forest’s whole life. All of the attraction she felt for him before now seemed weak in comparison. As if those small black dots in his eyes magnified his beauty one hundred times.
Syrus could feel the seconds ticking before his sight would be lost again. His eyes devoured Forest. Never, never had he seen or imagined anyone as beautiful as her. And he felt the rush of this virgin moment. No one could see her the way he could! This beauty was his private possession, his alone. He would never treat her as though he owned her, but the vision of her true form was his to own.
