by Anna Santos
“You are worth the risk.” He brushed my lips with his.
“Then can I tell Cedric that it’s okay to delay the rejection?”
“Yes, you can tell him that. But he’s not on the balcony. We must go inside to look for him.”
“Or we can stay here a bit longer, listening to Ed sing,” I said, leaving small kisses on his lips. “We can look for them later.”
“Yes, we can do whatever you want.”
I played with the second button of his shirt. “Do you promise?” I felt vulnerable and childlike for saying those words. They made me feel warm and fuzzy at the same time.
“It will be fun. And I don’t need to promise because I will do anything to make you happy. Yet if you want my word, I’ll give you my word.”
I grinned, hugging him, so I wouldn’t feel so vulnerable. One thing was for certain, I needed to talk to William again.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
JOSEPHINE
Philippe was happier than I’ve ever seen him before. Therefore, I couldn’t spoil his happiness by telling him that I was going to disappear forever. Like Cedric, Philippe would want to dissuade me from saying the spell to take Oliver’s place as a rock statue in another realm. He could find out about my departure some other day.
Tonight was my last night. My mind was recalling the times I’ve wasted and the other moments that I thought would be my last. I’ve thought about how I would die a lot. I’ve imagined how it would feel to stop breathing and regret everything I hadn’t done. Yet I wasn’t regretting anything. I wouldn’t have met Cedric if anything in my life would have been different.
I was also at peace with my decision and not scared. There was clarity in everything I was going to do which made me feel relaxed. Though, if I let myself be wrapped up in the stinging sensation of my heart, I would start crying. I would sob like a little child because I didn’t want to leave Cedric behind. It wouldn’t be a sacrifice if I didn’t have something to lose.
The warm hand on my shoulder made me shiver. I looked back, drowning in Cedric’s blue eyes. Suddenly, the sound of music and voices reminded me that I was on the balcony, staring at the void, hoping to be left alone but not really wanting to. Being with Cedric wasn’t an option anymore. He didn’t want to let me go. It was a paradox.
“I’ve asked for more time from Aria,” Cedric whispered, lowering his lips to kiss my shoulder.
I closed my eyes, trembling with pleasure. His words alerted me to the fact that he was pressuring me and now Aria to find a way to delay the inevitable.
“Cedric, please let me go,” I begged.
His eyes once sweet became hard. His face changed, too. My request wounded him. “I’ve said my goodbyes to Philippe. Now, I need you to let me go, too.”
“No,” he denied, shaking his head. “Aria will say yes. She has a good heart. You just need to delay the ritual. You will have other opportunities for it.”
“Cedric,” I mumbled, closing my eyes. My emotions were clouding my judgment and making my voice shaky.
His hands surrounded my waist, pulling me closer to his chest, and my feet left the ground. When I opened my eyes, I saw his silvery wings moving up and down, and I understood that we were flying. Gravity was pulling my body against his, and the wind was caressed my skin and hair.
“What are you doing?” I asked out of breath.
“We are leaving the party, so I can talk some sense into you,” he replied.
We were flying up, and I had wrapped my arms around his neck, afraid that I would slip from his arms and fall into the deadly abyss. But it was an absurd fear. Cedric was holding me tight and would never let me fall. I trusted him. It was exciting to be flying with him, in his arms, feeling the cold of the night and the moist air around us fading away because of the heat that was coming from him. I had missed flying. I had barely tried my wings before I had lost them.
Moments after, we were landing on some other balcony. We didn’t stick around. Cedric teleported us, and we appeared inside his office where we had first kissed. His beautiful silvery wings disappeared, but he didn’t let me go. He leaned his head against the hollow of my neck, and I felt his body shivering.
I waited for him to talk or release and start reasoning with me, but he didn’t. He kept hugging me with heavy breathing and fast heartbeat.
“Why do you want to leave me? Don’t I make you happy?”
His questions made my heart clench and my body tense. I rubbed the back of his head, enjoying the softness of his hair and the warm sensation of his body.
“You’ve made me really happy, Cedric. You must know that we need to stop pretending that everything is going to be okay. We aren’t meant to be. Last night was fun, but we are only prolonging the inevitable.”
“Then…I’m doomed to stay alone forever,” he mumbled.
I put my hands over his face and forced him to look me in the eyes. His eyes were shut.
“There’s a ballroom full of girls waiting for a chance to see you, talk to you, and dance with you. You have a princess everybody wants you to marry. They don’t want you to date a vampire. They will not accept a vampire as their queen. Even if we stay together, what will happen when you stop wanting me, when you find your other half and bond with her? What will happen to me then?”
I was breathless by the time I’d finished talking. Cedric had slowly opened his beautiful blue eyes and was pouting like a small boy.
“I’m not a toy, Cedric. I don’t need anyone else to break my heart.”
“You keep giving me the same excuses, and I think that you don’t want to commit to me because you are afraid.”
“Of course, I’m afraid. I don’t want my heart broken again.”
“No, you are afraid of living,” he said, making me step back and release his face.
I hugged myself and looked away, aiming my blurred gaze to the floor. “I don’t want this to end in another pointless discussion where we both say things that we will regret later,” I said. “It was fun. I don’t regret anything we did. If you are unwilling to understand my decision, then, maybe it’s best for us to say goodbye now and forget everything that happened. Go back to your party, and I’ll…be somewhere else, waiting for the right time to say the spell.”
I fixed my dress and hair, turned around, and left Cedric in the study. The only sounds were of my high heels and my heart beating fast. I found my way along the corridor to William’s laboratory. I knew I had to find the stairs to the rooftop, but I was in auto-pilot mode with a part of me wishing that Cedric would follow me and sweep me off my feet. Another part of me wished that he wouldn’t, so things wouldn’t be so hurtful.
I was hurting too much already. If he kept insisting, I would eventually cave in and give up, so I could spend more time with him. But what would be the point? One more day, two more days—in the end, I would be alone. He would go back to being a gargoyle until some other girl touched him, and they would be paired, making him forget all about me and what we had.
I knocked before I entered. William was immersed in his reading. He didn’t notice that he had company until I cleared my throat.
“Is it time already?” he asked, staring at me with some special golden glasses. His curly brown hair was shadowing his forehead, giving him an ethereal look.
“Not yet. I was bored,” I said, sitting down on a chair next to him. “Did you find something else in the prayer?” I put my hand under my chin and smiled at him.
“This hidden message is fascinating,” he said, giving me his attention.
“Well, I’m just interested in the spell to save Oliver.”
“I find you extremely brave.” He put down the parchment and concentrated his soft gaze on my face.
I offered him a lopsided grin. “Why aren’t you downstairs flirting with the single gargoyle girls?”
“This is a lot more fascinating. My work is much more important than trying to sound interesting to young girls. Besides, I believe in destiny. It will happen w
hen it has to happen.”
“You are so handsome and nice! I’m sure you have plenty of girls chasing after you,” I teased him.
“Not really,” he said, diverting his attention to the parchment. “I’m not interesting enough for them. They would rather meet the prince than me. I don’t particularly care. If I’m matched with a girl or a boy, I expect that they would like me for me and not for my title. It can be stressful. I wouldn’t want to be in Cedric’s shoes.”
“What are your thoughts about Aria going back to Philippe? Do you find her decision unwise?”
“Well,” he said, taking off the glasses and folding his hands on the table. “I never had a formed opinion about Philippe, but they were here just a moment ago, and they seemed… Not seemed, they looked deeply in love. Philippe treasures her, and Aria is clearly a beautiful person. If they are in love, who am I to judge? It sucks for Cedric, though. But he will have plenty of other opportunities. It was for the best to break up now before they faced the trial and he turned to stone. And Cedric seems to be falling hard for you. Maybe Aria and he were never meant to be. Perhaps, Aria was meant to have her powers only to save the world from some unknown menace.” William leaned back in his chair, folded his legs beneath the table, and stared at me.
“We both know that Cedric and I could never be together,” I said, mimicking him and folding my hands in my lap. I studied the borders of the table.
“You are taking Oliver’s place, his curse, so why can’t you be with Cedric?” William asked, making me raise my head.
I blinked several times, puckering my lips. “I’m going to die, William.”
“That’s not how I read the spell. It states that you are taking his place, meaning that you are taking on his curse, so he can enter Heaven.”
“Yes, I’ll become a statue.”
“No, you’ll become a gargoyle and, as far as I know, you’ll be able to kiss Cedric. Once he rejects Aria, you both can put your love to the test. If you are truly a matching soul, then you’ll be soul-mates and become full angels.”
My mouth was agape and my eyes wide open. I must have forgotten how to breathe for a moment as I tried to make sense of what William was telling me. If he was lying, if he was making that up, I would die of grief.
I grabbed the parchment, pulling the light to the letters. It was a hopeless act. I didn’t know how to read the angelic writing. William understood my frustration. He rose, pulled up his chair, and sat next to me.
“I’ll show you. The English version you showed me had some inaccuracies that I took the liberty of fixing. The new spell is on the other table. I was going to give it to you before the ritual.”
“Are you sure?” I asked with blurred vision. My heart wanted to come out from my mouth. I was also trying not to get up and run to Cedric. I didn’t want to give him false hopes. I didn’t want to…
I wasn’t even sure if it mattered anymore. Cedric’s feelings for me could be nothing more than raw lust. It was exciting while he knew that we had no future. Maybe now that we might have a future, being with me wouldn’t seem as thrilling.
“What’s wrong?” William asked me since I wasn’t paying attention to what he was saying.
I tried to concentrate on his voice. “I…don’t want to get my hopes up and…break Cedric’s heart when I become a statue forever.”
“Jo, God is love. He always knows what he’s doing. He wouldn’t give us a spell to save us and have someone else disappear in exchange for our salvation. You need to believe that God is love and life, not death and unhappiness. Whether your act of love is done for Oliver or Cedric, you can be sure that the spell will work, and you’ll become a gargoyle.”
William’s voice was steady and righteous. He believed what he was saying with all his heart. His eyes were sparkling and his face was lit with joy and hope. I was never a hopeful kind of person. I never had too much faith in the reason for my existence. However, enlightened people like William were hard to find. I should believe him as there was something about him, some kind of aura that made me hopeful. It made me believe that there was a future for Cedric and me.
“When did you find out?” I asked.
“A couple of hours ago. I had some time to translate the parchment after consulting Gabriel about it. The version you provide us with was bothering me. It seemed off somehow... Does this make you change your mind about performing the ritual?”
“No, it makes me want to perform it even more,” I assured him, smiling while grabbing his hands. “William, you are a lifesaver.”
“I’m just doing my job. If Cedric isn’t your match, I wouldn’t mind kissing you.”
I burst into laughter, watching William’s face brighten up. He was adorable!
“What’s so funny?” a cold male voice asked after closing the door with unnecessary noise.
I fixed my makeup, making sure that my happy tears wouldn’t ruin it. Then, I turned around to find Cedric’s piercing blue eyes on us. He had stopped on the other end of the table with his hands in the pockets of his trousers. He didn’t seem happy.
“I was flirting with Jo,” William said casually.
I bit my lip to swallow my new laughter. Cedric looked like he was about to make a jealous scene.
“I’m joking, cousin. I was telling her the good news…”
I touched William’s arm, shaking my head. “Cedric and I need to have a serious conversation. Why don’t you go downstairs to the party?”
“I’m not properly dressed for that,” William said, staring at his white cotton sweater and black jeans. “But I can step out for a moment and let you two talk.”
I nodded in agreement.
William grabbed a few papers from the table along with his peculiar glasses and strolled to the door with a pleased smirk on his face.
The prince’s eyes never left mine. When he heard the door close, he took his hands out of his pockets and sighed deeply.
“I’ve been looking for you everywhere!” he complained, moving forward. He pulled up a chair and sat next to me. “We need to talk. You can’t…”
I put two fingers to his lips, shutting him up.
He grabbed my hand and leaned forward with his shiny blue eyes clouded with grief. “You need to hear what I’m going to say.”
“I don’t,” I whispered.
“You do. Your excuse to perform the ritual is that we can’t stay together, but what if we could?”
“Yes, let’s talk about that. If I could be with you, would you want me to be with you forever or until the sexual attraction faded away?”
“It’s more than lust, Jo. You need to believe that. I was hoping that it was more than lust for you, too.”
“Would you accept me as your mate?” I asked, caressing the hair close to his right ear. “Even if I’m a vampire and everybody downstairs hates me?”
“They don’t hate you. They are jealous of you because you are pretty, kind, and better than them. If they hate you, then they are fools. Petty, heartless, and egocentric fools who should mind their own business.”
“Cedric, you are being egocentric yourself, not wanting me to save Oliver.”
“I’m half human half angel. I’m not perfect. My perfection lies in you, in what you have that’s missing in me.”
I smiled at his words, lowering my eyes. He put his hand on mine and raised my chin with two fingers. I felt my cheeks reddening. My heart was beating fast.
“If William is right and Archangels can’t lose their wings even after the rejection, then… I’ll be able to be with you, even if I need to reject my title so we can stay together. William would be a good king. We couldn’t have babies, and I don’t know how long I would live, but…I…”
I kissed him, closing my eyes and tasting the softness of our kiss. Placing my hands on his chest, I sensed his heartbeat and breathing. I was unable to stop smiling while our lips met. That was the sweetest thing anyone had ever told me.
“There may be hope for you, after all
,” I mumbled against his mouth.
“What do you mean?” he asked, capturing my face between his hands and stopping the kiss. “Does that mean you are going to stay with me?”
“Cedric… I think I’m in love with you,” I confessed, putting my hands on his. “I never thought I would feel this way again for anybody else. But the fact is that…we click. I don’t know any other word to explain what happens between us. We understand each other without words. You can be a possessive jerk, but there’s something compelling about that. I understand that you feel lonely. I feel lonely, too. Being that way isn’t a reason to want to be with someone, though. We need to truly belong to each other for this to work.”
“Josephine, it’s simple. Do you want to stay with me or not?” he asked, holding my face tighter as he looked deeper into my eyes.
I nodded.
He pulled me into his arms, burying his face in my hair.
“Cedric, you need to listen to me. I want to stay with you, but we need to talk,” I said, almost out of breath from his possessive hug.
“Jo, you like to complicate things. What are you going to ask now?”
“I’m not going to ask anything. We need to talk. There may be another way for us to be together,” I explained.
William said that the new translation of the spell was on one of his tables. I needed it to explain to Cedric that he had to trust me and let me perform the ritual.
I got up and looked for the paper like a mad person while Cedric was watching me. Hope was making my heart race and my hands tremble. I was too high on that feeling to even consider that William could be wrong. I was choosing to believe that I might have another chance to be with Cedric. I was willing to put my existence at risk in order to become a cursed gargoyle and kiss Cedric to find out if we were meant to be.
A true love’s kiss was all that was necessary for us to be together. But I was old enough to know that real love was the hardest thing to find. I was willing to believe in Cedric’s love and my love because I didn’t want to leave my prince.
