“Jeez, what?”
“If I was born, I can die. If I always was, then I couldn’t cease to be. She wanted to know if she could kill me. I admit, I thought she was working through you to get that information.”
I gulped at the answer I hadn’t anticipated. “You thought I was trying to find a way to kill you?”
“Why else would you have asked me such a specific question?”
Sadness weighted my soul, and I wished life wasn’t so complicated for either of us. “I wanted to know if we were the same. If you were lonely, like me. If you’d been orphaned. You never mentioned parents, so I wasn’t sure. You think I was trying to kill you? I wanted more of you, not less,” I said quietly, turning his own words back on him. “Now I don’t want any part of you.”
“Of course your questions were as innocent as you.” He buried his face in the nape of my neck again, and I could feel his shame through the connection of our skin. “It occurred to me after the fact that I may have overreacted. When I realized your reason was as blameless as you are, I freed you from the ice and disappeared. I knew I couldn’t show my face again until I made it up to you.” He sighed into my flesh, giving me the shivers. “I’ll tell you the truth, if you want to know. Only one other person knows, and he’s not in Faîte anymore.”
I reached behind me to grip his hair, relishing the thickness of the handful of light blue I’d always been fascinated by. “No. Don’t tell me. I don’t want you uncertain about me like that ever again. I didn’t mean to ask you such a loaded question. I thought we could have a heart-to-heart. I wasn’t trying to kill you. Jeez.”
“I know that now. You really don’t want to know if I was born or not?”
“Not anymore, no. That’s what you get when you lash out at people; they don’t want to know you. Someday you’ll want to be known, and it’ll be too late. You scared me, K.”
“I scared me a little bit, too. It’s why I didn’t come when you called. I was afraid to show my face without some sort of peace offering. You’re the only… You’re the only true loveliness left in Avalon. I can’t risk something bad happening to you.”
“You’re the something bad that happened to me.” I closed my eyes, my senses filling with the dank stink of the well. I remembered clearly the desperation I felt when I called out for him, and the devastation when he didn’t come. I quickly inhaled the fragrance of the meadow – a purity so lush and perfect, it smelled like freshly mown grass, joyful flowers and love, all sprinkled with a smattering of dew. I wasn’t in the well anymore – it was a lesson I needed to remind myself of from time to time still. “I needed you, and you weren’t there.”
“I’m here now.” He gripped me tighter to him. The pressure of his hold threatened to jerk the tears from me, so I held my emotions in as fiercely as I could. “You needed me? What happened? I assumed you were angry, and looking to get an audience with me so you could tell me how badly I hurt you. That wasn’t it?”
I chewed on my lower lip, unsure just how much I could trust Kerdik with the new information factored in. Good excuse or not, I’d needed him, and he let a misunderstanding keep me at the bottom of a well. I cleared my throat and tried to calm myself down, so I didn’t lean on Kerdik more than our fragile friendship could handle. “It was nothing. It got taken care of. I survived. But you were a jerk to me, and then you hurt me on purpose. Don’t feed me that crap about your emotions being tied to the elements. You knew what you were doing, and you didn’t stop. You left me bleeding and screaming, and you only came back because you needed help. That’s not friendship. Stupid me for ever thinking it was.”
Kerdik’s thumb traced up and down my ribs, ignoring my correction. “Why are you thinner? How much weight have you lost?”
I squirmed and struggled out of his grip, rolling away indignantly. I propped myself up on all fours, my eyebrows wrinkling toward the center, and my frown stalwartly in place. “You don’t get to hold me like that. Not after attacking me like you did.”
Kerdik sat up, his eyebrows pushed together to mirror my own. “You’re hiding something. What happened? Is Bastien not watching you?” He groaned and shook his head. “What’s the point of giving him those enhancements if he’s completely incapable of keeping you safe? Taking away his social obligation was supposed to make him tied tighter to you. I thought it was working, but you’re a skeleton!”
“My body is amazing, thank you very much. And Bastien rescued me not long before I was about to die, I’ll have you know. I’m safe and alive, thanks to him. Not you. Him.”
Kerdik’s full lips tightened. “And what danger did you fall into that almost killed you?”
“Morgan,” I hissed, sitting back on my heels to face him. “She’s not too thrilled about the ring you gave me. Had some of her soldiers try to yank it off my hand when I wouldn’t give it up.”
Kerdik leaned back on his elbows and chuckled unexpectedly. It was a chilling sound that held no remorse. “How many of them died before she realized her mistake in crossing me?”
“Just the one.”
“One? Wow, she’s learning quicker this time around. Good for her. I thought her far more stubborn and foolish than that.”
“Well, she switched tactics real quick.” I debated between glossing over the details with an “I dealt with it” vibe, but part of me wanted Kerdik to understand just what happened when you ignored someone who counted on you. The blood loss was getting to me, so I took a few extra heavy breaths before delving into the truth. “I wouldn’t give her the ring, so she ordered a few of her men to take my clothes and lower me into an abandoned well. She wanted me to rot there until I got so desperate I gave up the ring.”
I was expecting some kind of a “how dare she” sort of reaction from Kerdik, but when the yellow daisies underneath me withered in a breath, I grew worried. Then they spread their death like a foul breath that rippled across the entire meadow, killing off every single flower in this gorgeous haven, and leaving it bereft of beauty. “I’ll handle it,” Kerdik promised in a low threat.
I stood, backing up as I surveyed the death that rippled out from where Kerdik sat, peering up at me with a fierce promise in his eyes. “I don’t need you to handle it. I needed you to get me the crap out of the well, but you didn’t answer me. What’s the point of being able to call you if you never pick up? Were you that pissed at me?”
“No! I didn’t understand, and I overreacted. I was angry with myself, not you.”
I didn’t have all that great a hold on my emotions, so my voice came out pinched and hurt. “All I did was ask you about your life! I didn’t deserve to get yelled at by you, then sliced up by your ice, and abandoned because you were being a brat. We were supposed to be friends, K, but you treated me like you didn’t know the first thing about what kind of a person I am.”
Kerdik stood, his hands raised and chin lowered in surrender to my temper. “I would have come for you, had I known.”
“I was in the bottom of that well for more than two weeks! I was freezing, starved and scared.” Angst rose up in me, so I pinched the skin on my knuckles to keep myself from shedding tears in front of him. “She killed Demi! Her or Avril, I’m not sure who. They killed him and then Morgan dropped his head down on me! Demi’s only crime in this was loving me, and it got him beheaded! Who does that? How does this get to be my mom?” My breath came in heavy gulps as I motioned to him with a clumsy hand. “How do you get to be one of my few friends here? You were terrible to me the second you got scared!”
Kerdik cleared the distance between us and wrapped me in his unsteady arms, knocking me back a few steps with his passion. He seemed unperturbed that I pounded my feeble fists on his chest. We were both weak and sweaty, and together we were an exquisitely flawed mess. “Darling,” he cooed, his softness a sharp contrast to my anger. He was trying to soothe me, but I was beyond reason. I knew the second I confessed the awfulness, the tears would spill out of my control.
My fury at the unfairness
of Morgan, Avril, and just plain life welled up and exploded all over Kerdik. More than my mother and my twisted aunt, I was mad at Rigby, whom I’d trusted and befriended – as I’d cared for Kerdik – yet he turned snake and bit me. “You left me! You hurt me, and then you left me!”
“No, my darling. I didn’t know. Do you think I would’ve left you if I’d known you were naked in the bottom of a well?”
“Yes! Yes, you would because you’re selfish, just like all of them! You were supposed to be my friend. You were supposed to understand how hard it is to only be used as a tool – a means to an end – because that’s how they treat you! You weren’t supposed to be this walking landmine, making me tiptoe so you don’t explode. Do you think I have the time for your PMS? The cuts your ice gave me got infected in the well, you jag!”
His sweaty hands gripped my back and my hip, desperate to make things right when it was far too late for any of it. “I’ll heal them, Rosie. Show me where I hurt you.”
“No! I’ll heal on my own, without your help.”
“If I cut you, I should fix it! Please, how can I make this right?”
I punched his chest over and over, hoping I’d push him too far, and he’d snap. I don’t know why I wanted him to break me, just so I had a reason to stay down, but I longed for a permanent push so I didn’t have to feel conflicted. “I’m so tired of trying! It’s never enough, and you made it worse! I wasn’t supposed to have to try with you. We were supposed to be easy – friends that fit nowhere, but somehow fit with each other. Don’t you get how rare it is to find someone like us? And then you threw it away the second I stopped looking all shiny. I would never have turned on you like that.” When his hands mutated from a desperate grip to a sweet embrace, my posture started to slump in his arms. Somehow, he found the strength to hold me, and somehow, I found the grace to let him. “You were supposed to be different! Man, I’m so stupid for falling for it, and I hate being stupid!”
He shushed me, but surprisingly didn’t lose his temper or fight back. He let me wail on him in my weakened state, his expression pained but patient. “I’m sorry, darling. I’m so sorry. I did. I hurt you. I didn’t come when you called. Then I show up at your aunt’s home, expecting you to take care of me.”
“If I were like you, I would’ve left you to rot! I had no one but Demi’s severed head!” Admitting that Demi was, in fact, deceased pushed a petrified scream from my lips. The sound escaped before I could shove the crazy back down into the denial box I’d locked it neatly in. My erratic outburst made me want to punish Kerdik for forcing these emotions to the surface, when I knew bringing them to light would do nothing to bring my boyfriend back. My temper flared as I shouted in his face, “Demi’s dead body was a better man than you!”
I guess that was one too far. His hands turned hard, crushing me to him so tightly, it smooshed the breath from my lungs. “Listen to me,” he worked out through clenched teeth. “I had no idea you were in a well, or that Morgan hurt you like that. No matter how furious I was with you, thinking you were trying to find a way to kill me, like your mother did, I would have saved you still.”
“No, you wouldn’t!”
His eyes narrowed with passion that made him shout in my face. “I would, because I love you!”
I gasped, scandalized. “Words! Stupid, useless words. I called you, and you didn’t even bother to answer me! If not for Lane and Bastien finding me, I would’ve died!”
He kept me crushed with one arm, his other hand reaching up to brush a few of my wild curls back so he could meet my angry eyes with his repentant ones. “I was trying to give you a grand gesture. I knew I couldn’t come back to you without one. Give a man some time to grovel, Fleur.”
“I don’t need your stupid gestures. I need you to not attack me in the first place! I need someone in this awful world to be good! My mom throws me down a well, my only friend left in the mansion takes my clothes from me, and you just… I needed a friend, but you couldn’t handle it. That’s not love.”
“What friend took your clothes?”
“He’s not a friend anymore, obviously.”
“What’s his name, darling?”
“Rigby? He was just following orders, like every other soldier who’s ever carried out a psychotic dictator’s rule.”
Kerdik shushed me, kissing pure sweetness into my forehead. “Rigby is Morgan’s pet. And she took your pet from you? This Demi boy?”
“Demi wasn’t a pet, he was a person! Why does no one understand that?” Panic rose in my chest, causing my fingers to wrap in Kerdik’s shirt. “She killed him, and he didn’t do anything wrong! She killed my boyfriend so she could take my ring!”
“Take a breath. I’ll handle it.”
“Can you raise the dead?”
“No, but I can take her pet away. It’s a good place to start my vengeance.”
I shook my head, so turned around and distraught that I didn’t know which way was up anymore. “I don’t need vengeance. Vengeance doesn’t do Demi a lick of good now.”
“It’s for me to decide how Morgan should be punished for her many crimes. I’ll send her his head on a silver platter. There’s something poetic about carnage on a silver platter, I’ve always thought.”
I shook my head, disgusted. “Don’t. Rigby was following orders. He wasn’t happy about any of it. Even told the soldiers not to get too handsy with me.”
Kerdik’s grip around me turned tender, and he slowly started swaying us from side to side as we stood together, my head tucked under his chin. “All he did was buy his life an extra month. He’ll die, and that’s all there is to say about it. You may not need vengeance, and that’s good. Keep your pure soul – it only adds to your beauty. My darkness allows your light to stay untouched.” He lifted my hand to his lips and kissed my knuckles, before returning it to rest on his chest. “I need that light, darling. Being in your glow, and then losing that warmth? It’s a cold, long life without your affections.”
“If you need my light, then don’t go out of your way to put it out. Rigby should live a long time with the memory of what he did to me.” I looked up at Kerdik with unconcealed sadness. “You can’t fuel my light with darkness.” I wasn’t sure why I wanted Rigby to have a free pass. Maybe I was just tired of all the deaths, and didn’t want to be part of yet another.
Kerdik’s body wobbled slightly, but he didn’t release me. He held me, even when I was angry, even when I was bossy, even when I had no hope we could find a way to work through the sea of angst we were both trying frantically not to drown in. Despite my insistence that we were doomed to lose each other, Kerdik found the steadiness to be tender with me, his lips brushing my ear as he spoke. “When you greeted me at your coronation, not caring who saw or what they thought?” He held me to him as if I was precious, as if I wasn’t the naked, filthy girl covered in fungus at the bottom of the well. I could practically feel his heart swelling as his words cradled the broken parts of me, treating them more gently than I thought him capable. “I loved you that day. You were their princess, but in that moment, you were my queen. Every day without your brightness has been a sea of dark.” He kissed my fingertips, letting me touch the fullness of his lips. “Rigby will die, and Morgan will see that you’re to remain unharmed.”
“There you go again, not listening to me. You are the worst friend in the world. I have no use for your kindergarten temper.”
Kerdik rolled his tongue along his teeth, frustrated that he was trying to give me some big gesture, and it was the wrong one. “Fine. If you wish this Rigby spared, then I’ll let him keep his head.”
My voice came out small and insecure, muffled in his white dress shirt, which was damp from dew and sweat. “Why does she hate me so much?”
“Pure darkness can rarely understand pure light, and people fear what they do not understand. Morgan does not hate you. She’s afraid of you.”
I didn’t know what to make of his response, so I stayed quiet, letting the stillness of
the dead meadow around us lull me into a calmer state of mind.
Finally, Kerdik broke the silence with a cautious whisper. “I’m sorry I lost my temper. The power I have… it’s not always easy to control. It’s one of the reasons I don’t get close to people anymore. It’s why I’ve stayed away – for everyone else’s safety.”
“Why’d you come back?”
He brought my knuckles to his lips again and kissed them. I felt his tender affection for me blooming between us. “A man can only live for so long in his own darkness.” There was a softness in the way he held me that gave me hope he would work on all the things that had gone so very wrong.
Kerdik’s Secret Mission
Kerdik and I spent a fair amount of time talking quietly in the dead meadow, calming from our fight and breathing in the air that was so fresh, it felt like each inhale regenerated long-dead parts of me. As our connection returned to us, the yellow daisies slowly started to resurrect, blooming and standing with beauty I’d thought was lost forever. I managed a few smiles, but was overall cautious of the quick-turning temper I didn’t trust him to control.
“You ready to tell me what happened to you to get you so sick?” I asked, more at ease when I tossed an orange back at him. I’d needed the simple game of catch to bring something familiar to my life. He’d grown a full-blown tree from scratch just so we’d have a ball to play with.
“I found a way to undo one of Morgan’s spells.”
“Yikes. You weren’t looking so hot when you came to me. You sure you’re feeling alright?”
“Better than I was, though, I admit, I’m still on the mend. That nap did me a world of good. Thank you for the magic transfusion.” He dipped his head to me politely.
“No problem. I figured you probably wouldn’t trust anyone else’s blood in you.”
Stupid Girl: A Fantasy Adventure Based in French Folklore (Faite Falling Book 4) Page 9
