A few times during our travelling tour, Sytrius tried to talk to me about the financial and other arrangements he made for me, in case he would end up detained. I made myself listen to the main points of the plan, eventually, because I understood the practical merit of the arrangements as well as his desire to have everything in order for the worse case scenario, but I couldn’t bear to go over the details. Hearing Sytrius talk about my life after him put me in a full-on panic mode every time.
I convinced myself, admittedly, without much logic or reason, that if he focused so much time and energy on making the perfect arrangements for my life without him, he would be less motivated to work on the strategy to defend himself during the hearing and would lose it as a result. So I forbade him to talk to me about any bank accounts and deposit boxes in my name and promised him that I would look at all the paperwork only after the day of the hearing. Right now, even thinking about it was literally making me nauseous.
Ultimately, it didn’t really matter whether we talked about the hearing or not. Even if I refused to acknowledge it and preferred the strategy of the ostrich – burying my head into the sand – the danger of being separated from Sytrius in the near future was always on my mind.
It may have been at least partially the reason why Sytrius and I were so hungry for each other’s company, eager to spend every moment together, trying to absorb the very essence of each other for as long as we could. Lying in bed at night with his arms wrapped around me and our legs intertwined, I breathed his warm skin in, committing to memory the feel of him, the look of him, the scent of him. I was saving everything I could deep inside of me, dreading the moment when he may no longer be there with me.
That evening at the restaurant, I watched the sea breeze toss his overgrown hair over his forehead, forcing him to push it back again with his hand every few minutes between taking sips of ice water out of his fogged up glass.
“Are you hungry, Sytrius?” I asked the question I had asked him many times before.
He tilted his head, with his eyes on me. The corners of his mouth that were always raised a little in a beginning of a smile, even when he was serious, were barely holding their position now, threatening to break out into the wide brilliant grin that I loved so much.
His lips parted a little, ready to give me the answer he gave me every time I asked the question, but then his forehead furrowed in thought, and his eyes focused somewhere in the distance.
“No,” he said slowly. “Not any more…” The dazzling, joyful smile appeared on his face at last. “Not at all!”
I stared at him with my eyes open wide, forgetting all about the delicious food in front of me.
“It is an incredible feeling, Alyssa! One I never thought I would ever experience. I never thought I could ever be …full.”
“When did it start? Is it really the first time you noticed it?”
“I… I hadn’t thought about it lately, not until you asked again.”
“What about your memories? Doesn’t it mean you should be remembering everything now?”
“Actually, the memories have been coming in regularly during the past months. Sometimes, in a thin trickle of remembered feelings. Other times, in onslaught of vivid images…”
“Does it really mean that you remember everything now? Even the day of your creation?” I couldn’t hide my excitement for him. Regaining his memories meant that he finally got all of himself back now! Having gaps in his life experiences must have felt like pieces of himself were missing.
“Yes. I remember my first day on Earth… I remember being cold, ravaged by hunger and alone.” He shrugged his wide shoulders, his expression calm, even a little playful in contrast to his devastating words, and added casually, “No flowers or ‘It’s A Boy’ balloons.”
“When was it? Do you know exactly how old you are now?”
“Yes.” He smiled impishly. “But I can’t tell you…”
“Why not?”
“You wouldn’t want to hang out with an old man like me any more.”
“Really?” I laughed, making him burst into laughter too. “Okay then, I’ll just keep pretending that you are a young man of only about 800 years of age!”
Sytrius was summoned to Eastern Council the very next day.
I woke up in the morning with a start because I sensed that he was not in bed with me. He no longer needed to lie down at night in order to preserve his energy. However, he would go to bed with me every night and was there every morning when I woke up.
He said that he liked to listen to my breathing in the dark and to the noises of people or nature from the outside. He claimed to be able to think more clearly at night.
Sometimes, he would enter my dreams and meet me there. Or he would get up in the middle of the night to get a few things done that he had no chance to finish during the day. However, he always made sure to get back in bed early in the morning, so that he wouldn’t miss out on my especially cuddly mood the moment I woke up.
This morning he wasn’t lying next to me, and I knew right away that something must have happened. I got out of bed and found him on the balcony, looking out towards the thin blue line of the sea visible in the distance from our hotel room. He only had shorts on, making me think that he probably was going to join me in bed before something stopped him. His elbows were on the railing of the balcony and his massive shoulders slumped, as if he physically felt the heavy burden of what was to come.
It scared me seeing him like this. He was my rock, my own source of strength. Seeing him like this now filled me with pain for him.
I remembered the way he was when we first had a chance to talk and to get to know each other. Unsure of who he truly was, loathing what he knew of himself and of his kind, afraid of his own power, full of remorse for his actions towards me, confused…
He had changed so much in the time I knew him. Despite everything, he found a way to be his own person. His past no longer haunted him. He accepted the truth of who he was and found the confidence to live free from his own misconception and doubt. He learned how to love and be loved. He no longer moved through the existence because he had no other choice, he was actually happy to be alive.
Now he faced the very real possibility of all of it being taken away from him again.
His back was turned to me, but he knew I was there right away; somehow, he always sensed when I was close.
“Good morning, my angel,” he said, turning around to face me with a small smile and rolled his shoulders back, straightening to his full height in front of me. Tall. Proud. Confident. As strong as ever.
“Did you hear from them?”
He nodded and closed the distance between us in one long stride then wrapped his arms around me.
“We are summoned to the Council Feeding tomorrow night. We will catch a flight this afternoon to arrive in Minsk later tonight. I already booked the tickets…”
I drew a deep breath in. So it was finally here. A miracle didn’t happen – they didn’t forget about us.
“Feeding? Did you say we are summoned to the Feeding?”
“Yes. The hearing will be right after. The honour to partake in the Feeding beforehand was extended to us as ‘guests.’ It would be extremely rude to decline, but I would still suggest that you skip both the Feeding and the hearing…”
“No,” I interrupted. “I’m going to the hearing; we’ve talked about it. What exactly does ‘as guests’ mean? They won’t put me on the cross, will they?”
“No.”
“Will we sit with the rest of the Council? Will you have to feed too?” The hearing turned from a distant possibility into a real event happening within less than two days. The anxiety that had been simmering somewhere on the backburner of my mind all this time was boiling over with full force now.
I felt nauseous again just thinking about it and rubbed my lower stomach where some cramps started to twist into knots.
“No, not with the Council.” Sytrius’s face was now stern. I h
ated to see his sunny smile gone, but it was to be expected at this point. “According to Andras, Eastern Council had been allowing a ‘secondary’ audience at nightly Feedings. Incubi who are currently awake are allowed to partake in the Feeding even if they are not on the Council. We will be sitting with them.”
“Non-members of the Council are allowed to skim sexual energy?” I had spent so much time thinking about incubi and human issues during my daily communications with Andras and beyond that my mind had been attuned to pick out this information for analysis immediately. “Andras didn’t mention anything about it to me yesterday. How long has it been allowed?”
“He just told me this morning when I spoke to him about the summons. The secondary audiences were allowed since last week, but he was travelling out of the country and had not witnessed one yet. He is in Minsk now and will be meeting us at the airport tonight.”
I pressed my forehead into his bare chest and closed my eyes, thinking I should have breakfast, as the next wave of nausea hit my cramping stomach.
“I wonder if that means that they are increasing the number of human women held at the base, to feed everyone,” I said to myself, wondering how I would go through this Feeding. Sitting in the audience in some ways felt worse than being on the cross, actually. Would I be able to bear seeing another woman being where I was so many times myself? Would I lose my mind and spoil everything for her, for Sytrius, for myself?
“You’re not well, Alyssa.” I heard his concerned voice above me right before he lifted me in his arms to take me back inside. “Come, I have breakfast for you.”
Chapter Forty One. Belarus.
Andras took us to the hotel right after our landing in Minsk. It was the first time I was in Belarus or in any Eastern European country, for that matter.
Belarus was the birth country of both of my parents, so I heard a lot about it from them. It had always been on my bucket list to visit it, yet never in a million years would I have thought that this would be how I finally get to see it: rushed to the hotel, flanked by two demons at night, with the very real possibility of my heart and my life to be crushed right in front of my eyes tomorrow.
I didn’t think I would sleep that night from stress. However, I must have been completely exhausted by the anxious worry I felt all day because I crashed right after the late dinner and fell asleep almost immediately, listening to the quiet murmur of voices of Sytrius and Andras talking in the sitting room of our hotel suite.
I woke up from the movement of the bed when Sytrius climbed under the covers with me in the early morning hours. The sky outside the hotel window had already paled at the horizon with the glow of the rising sun. It hit me that it may possibly be the last sunrise I would ever meet with Sytrius by my side.
The thing was that there really was no compromise, no halfway solution for tonight’s hearing outcome. Sytrius and I would either be let go free together or we would be separated. Even his actual sentence didn’t matter. 50 years of exile, a century or two… it didn’t matter. If they took him away from me tonight, I would be left to spend a lifetime without him.
What would happen to him? Would they chain him and make him burn alive? What would be left from him then? Would they starve him again after he is free to go? Would it cost him his memories again? Would he forget me at the end? Wouldn’t that be a blessing rather than to live for an eternity, remembering what was lost forever?
“Sytrius… come here, my love…” I reached for him, unable to face my fears on my own any longer.
“I’m here,” he answered as he’d always done. Because he’d always been there for me from the moment he saved my life when he carried me out of the prison cell. And even long before that when he helped me keep my sanity and helped me fight loneliness and isolation that I was no longer able to fight on my own.
He pulled me to him and buried his face in my hair, breathing me in.
“We need to…” His voice shook with emotion, and he stopped to clear his throat. “We need to talk about tonight…”
“We will. I promise.” I splayed my hands on the wide planes of his back, tracing every familiar ridge of his muscles, feeling the warm smoothness of his skin under my palms. “But not right now.” I brushed his hair away from his forehead, looking deep into the winter blue of his eyes.
How could I make sure to remember this moment for the rest of my life? How could I commit to memory every single part of him, just the way he was, to carry it with me through the rest of my life? How could I ever go through my life without him?
“So much sadness, Alyssa…” He kissed my eyes wet from tears that I let run freely now. “So much pain…” He rolled me on my back, covering my body with his and held my face between his hands. “Can I make it go away? Please, let me make you feel better.”
I knew what he was asking for and shook my head.
“No, don’t take it. Let me feel it all for now. Let me feel all of you.” I sank my fingers into the soft tangled hair on the back of his head. “Make love to me, Sytrius…”
“Just you and me,” he whispered before covering my mouth with his in a deep heartbreaking kiss.
You and me, I repeated in my head, returning his kiss, for as long as we have.
There were two lines. Two very solid blue lines stared at me unapologetically from the pregnancy test held in my trembling hand. I should not have been as shocked as I was. There were enough signs for me to figure it out much earlier, if only I paid enough attention, if only I thought that there was even the slightest possibility for Sytrius to get me pregnant.
I did miss my period, twice actually, but I had stopped ovulating altogether while being held in captivity either from all the stress or from malnutrition, but most likely from the combination of the two.
So when the periods stopped again after a couple of regular ones when I was free and eating well again under the strict supervision of Sytrius, I just thought that my body was still in the process of re-adjusting itself to the more normal life I was having again.
Also, the occasional cramping I was experiencing every now and then felt very much like an impending period. It would put any worry to rest, assuring me that it was about to come any time now, making it easier to ignore all the clues.
The cramps were a little more noticeable this morning, and I went to one of the small stores in the hotel lobby to buy tampons when it looked like we had a few minutes to wait for the car that would take us to the incubi base outside of Minsk.
Standing in front of the shelf that had pads and tampons displayed next to the packs of condoms and the boxes of pregnancy tests, I picked up one on impulse. The timing was odd, but we had time to kill, and it seemed like a good idea, just to make sure…
Getting pregnant was not a possibility, I was told. Not surprising then that the thought of using any birth control with Sytrius never even crossed my mind, not even once. The two little lines that I couldn’t stop starring at now confirmed with all their bright blue certainty that getting pregnant was a very real possibility after all.
There was no doubt that Sytrius was the father of my baby. There was just no other option. The fact that he could have children shouldn’t have surprised me much either. It was not the first time that he proved to me that rules could be bent or even broken.
I was told that he could not create, yet he had the most imaginative mind and an artist’s ability to find beauty in most unexpected places; I was told he couldn’t cry, but I had tasted his tears myself; I was told he could never love me, but I believed every word when he said that he did. I felt his love every day with everything in me. I should not have been surprised that our love for each other created a tiny life inside of me. Yet the news still came with a shock of an earthquake.
What now? I disposed of the test and stuffed the unnecessary tampons back into my backpack. Sytrius was waiting for me just outside the bathroom in the hotel lobby. I needed to tell him that sometime, somewhere between Italy and France, we created a life together and th
at he was going to be a father soon… A few months from now. When he may not even be around to meet his baby… And when he was free again, a century or so later, neither me nor the baby would be alive any longer to see him…
My hands shook uncontrollably and my insides froze into icy twists when I finally opened the door to the bathroom and walked out into the lobby.
“The car is here…” Sytrius began but then cut himself short, noticing the state I was in. “God Almighty, Alyssa!” He lifted me into his arms and carried me across the lobby to the car waiting outside. “You are way too stressed.”
Andras was already sitting in the front of the car, next to the driver.
I closed my eyes and leaned into Sytrius’s chest when he got in the back seat, keeping me in his lap. The realization of what I had to tell him pounded inside of my head.
“It’s not too late to change your mind.” Sytrius brushed my hair away from my face, leaving small light kisses along my forehead and the side of my face. “You can stay here. You will be safe.”
My mind was calming under his caresses, gaining ability to think a little more clearly. I looked up at him. His eyebrows were furrowed in a frown, almost meeting in the middle of his forehead, with a deep line between them. The look of his steely-blue eyes was severe and determined, full of thought and concentration. His overall expression remained calm and collected, in control.
Could I spring my news on him right now when I knew for certain that it would kick him off balance, to say the least? Could I do it to him now, when the loss of focus could, literally, mean a difference between life and death, freedom and incarceration? Ultimately, it was not my call to make; he was the father and he needed to know, but I decided against telling him before the hearing. I would have to find the time to tell him later, no matter how the hearing would go.
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