by Am Hudson
He stood up too. “A warning might’ve been nice.”
“Why?” I said, offering my hand. “A little rain never hurt anyone.”
“I guess not,” he said, taking my hand. “Would you like to go inside to talk, or stay out here in the cold?”
I looked up to the grassy hills in the distance, feeling a sudden urge to run. Maybe to run away from the inevitable or the truth, but not, on any level, to run away from David. “I think I’d like to play a game.”
“A game?” he asked, as if it was the silliest thing he’d ever heard.
“Yeah. Come on,” I said, and started running. “Let’s run back to the manor without getting wet.”
“How do we do that?”
“Dodge the raindrops.” I glanced back at the dripping David and grinned.
“You know that’s not at all possible, right? Not even running at vamp-speed.”
“You can manipulate the elements.” I stopped running and shrugged back at him. “Try.”
He wiped his hand firmly over his mouth as he considered that, looking up to the sky, then around the hills. “I can slow them. But you’ll have to run pretty fast to dodge them.”
Fast, I could do. “Easy.”
“You’ll ruin those boots,” he suggested.
I rolled my foot to its side and considered my cute calf-high boots—soaking up the mud as the rain pushed it above the grass. “They’re suede, David. They’re already dead.”
His head moved in a nod of approval. “You ready then?”
I leaned down into one knee like a track runner. “Race you?”
He leaned down too. “You’re on.”
And something changed then—the air, maybe—something stilled somehow. Everything looked exactly the same, except for the way the rain hit the ground. It was like each drop danced to a different beat. When I looked across the grassy clearing toward the forest in the distance, I could almost see a path defining itself—like shower heads on a timer.
The excitement narrowed my eyes into competitive slits and I took off running before David said “Go.”
“Hey!” he called over the distant thunder. “You little cheat.”
“Don’t like it?” I said. “Catch me and spank me.”
But as I weaved and darted around the fat lines of cold water, David caught up and merely took my hand, running beside me. There had always been a feeling of ultimate freedom that accompanied running at this speed, but something about running through falling rain and not getting wet felt magical and almost intimate, as if the rain hid us from the world.
David turned slightly as he got ahead of me, his hands moving in around my waist. He leaned into our stop, and steadied me against his chest as we skidded for a few feet, the rain falling thickly down on us then as if we’d just tossed an umbrella aside.
I took a really big breath as the cold water went right down my shirt. “Holy crap.”
David laughed, brushing both hands up my face to push my wet hair away. “Did you like that?”
“It was so much fun, right?” I said, a little puffed out.
“Yes, but anything is fun if I’m with you.” He leaned down and kissed my wet forehead. The water between us made a funny slurping noise. We both laughed. “This reminds me of the first time we shared blood.”
All the rain and the cold and the uncertainty of that day came flooding back, slipping away pleasurably with the memory of how he tasted. “Hm.” I let out the excitement and adrenaline with a hard breath. “I just wish this rain would stop so we could stay out here all day.”
Almost immediately, as if my words were a spell, the rain reduced to a fine drizzle before ceasing completely.
David looked up, rolling a flat palm out to the sky. “Your wish is my command.”
“Ha! Nice try. But even you’re not talented enough to completely stop the rain.”
“No.” He took both my hands and wrapped them behind him. “But if I were, I would stop the rain for you. And there would be only sunshine.”
“Do you mean that metaphorically?”
The light, carefree David went back into hiding, and a more guarded David stepped forward. “No matter what happens, Ara, I will forever do my best to be the light in your life. But… it’s hard.”
“What’s hard?”
“The residual effects of this spell—they…” He looked as though he was choking for a moment. “Sometimes they get in the way—change my instant reactions until…”
“Until?”
He seemed to shake off whatever he was thinking. “Once I’ve had time to think, everything will be fine. But… I’m just a little afraid what I might do initially when you show me this memory of you and my brother.”
His black shirt was completely wet and sticking to all the contours of his chest. I placed both hands over his arms and gripped tightly, rising up onto my toes to kiss his stubbly cheek. “I understand. Okay? And I’ll wait—as long as it takes for you to come ’round.”
He nodded, sliding his hands along my cheeks and holding my face in front of his, while I struggled to stay on my toes. “It’s time then, Ara. I need to know what happened between you two. And I need to know why you’ve put so many walls up around this memory of my uncle.”
“Okay then. Let’s not stand here.” I settled back down on my heels, feeling the rainwater in my socks squish awkwardly around. “We should go sit under the oak tree.”
He took my hand and walked past me, leading me along behind him.
***
Even though it had rained several times in the weeks that passed since the ball and the battle that followed, and despite the grass having grown to my knees in that time, the roots were still stained with red, as if the memory of war would never wash away. Arthur told me that the stains would remain for some time—that vampire blood had a tendency to ‘stick’ around—and in the right light, looking down from a window in the manor, the colour of the field matched the remaining autumn leaves, swallowing them whole as they floated gently down to the ground.
But as we sat down under the oak tree at the centre of the field, my thoughts wouldn’t follow the path of horror and gore that tried to steal them; Jason came to mind instead, bringing summer foliage and the scent of sweet frangipanis. Then, as I stretched my legs out beside David’s, our backs to the furrowed trunk, all the joy of summer with Jason melted away under the magic of true love.
David reached across and lifted my hand off Bump, taking it over to his lap, keeping his eyes steadily on the white horizon, while I stared down at my feet.
The oak offered no shelter out here from the whipping breeze, and the tiny bare twigs clung for dear life to the broader branches above us. I shivered as the wind ripped through my wet coat and jeans, clawing at my hair and wrapping it around my nose and eyes.
“Cold?”
I waited for a moment before answering. “Yes. But I don’t want to talk inside.”
“It would be better if—”
“Yes, but I like the noise out here. It always made me feel… like I’m not alone, or maybe that things aren’t so empty.”
“What do you mean by empty?” He placed his other hand over the one he was holding.
“The fear—of what you’ll say or do—it makes my chest feel like there’s nothing in it. And… out here—” I motioned around the field. “It’s not so empty.”
David exhaled and rested his head against the trunk, closing his eyes. “Is that because this is your ‘special’ tree—you and Jason?”
“Ha!” I laughed, without meaning to; David lifted his head to look at me. “No,” I added quickly. “It’s the wind—the rush, the movement.”
He put his head back again.
“Jason doesn’t mean to me what you think he means to me,” I said. “Just so we’re clear—before I show you what happened in the bedroom.”
“I know that, Ara.” He lifted my hand to his lips and kissed it. “I wasn’t asking to accuse you of loving him. I just want to kn
ow everything about you—what matters to you. And, after all this time apart, we have a lot of catching up to do.”
When I looked at him, expecting his eyes to still be closed, the bright emerald green shocked me. For the first time in so long, I actually let myself look right into them; they’d changed since we were younger—a side effect of Mother Nature’s power, I guess, after being sworn in as King. Or maybe it was all that he’d suffered, perhaps even the remainder of Morgana’s spell. But the thin coloured ring around the green was slightly blue now, like my eyes, making the emerald ten times greener. And if I got close enough in this light I could see hundreds of tiny branches reaching out from his jet-black pupil to that electric blue ring, like it was a source of power, giving energy to his mind.
His thick dark brown lashes closed over them then, waking me to the reality of the situation. I sat back and shook off the intensity of those eyes, and it was only as I fixed my coat as a distraction that I realised I was no longer cold.
“Where did the wind go?” I asked, leaning forward to look around. The branches above us were still rocking and the grass still waving, but my hair was motionless and my hands warming.
“We’re in a… bubble,” he said. “But it won’t hold if I get… it’ll probably pop once you show me these memories.”
My throat filled with saliva. I twisted the hem of my jacket, plucking a few loose threads off the end. “Then I think it’d be better if I started from the end—went backward… left the Arthur thing until last.”
“Why?”
“Because if I show you that, you won’t want to see the rest. And then Lilith won’t give me my apple,” I said.
“And that’s all you care about?”
“Right now? Yes. Because you freaking out is inevitable. Losing my baby or Jason’s soul is not.”
“Ara.” He turned my chin with the tip of his finger and held my gaze with a stern eye. “What the hell did my uncle do?”
“Like I said,” I muttered, opening the door to the last memory I had as I jumped from the lighthouse. “Let’s start at the end.”
I watched David’s face as he relived the moment I hit the rocks, steadying him when he jumped out of his skin. I’d relived that moment so many times it no longer bothered me, but to see the one he loves essentially die sent waves through David, like I never expected.
“I thought you threw it away,” he said softly, stilling as the shock left him.
“Threw what away?”
“The locket.”
I closed my fist around the memory of it. “It was ripped away.”
He nodded, reaching out blindly to squeeze my hand. “I saw.”
We both watched in reverse then as my past self stumbled, whimpering and crying, through the field toward the lighthouse. I saw the heartbreak in his expression as he realised just how badly the events before that tore me apart. Just how badly I didn’t want to be in love with Jason.
When we came to the moment Jason left my room, David’s brain mixed the two versions—Jason’s memories and my memories—together. He showed me the way Jason saw me in that moment: so broken and so damaged. Damaged by him. And I felt nothing but empathy in David’s touch as he recalled the two scenes from different perspectives.
“This is the reason I didn’t kill him,” he said. “When I saw how much he hated himself for having convinced you to… sleep with him, I decided that would cause him suffering enough for the rest of his days anyway.”
“Does he still?” I asked, opening my eyes. “Suffer, I mean.”
He just nodded once, slowly.
We moved on then to the conversation and the guilt after the sex, and he sped things up until right before the point Jason took my clothes off, then slowed it all down. “I want to see that conversation in real time—see it all from the start.”
“Okay,” I agreed, resting back a little as my cheeks filled with hot shame.
David’s jaw stiffened and I could hear his teeth grinding as he watched his brother fooling around with me on the bed, like little kids—tickling and laughing—the shirt I was wearing coming up to reveal my nakedness.
“He had you figured from the start, Ara,” he said in a toneless voice. “He knew exactly how to get you where he wanted you.”
“He didn’t intend to have sex with me, David.”
He just exhaled. “What’s he talking about?” I saw him tilt his head as if trying to listen closer.
“Saving you by conceiving with another—to make them king by right of heir,” I said. “I…” This was the first round of the truth. “I… Arthur offered.”
David’s fist tightened. “You threatened me with that—a long time ago. Threatened to make him the father. You never said he offered as well!”
I could hardly breathe now. My chest felt so tight. “Jason was disgusted too. He said he’d rather it was him.”
“Were you actually planning to take Arthur up on this?” he asked, completely stopping the memory for a moment.
Every cell in my body wanted to lie. But I couldn’t. I had to tell the truth. “I planned to, yes—”
“Argh, Ara!” He put both hands on his brow and rubbed his hair back, banging his head on the trunk a few times. “Fuck!”
“David,” I said cautiously, reaching out to touch his arm. “Just forget that, okay? You need to see the rest or Lilith—”
“Fine.” He put a hand over my mouth for a second until I stopped, then flicked the memory back on.
My arms and hands shook so fiercely it was hard to keep my walls down so he could watch—like standing naked in front of fifty dirty old men. I just wanted to cover it all up.
David’s jaw dropped a little as he watched his own brother go down on his wife—from his wife’s perspective—then he opened his eyes again and looked right at me, holding back a smile. “More passionate than me? He is more passionate than me?” he squeaked, but his tone was thick with amusement, not anger, so I smiled at him.
“Well, it was true—back then. You might’ve thought you had me fooled, but you never showed your true self. And I could feel it. It felt like maybe you just…”
“Didn’t love you like he did.”
I moved one shoulder up. “Maybe.”
“And now?”
“Well—” I bit my lip. “After what we did last night, I can safely say you are much better in bed than your brother.”
He tossed his head back, a bold, boyish laughter filling the air. “That’s what every guy whose wife slept with his brother wants to hear.”
I giggled. “I’ll remember to write that down in my new book: ‘Top Ten Ways to Ruin Your Marriage’.”
“Good. And you can dedicate it to me.”
“I will.”
He kissed my hand and leaned his head against mine. “You stole Jason’s memory of this night, didn’t you?”
“I did,” I said softly.
“All of it?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Because I only have fragments. And I’m not sure I can handle seeing a replay any further from your thoughts, Ara. It’s like having sex with my own brother.”
I laughed aloud. “Okay, I’ll show you his memory then.”
He sat back again. “Thank you.”
Instead of letting David go alone down the road of retrieval, I went with him—reliving each passionate moment through Jason’s eyes. When he entered me, I jumped, fusing the two memories together accidentally and finding myself a little put off.
But David, he nearly cried. He covered the sound, the shock, the emotional agony well enough that if I hadn’t opened my eyes at that exact moment, I would never have known how his lips turned down, his jaw shook and tears glistened on the ends of his lashes. He ran one hand through his hair repeatedly, his other fist as tight as a rock, holding his breath as though to take in air would let out the emotion.
But he didn’t stop watching. He didn’t look away. Because as much as Lilith wanted this to tear a rift between us, David only wante
d to see it in order to rebuild what was broken by it. I knew he was strong enough to continue. I knew it was tearing him up to see me hold Jason that way—to feel the love I had through his brother’s own thoughts. But I also knew he wouldn’t feel even half the love in Jason’s memories that he felt last night when we made our own.
As things came to an end, he switched back to my memory—to me kneeling on the floor, a mess of guilt and hurt—and he took my hand and cupped it to his cheek. I’m not sure if he just wanted to comfort me or if he wanted me to feel the tears there, but I felt them. Felt his lips kiss my palm. Felt the many different meanings he intended in that one gesture.
“So…” He swallowed the break in his voice. “Why were you half-naked when he came to your room—in a shirt that very clearly isn’t mine—or Falcon’s?”
“This is… where things get hard. You need to go further back.”
He put his forehead against mine and went to the place in my past where I opened my eyes to see the concerned face of Jason, who rescued me after Mike slapped me that day.
David sat a little taller, his brows pinching over his nose. “Mike hit you?”
“I told you this, remember?”
We both went back to a moment by the piano in the Great Hall—shortly after all this happened—where we had one of only a few chats at that time. But we were interrupted and never finished talking about it.
“I remember now. But… Ara, I know Mike.” He leaned back to look at me. “He would never hit you without a damn good reason. What really happened?”
“Heeee—” I dragged the e out as long as I could. “He thought I slept with Arthur.”
The memory cut off with a sudden darkness. David went cold and silent beside me until, in a calculated tone he said, “Why would he think that?”
I felt myself getting smaller.
“Ara!” he said firmly. “What would lead Mike to think you had sex with my uncle?”
“Go back,” I said, and the emotion swelled up in me like rising water in a tube, so consuming I started sobbing. “I can’t tell you. I need you to see.”
The cold wind broke through his bubble, drawing a small scream from my lips as it stung my skin.
