Silence: Part Two of Echoes & Silence

by Am Hudson

  I wanted to set Arthur free to go with her, but unless David was willing to let go, how could I take his uncle’s life?

  My shoulders dropping, I looked at David.

  “No.” He pointed at me. “Ara, don’t.”

  “He wants to go, David—”

  “I don’t care. He’s gone mad, can’t you see? He—”

  “She’s here,” I said softly, cutting him off. “Arietta’s here—with him. He’s not insane, David. He’s just ready to die…”

  David’s face dropped and his eyes filled with tears. He followed his uncle’s gaze to the nothingness I knew he saw there, and reached out a cautious hand.

  Arietta reached out too, touching his face, and as if he could feel her, he closed his eyes.

  “Let him go,” I said softly to David. “He’s wanted this for such a long time. It’s what you’d want—if that were me and our daughter.”

  His attention shifted back to me then. “The baby is there too?”

  I nodded, smiling softly.

  “She’s safe in the arms of her mother,” Arthur said. “And so beautiful.”

  Seeing Arthur’s smile, the way he looked at his baby girl, even though David couldn’t see them, I knew he instantly related to that feeling.

  “I came close to losing my wife and daughter today,” he said. “And if that had been the case, Uncle, I would lie where you lie right now—begging for death.” He looked at me then, and gave a small nod of approval.

  “Thank you.” Arthur reached up with his other hand and clutched David’s arm, hugging him as best he could in that position. “Thank you.”

  “Arthur.” I peeled his hand away from David so I could bite his wrist. “When I release your from this life, there may be a period of darkness. Immortal souls do not go to the same place as mortals—”

  “I have made my peace with God,” he said, laying flat again, his head in David’s lap. “He will let me walk with my family.”

  He sounded so sure of that. I smiled at David, and brought Arthur’s hand up to my lips, sinking my teeth in softly. He didn’t flinch or even cringe as the venom passed into his flesh. He kept his smiling eyes on the face of his beloved and their little girl, focusing on the moment he would finally feel their skin against his once more.

  “What was her name to be?” I asked Arthur, feeling his flesh change as the venom rearranged his cells. “If she’d lived, what would you have called her?”

  He seemed to look to Arietta for the answer, and when she nodded, her angelic face soft with kindness, he turned his eyes to me. “I thought I’d lost that name—that I would never speak it again.”

  “What was it?”

  He looked back at Arietta and reached out for her, his blood slowing now in his veins, taking the colour from his skin. “Elora,” he whispered. “She was to be named Elora.”

  “That’s pretty,” I offered, holding his arm up for him at the elbow so he could imagine he was still touching Arietta. “What does it mean?”

  He took a long, empty breath, and released it slowly. “Shining light,” he breathed. “It means shining light.”

  David’s eyes met mine, an exchange occurring between us without words or thought, and we both smiled, taking those last words with us in our hearts as Arthur’s eyes closed and the fight left him. He lay against his nephew’s lap, his flesh once again human, his blood still, centuries of life now behind him. But I knew that David could only see the stolen future—the eternity he would now miss his uncle for— squeezing his heart so hard that a singular sob burst from his lips as he folded around him.

  I drew Arthur’s hand up and kissed him farewell, nearly choking on the heavy sting of emotion in the room. I’d never felt anything like it from any other being. No matter their grief. No matter their torture. And I knew this was one loss too many for David—one he would not move past for a very long time.

  I wanted to look into the corner and see Arthur with his wife and child—happy. I wanted the closure, knowing he would be okay now, but whatever that energy was here in this room when he passed, it was gone now. The dead did not linger here. Or perhaps, I hoped, those at peace did not.

  David’s sobs filled out the silence in the tunnels, and I knew the tears weren’t just for his uncle. They were for everything. For all of it. They were the tears of the past finally breaking free within the safety of a promised future. Everything would be okay for us now, but it would all be okay in a world without so many people that we had loved.

  My mum.

  Harry.

  Greg Thompson.

  Ryder.

  Drake.

  Arthur.

  And maybe, if he never woke up again, Jason.

  I stepped back and moved to stand against the cell bars before David’s emotions could consume me. If I let myself feel it, let myself break down, I would cry a lot harder than him. And I wasn’t sure I would ever stop.

  So I stood back, close enough to comfort him but far enough to give him space, and watched on as my husband said goodbye to the only true father he’d ever known, on the same day I also lost mine.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Dear Diary,

  Time: our greatest enemy; our greatest friend. Enough of it has passed now that I can think about other things, and as much as I try to deny it, Vicki was right; this daily entry is helping. Last night, for the first time since that entire nightmare at the castle, I actually slept. Of course, Elora then woke every two hours, teething I guess, if babies can teethe at ten weeks old, but in between, not one dream or memory slipped past my eyelids, and David hasn’t yet complained about me tossing and turning all night.

  I think, maybe, I’m finally moving on.

  I will forever miss Drake and Arthur, maybe more than I’ll ever let on, and the hole Jason has left while he’s been in recovery is a little bit bigger than it should be, but these are thoughts only you and I will share, my dearest diary. Even Vicki agrees that they’re best left as thoughts, not words. She believes it will change—all of it—when I’ve healed. If it doesn’t, I’ll need to talk to David, but she doesn’t want me to burden him with any more than he’s already suffering. She won’t say what that is, exactly, and he doesn’t talk much lately, but whatever it is, it’s enough that she recommended a journal for me instead of talking to my husband.

  Of the seventy-three vampires and Lilithians we lost to the Black Widows, I am pleased and also horrified to report that thirty vampires so far have dug their way to the surface from the mass grave we laid them in, and we have now exhumed the rest. There’s no hope for the Lilithian soldiers, we know that, but we were naïve to think anything could kill vampires. If it were that easy, Nature wouldn’t need my kind. I will offer each man heavy compensation for his suffering. Although, nothing will be able to dampen the horror of being eaten alive and then waking buried in a deep, dark grave. I should have listened to David; we should have injected them all with venom and let them die once their flesh began to reappear.

  On a lighter note, we’re preparing our new Upper House to run things here when we leave in a few months. I’m actually looking forward to moving back home with Vicki and Sam, and finally living free in the human realm—with David—as things should have been, or would have been, if he were human when we first met. Most of all, though, I think I’m looking forward to seeing Alana and Ryan and hearing all about their human issues. Maybe while we eat a burger at Betty’s. On those days, Emily’s absence will be noticed more than others. But she’s happy now—with Mike and the boys. I thought she’d pretend for a while, that they both would, and maybe bounce back and forth between being friends and something more, but Mike never was one to waste time—not when he knew what he wanted. And I know his mum and dad love Emily, too. He___

  I drew my eyes and my pen away from the page as David quietly closed the door behind him. He waved a hand at me to continue, and then walked over to sit in the rocking chair beside the cradle, but the spring sun fingered its way through the gian
t windows and lit him up like a glowing angel, and I put my pen down. Therapy could wait.

  “So?” I said, standing up.

  “So?” he echoed, smiling in at the baby, avoiding eye contact.

  “How is he?” I sat down on the settee and turned to face David over the backrest. “I expected a full report by phone a few hours ago. You always call,” I reminded him in a snotty tone. “I’ve been worried. How is he?”

  David moved his smile from the baby to me, his mouth wide with the promise of good news.

  “He remembered something!” I nearly leapt off the chair.

  “No,” he said, shattering my hopes. “But the new therapy worked. He’s learning to talk again—”

  “But they’ve only been trying that for a month—”

  “Let me finish.” He laughed. “He’s talking, but only in basic sentences—like a child.”

  “Is he walking yet? Feeding himself—”

  “Feeding himself, yes. But he still hasn’t mastered walking.” He spun around a little on the rocking chair to face me. “Ara, he only woke up six weeks ago—from severe brain trauma. It will take time, my love.”

  “I know.” I looked into my lap, twiddling my thumbs.

  “You just miss him,” he stated, appearing in a crouch by my feet, his hand over mine. “I get it.”

  I looked up from our hands into his very human green eyes. “When can we bring him home?”

  He leaned back with a sigh and then stood up. “The IVRS planned to keep him—given that they can offer him help the humans can’t. But I’ve now gone a step past requesting, and ordered them to organise home care for him—for when we move to Vicki’s. It’ll mean the baby sleeps in our room for a while, but—”

  “I don’t care!” I jumped up excitedly. “It’ll just be so good to have him home again.”

  He wrapped his arms around my waist and exhaled. “I knew you’d say that. But do you think Vicki will mind?”

  “Of course not—”

  “But she knows now—that he kidnapped you at the ball. I don’t think she’ll forgive as easily as you did.”

  “Have you spoken to her about it?” I asked, angling my neck back to look up at him. “Because she’s got quite a unique outlook on the whole situation—”

  “I’ve avoided that topic with her,” he said simply.

  “She’s never going to adore him, David, but she won’t deny him the love of family in a time of need.” I laughed then, thinking about someone else. “It’s Sam you need to worry about.”

  David laughed too, stepping away to sit down on the armchair, scooping up the book on the lamp table. “We’ll need a lock on Jason’s door—so we don’t find Sam in there in the middle of the night with a pillow in his hands.”

  “I’ll make him understand.” I sat down on the settee again, checking over my shoulder to see if Elora was okay. “Now, before we get dressed for dinner, I want you to finish that paragraph you were reading before you left for the hospital this morning.”

  David’s eyes shrunk with a smile into the pages of the book. “I’d rather skip that entire chapter.”

  “No way,” I demanded, resting back comfortably with a pillow in my lap. “Finish it. I want to know what you were really thinking that day.”

  He sighed, readjusting himself into his reading position, and rested the book against his knee, scrolling the page and shaking his head. “I never wanted you to know this.”

  “Why?”

  “Just listen and you’ll see why,” he said shortly, then took a breath to narrate the story. “Being away from her—pretending to be dead, pretending to be searching for her family when, in truth, I’m preparing her for my death, is the hardest thing I have ever done. I find myself thinking more about our past—every word spoken, every touch, every mistake. I woke this morning in the early hours to her voice in my head, asking me what I would do if she broke the law. I was immediately taken back to our wedding day—leaning against the wall of her father’s house, looking down into the huge round eyes of my very human wife. Or what I thought was my very human wife. I know she took my answer to mean that I would prosecute her, should she ever break the vampire laws, as if she were a mere subject of Drake’s reign when, in truth, I have and always will hold her above the law—” He looked up at me and smiled as my mouth popped, “—I would be a walking contradiction had I said what I wanted to say, which was ‘Nothing, Ara. If you broke the law I would do nothing.’.”

  My heart sunk as he said those words, warming me from my core all the way through to the ends of my hair. “I thought the law meant more to you than I did,” I said softly. “I always just accepted that about you.”

  “I was too weak to allow you to believe otherwise, Ara,” he said in that deep, milky tone. “I thought you would lose respect for me.”

  “If Mike had said that, I would have. But it’s different coming from someone you love. It’s… special, even though it’s wrong.”

  He smiled, and moved his attention back to his journal.

  “I regret that now—not telling her,” he read. “While she is so far away from me, kept company only by my brother and my uncle, I find myself wishing on a daily basis that I’d said all those things I wanted to say. But when I’m gone a few months from now, when I am… dead, none of those words will matter to her. She will fall into another’s arms and forget I ever loved her.”

  “You do know now how silly that whole notion was, don’t you?” I interrupted.

  “I thought yesterday about Mike,” he read on, ignoring my question, giving it nothing more than a fleeting grin in response, “about the time I caught him an inch away from taking something from her that only her lover should.”

  I pouted at him as he read, going back in my mind to the lake—when Mike and I nearly had sex.

  “I didn’t know then, I couldn’t have known that she was Bound to him through a connection in her mind, but still, I wanted to tell her that day that I wasn’t mad. No, that’s wrong. I was mad. But I was mad at myself. Not her. I was mad that I couldn’t promise myself to her wholly—unconditionally—forever. I was mad that I understood how she ended up in Mike’s arms. And I was mad, mostly, that I wasn’t mad at her. I should have been mad at her. But I just wasn’t—”

  “You were hurt?” I asked.

  “No.” He looked up from the journal. “I think I told you this once—a long time ago. But I was… shocked, at first, and then I blamed myself. But after I found out about the Bind between you and Mike, I was relieved—that nothing had happened between you before that, and it made me realise how strong you are, and how much you must have loved me—that you never acted on the Bind, never did anything with Mike.”

  “Just with Jason,” I reminded him, folding my arms across my body.

  “Even then—as I said before: Jason, I can forgive. Mike…” He let that trail off. The last time we spoke about this subject he’d been talking about Arthur, and I knew by the look of deep hurt in his eyes that it took him back to that day and then thrust him back to this reality where his uncle, once a permanent fixture in his eternity, no longer existed. The funeral, where we lay Arthur to rest beside his wife and the bones of his child, taken from the walls of the cells at the castle, was still lingering in his thoughts on a daily basis. I’d seen it, and he denied it. Those of us that were close to him knew he would never truly move on, and I also knew he was wondering how he would break the news to his brother—if he ever remembered who he was.

  David looked out the window for a long time before finally bringing his eyes back to his journal. He closed it softly and said, “That’s enough for today.”

  When he rose and walked into the bathroom, closing the door, I stayed put, knowing he was using the need to relieve himself as an excuse to release all that emotion. No matter how close we got, no matter how many times I saw him cry, he would always try to hide it first, so I let him go this time. We all needed to cry alone once in a while. It would do him good to get it all o
ut.

  A soft rap on the door carried across the quiet room, and I looked over it, calling the person to enter.

  Falcon pushed the door open a crack and looked at the cradle. “Is she sleeping?”

  “No.” I smiled over at her. “You can come in.”

  He pushed the door open fully and stepped inside, bowing as he stood before his Queen. “Just wanted to remind you that the Lower House are joining us for dinner tonight—to meet the new Upper House members.”

  “Be sure to wear your best shirt then—” I grinned, “Councilman Falcon.”

  He bowed. “Already picked out the pink tie.”

  I laughed. “And will that lovely doctor hunk of yours be joining us?”

  His smile faded slightly.

  “Falcon.” I manoeuvred around the settee and the rocking chair and walked toward him. “Did you have a fight?”

  “Not so much a fight,” he explained half-heartedly. “More like a… change of heart.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Falcon looked toward the bathroom, where I knew he could hear David, then took one step back. “We’ll talk later.”

  I looked back at the bathroom, too. “He won’t be out for a while.”

  “Still, I feel it’s inappropriate—”

  “Falcon, you’re a councilman now—not a guard. It’s a whole different set of rules.”

  “I know.” He bowed his head slightly. “But if it’s all the same to you, I’d feel more comfortable talking in a communal area—not your chambers, with the King a few feet away in the bathroom. It just feels… rude.”

  I laughed. “Okay, I see your point. Coffee tonight then? Kitchen? Ten o’clock?”

  “Ten o’clock,” he said with a smile, and bowed as he left the room, closing the door softly behind him.

  I glanced back at my journal on the dresser. Elora would lose interest in the frills along her cradle soon and start calling out for her bottle. I had a few minutes to finish today’s entry so that I could discuss it all with Vicki in our next session of therapy after dinner tonight. I felt almost like talking to Falcon would be better therapy, but I knew that was just the denial in me talking—the part of me that didn’t want to face all that I’d suffered—the part of me that just wanted to bury the pain and hope it went away. Vicki was just that light in the dark that wouldn’t let me sleep. But to sleep, I knew, would be to close my eyes eternally. A few more months of this therapy and I could close the figurative journal on it all for hopefully the rest of my life.