Echoes & Silence Part 1

by Angela M Hudson

  But it ended then and the morning went quiet again. Too quiet.

  The crickets outside sung the dawn a merry tune as the wind played percussion, sweeping tiny pebbles off the driveway into the bricks at the base of the walls, and I held my breath, frozen in the middle of the entranceway, my feet flat and cold on the marble floor, my nostrils flaring around that crisp rosewater scent the autumn had left in the air. He’d come out any second now. He’d catch my scent, know I was listening, and be so embarrassed by his vulnerability that he’d have to say something cruel to appear heartless again.

  I was about to make a mad dash back up to bed when the bewitching ring of a lullaby eased my nerves and unfolded my toes, guiding me to the Great Hall on the very tips of them. He wasn’t done pouring out his heart yet, and I sure as hell wasn’t done witnessing it. Not for all the gold in the world.

  As I reached the doors and glided like a ghost into the corner beside the frame, my eyes found him in the perfect darkness by the piano: the stool sat slightly further out than it usually did, almost as if he’d just stopped on a whim and decided to play, but the way he owned the notes and the keys, his hands scaling across them like ripples along water, made it seem like he’d been sitting there all night and was now fused to the piano. His feet were bare, the cuffs of his jeans sitting just over them, moving as he pressed the pedals, sustaining the chords.

  It wasn’t until he stopped playing for a second and drew a long breath before starting again that I recognized the song. I knew it only as a pop song on the radio, surrounded by controversy about a girl on a steel ball. I’d never heard it done acoustically and never on a piano. He made beauty of the melody, humming to it softly for a while, letting the gravity of the words I knew should be there saturate the room.

  His lips parted then, and the first words echoed as he began the song a cappella.

  I let out the breath I didn’t know I was holding and leaned into the doorway, steadying my jelly legs to hold me up. Just the way he sung it, with his heart well and truly on his sleeve, his voice illustrating his soul’s anguish in colors all around the room, made me want to cry. Hearing the song in David’s voice connected me to it in ways that I never had before. It was like he owned the words, certainly owned all the pain, as if it had been written by him—in a letter personally addressed to me. Which made me think about the reason he’d chosen this song. Was his inner heart crying out for someone to save him from the anguish of being forced not to love me?

  He knew about the prophecy of Lilith—that Jason and I were meant to be. Maybe his distance from me, the reason he had to make me hate him, was because of that; because he’d been told that I could die if I refused to be with Jason.

  Maybe all this time he was doing what he thought was best—pushing me away. If anyone knew how to push me away, it was him. He knew exactly what to say. He knew exactly what to do.

  This song, this performance, was it the turmoil escaping from inside him for an instant—just a breath where he could ease the pain of being torn from someone he loved?

  Or was it just a phenomenal performance by an inspiringly-talented musician that left its audience thinking wishfully, believing he could see them—that they were the only people in the crowd?

  But if he had been influenced by a hex this whole time, then how much must it kill him to say those nasty things to me, knowing I actually believed them? And how helpless must he feel knowing he has to give me up, hand me over to someone else, for the greater good?

  I just wanted to walk in there and hold him, tell him it was okay. Tell him again and again that I never stopped loving him and that I’d rather die—rather accept this fate Lilith foresaw of my death than live another day without him. He’d probably just tell me again how much he hates me, but I bet if I looked deep into those eyes, I’d see the truth. It was always there. Maybe I just hadn’t wanted to see it until now. Maybe accepting that he still loved me meant that I had to face the truth of how deeply I hurt him and face the truth that Jason really did need to leave. I wasn’t ready to let him go before, but hearing the pain bear itself in David’s voice was enough to make me never want to see Jason again.

  I focused my attention on David again as he leaned down, placing his ear to the keys, singing his agony into the slower more soulful notes. I’d seen him do that a thousand times, heard him sing a thousand times, but tonight it felt like the first time. I felt myself falling in love with him all over again, like that first day I ever heard him sing, so long ago by a lake that seemed more like a dream now than a real place. All those memories of a lost childhood wavered around me on an invisible current: the music room, Big Bertha, Ryan and Alana. The storage closet and the day David squeezed his cola all over his jeans. All of it filled me up with a rush of agony and a cool wash of hope. Where there was once love there would always be hope. Always. I wouldn’t give up on him. Ever. And tonight, speaking with him, hearing him sing again, gave me the strength to know that no matter what came I couldn’t give up. I had to stay strong. I had to get him back.

  As the last note rang into the emptiness around us, David slid his foot from the pedal and sat back, his hands in his lap. I gently wiped a cool line of tears from my face, sobbing all the tension and heartache out in a long breath, my eyes going wide with horror when the breath reached his ears.

  He looked up quickly from the piano, his eyes falling on an ultimately empty space as I ducked masterfully into the shadows in the nick of time, turning on my heel then to dart up the stairs.

  “Please don’t follow me,” I whispered. “Please don’t follow me.”

  I shoved my bedroom door open, slammed it shut and set myself up on the settee by the fire with a book in my hand just as the door swung back open.

  He didn’t knock. Didn’t announce himself. Just stood there in the doorway, probably staring at me.

  “Ara.”

  “Mm?” I said casually, not looking up from my book.

  He appeared on the table beside the settee, his eyes cold and dark. “Were you in the Great Hall just now?”

  “Me?” I shrugged dismissively. “No. I was reading. Why?”

  He angled his head horizontally. “So you read upside-down now?”

  I cringed when I looked at the book. “Um, yeah. It exercises the brain.”

  He groaned, lowering his brow to his fingertips.

  I put the book and the facade down. “I’m sorry. I just couldn’t help it. It’s been so long since I’ve heard you sing.”

  He jumped up quickly and stormed away but didn’t leave the room. Instead, he just stood by the fireplace, his hand splayed out on the mantle, looking down into the golden flames as they turned half of him orange.

  “I am really sorry, David,” I added, sliding my feet onto the floor.

  “Don’t be.”

  “Okay.” I sat back, hugging a pillow. “I’m not then.”

  He turned his head slightly and smiled, laughing a little.

  “Can I just say one thing about it?” I asked delicately.

  “What?”

  “You are an amazing performer.”

  His shoulders dropped then, and he relaxed, moving back a step from the fireplace. “I thought I was alone.”

  And all I could think was that I’d at least finally managed to get him up to the bedroom. Maybe I could keep him here overnight—make sure he got some sleep.

  “I can’t, Ara.”

  “Can’t what?”

  “Can’t sleep in the same room as you.”

  “Why? I know you’re not still that mad at me, David. You—”

  “It’s not that.”

  “Then what is it?”

  He sighed and came to sit on the coffee table in front of me. “It’s the nightmares.”

  “You’re having nightmares?” I asked, but I already knew that. I just didn’t know what they were about.

  “I haven’t slept for more than an hour at a time in…” He balanced his elbows on his knees and cradled his face in hi
s hands. “Weeks.”

  “And… are the nightmares because of the lack of sleep, or is the lack of sleep because of the nightmares?”

  “Both. I think.” He gave a timid smirk, looking up from his hands. “They’re so vivid, Ara. The dreams. Sometimes, when I wake, I’m not sure what’s real.”

  “What are they about?”

  “You,” he said without hesitation.

  “Me? What, being with me, leaving me—?”

  “Killing you.”

  My throat made an overdramatized gulping noise for comedic effect. “And you think if we sleep together you might actually kill me?” As if!

  “Yes,” he said in short. “But that’s not why I’m afraid to go to sleep.”

  I was taken slightly aback by that. I shifted in my seat awkwardly before asking, “Then why are you?”

  “Honestly? It’s what I feel when I open my eyes and realize you’re not actually dead that bothers me.”

  “Relief?”

  He shook his head. “I feel like I failed. Like I can’t go another day if you exist in this world.”

  “So you’re afraid I’ll still be alive?”

  He hesitated. “Yes.”

  The word hit me like an arrow through the heart. I stood, my eyes brimming with tears.

  “Ara, please—” He reached for my hand, but I backed away. “Ara.”

  “This is so wrong, David,” I said, my voice shaky.

  “In theory, yes.” He lowered his head. “But a bigger part of me, one I’m struggling to control, finds more injustice in every breath you take than the thought of your cold, dead corpse.”

  A shiver ran up my spine when he looked at me with a kind of hatred behind his icy gaze that shattered everything solid in my world—as if the vampire within had consumed the human remains of his soul and left him raw and open to pure instinct. The instinct to kill me.

  I ran so fast then that all I saw was the shock register in David’s eyes as I turned away and bolted down the corridors, taking the stairs at what felt like light speed, the drapes following the breeze of my momentum.

  I knew David took off at a run a heartbeat later, because he was only milliseconds behind. The urgency inside him, the very energy surrounding him, had me both fearful and hopeful that he’d follow me as far as I ran—follow me until I stopped in a space where we’d both be safe.

  He couldn’t have meant what he said. Those dreams, everything, it had to be because of the spell. It had to. If not, how would I ever find a way to go on? How would I ever be able to breathe again? I knew he was cruel. I knew from those early days after we first met that he had a darkness inside him, but I prayed to God as I ran through the corridors that it hadn’t taken away the sliver of good I knew he had inside as well.

  “Ara, please,” he cried, his fingertips nearly brushing my elbow. And from the tone of his voice, all the fear in me melted into a liquid kind of wanting—the wanting to stop and turn around and look into the loving eyes I knew were attached to that voice. “Please don’t run from me.”

  A guard looked up from his post with concern and I smiled at him to say everything was okay. The last thing I needed right now was interference. David had to think I was afraid of him, but anyone watching on had to think it was just a kinky game of cat-and-mouse between husband and wife.

  It took twenty seconds at this speed to reach the Throne Room, and the absence of guards in here made the room feel empty. It also gave me the space to add some drama to my act.

  “Just stay away from me,” I called.

  “No!” he snarled, but his tone had changed and the kindness he’d displayed around the guards was completely dried up. My limbs wanted to freeze with the dread that sunk through me. He’d clearly been playing Nice David back there in the halls. But he wasn’t in a nice mood at all.

  What if this wasn’t a hex? What if I got him in to the forest and the black magic didn’t lift?

  I slammed into the back doors as I pushed them out toward the forest, and the blustery chill of autumn swept my hair backward, almost giving it to David’s reach. But the darkness of looming clouds and a moonless sky gave me shadows to hide in—possible only because of the weakened eyes of the starving vampire. He was losing the fight, and if I truly needed to outrun him rather than lead him away, I could have. So I slowed my steps just enough to let him catch up again.

  “Ara!” he screamed with a kind of ferocity behind it that made me hope to God he didn’t catch me until we were in the boundaries of the forest. Running away, ‘disobeying’ his orders made him angry, and if he caught me, I could tell he would hurt me.

  The guards patrolling the manor gardens should have heard him scream that way—should have come running to see what was going on. And as the anger flamed in me for their incompetence, I made a list in my mind of all the soldiers that would be brought before me in Court tomorrow to face my wrath. Then again, maybe they were watching—just standing back and making sure they didn’t accidentally intervene in what might be nothing more than a small argument. That was the role of my knights, really. But Falcon’s decision to leave me unguarded while in the manor had, unfortunately, come too soon. Come at a very bad time. Because right now, more than ever before, I could actually use his help.

  The energy of the forest resonated out from the border like a dark but warm hand cradling the air. My bare feet hit the ground with such a force that the leaves sprung up behind me, leaving a trail of noise and spattered dirt in my wake—the only noise, the only disruption in this otherwise unnervingly still night. The trees watched as we charged toward them, their eyes respectfully observing what was nothing but an entertaining break in the norm for them.

  I checked over my shoulder to see David falling slightly behind again, and as I looked up to see how far until the border, I slammed straight into a tree—a barky mess exploding from its trunk, covering my hair and hands in dust as I ignored the sting in my ribs and shoulder, and hugged the tree for dear life. I made it. I made it.

  “Ara.” David grabbed my arm and snapped me toward him, drawing me outside the border again.

  I screamed, reaching back for the tree.

  “Shut up. I’m not here to hurt you.” He spun my spine into his chest and covered my mouth and half my nose with a very firm hand. “Calm down.”

  In my desperation to escape his arms, we stumbled back a few steps, slipping just inside the border of the forest until he regained his footing, moving us back out again. I rammed my elbow into his ribs, scraping his shins with my heels as I stomped on his foot, fighting to drag him just two steps to our right. But the run weakened me more than it should have, and his arms won out over me.

  “Why are you fighting me?” he grumbled, squeezing my body so tight I felt like my ears would pop. And then his foot finally crossed the threshold again, so I jammed my hand behind my back and grabbed his balls, spinning out of his grasp and knocking him onto his back as he cried out.

  “Don’t move,” I said through my teeth, pressing his throat firmly with my bare foot.

  “Yield,” he choked out, surrendering with one hand up, the other cupping his probably very sore testicles. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you, Ara.”

  I eased my foot back off his jugular. “I wasn’t scared.”

  “Then… what the hell!” He sat up a bit, rubbing his neck. “Why did you run?”

  “David, I think you’ve got a hex on you.” I squatted down in front of him.

  “A what?”

  “A hex—a spell that acts more like a curse.”

  “And what makes you think this?” He clambered to his feet, still rubbing his neck then his elbow.

  “Drake told me. He said he believes Morgana put a hex on you.”

  “And you just take his word as gospel now?”

  “No. But I believe him about this.”

  He pushed past me and walked deeper into the trees, blending a little with the shadows of night a few feet away. “Fine. Let’s say I believe you. Wh
at kind of a hex are we talking about?”

  “I’m not sure.” I stood very slowly up from my squat. “But it might have something to do with your dreams—your desire to see me dead.”

  He rushed in and grabbed my arm again, shoving me back into a tree trunk with the force. “What kind of spell can make a man desperate to kill his own wife?”

  “A nasty one,” I coughed out, winded. “One probably designed to keep you from loving me.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. But both Morgana and Lilith have reasons they want us apart.”

  “Lilith—the Mother of Nature?” He glanced over his shoulder, then leaned closer and whispered through his teeth, “The one we’ve trusted all along?”

  “Yes.”

  He let go of my arm and backed away.

  “She didn’t just advise me to be with Jason, David. She all but ordered me to. And then Marked me when I refused.”

  His eyes shot straight to the black band on my ring finger.

  “Yes,” I said, straightening my clothes. “That one. She added that, by refusing Jason’s love, I’d basically set my own inevitable end in motion.”

  “From what I know,” he muttered, his voice sounding distant as he walked into the dark, “you have.”

  “That may be so.” I moved toward his silhouette. “Or maybe it’s not. But she seemed too upset to be purely worried about me dying.”

  “So she has her own agenda as well,” he said simply. And just the way he said it, sounding so resolved, made me suddenly convinced of its truth, leaving me wondering why I questioned myself in the first place.

  “I guess so. But what?” I said.

  “Is she in league with Morgana? Did she assist with this… hex?”

  I shrugged.

  “What would either of them have to gain by keeping us apart?” he asked himself, pacing. “Or perhaps not apart.” He stopped. “But by placing you with Jason?”