Echoes & Silence Part 1

by Angela M Hudson

  Arthur’s eyes moved to Mike’s old seat. “And I heard we lost one of our own.”

  A tight feeling closed my lungs. “Yes.”

  “Have you heard from him yet?”

  “Not yet. But I’m sure he’ll write when he gets settled.”

  “I’m sure he will.” He patted my hand.

  The staff walked in through the doors near the fireplace then, and I watched their white-gloved hands moving skillfully around each seat, clearing plates as though they were invisible. I liked that—the formalities of life. Sometimes they were the only thing you could really rely on. And if David had told me when I first came here that one day I’d be grateful for all our stone-set customs, I’d never have believed him.

  Arthur, suddenly standing, gently touched my shoulder to get my attention. “I must bid you good night, My Queen.” He bowed once. “It was a long drive today, and I’m well and truly ready to turn in.”

  “Okay, Arthur.” I offered him a weak smile. “Good night.”

  “Come see me—if you can’t sleep.” He leaned closer to whisper in my ear. “I have a few potions that might help.”

  “Safe for the baby?” I asked, patting Bump.

  “Of course.” He nodded. “Safe to slip into someone’s drink, too.” The nod moved suggestively toward the king.

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  He bowed again and walked away, stopping to whisper in David’s ear as he passed. David nodded, closed his eyes tightly, and when he opened them again, looked right at me. I tried to search his mind, but it was either empty or just very well-guarded. So I let him into mine; opened it up completely. And when he caught the first rush of memories from that night, he looked away, disconnecting again.

  * * *

  David slipped into bed at midnight, barely lifting the covers or creasing the pillows. I breathed as if I were asleep, hoping to hide the line of tears streaming down my temples and onto my hand. He clearly fell for it. I heard him take off his watch and lay it on the nightstand, felt the bed shake a little as he repositioned the pillows, smelled the sweet orange scent of freshly-consumed blood on his breath as he exhaled deeply into the air above us.

  “We need to get those glass domes reconstructed,” he said, as if he knew all along that I was awake.

  “Why?” I whispered in a very quiet voice so he wouldn’t catch the quiver in it.

  The bed rocked again, and the blankets shifted, David’s face appearing above my shoulder a second later. “You’re crying,” he said.

  I wiped my face dry. “I’m not.”

  “You are.” He reached over and grabbed the shoulder I was laying on, using it to roll me onto my back. “Ara, what’s wrong, my love.”

  And that was it. Those two little words brought it all crashing down. I covered my face as it crumpled into an ugly fold, my whole body shaking with the sobs. He laid on top of me as much as he could with Bump in the way, and the warmth of him sunk into the iciness in me, melting away my reasons for crying.

  “Please talk to me,” he whispered into my hair, smoothing it off my brow.

  “I miss you,” I cried, my mouth wet with hot breath and tears. “I just miss you.”

  “And that’s all?” he asked delicately, leaning back to look down into my face.

  I nodded, licking a salty wet line off my lip.

  His round eyes shrunk with a growing smile and his whole face softened. “I’m still here, sweetheart.”

  “You’re not.” I sobbed again, wiping my nose with the back of my finger. “You ignore me all the time, you—”

  “I’m not ignoring you, Ara.” He laid back down and looked at the roof. “I’m grieving.”

  “So am I.”

  He just sighed, and I waited for him to reassure me that I meant something to him, sobbing quietly to myself, but when I braved a glance in his direction he was sleeping soundly, his ribs rising and falling with soft, peaceful breath.

  “David?” I said, even poked him a little, but he was out cold.

  On the nightstand, a small bottle from Arthur’s glass cabinet caught the light, glinting slightly. The same kind of small bottle he gave me before I came to bed. But I didn’t drink from it. I didn’t want to sleep. I just wanted David to hold me again and make it all okay.

  “David?” I tried again, but his breath didn’t even alter. I reached a hand down between us and gently tangled my fingers in his. “I don’t blame you—for taking that potion.”

  I laid awake holding his hand until I saw the sun. When it became abundantly clear to me that I wouldn’t sleep now, I climbed out of bed, careful not to disturb him, and then tiptoed down to the kitchen to sit alone, sipping coffee. It was peaceful and cold in a familiar kind of way, like being the first person awake at my dad’s house in autumn.

  When the grandfather clock chimed six, I left the kitchen and headed upstairs to get dressed. All around the manor people were rising, ready for a new day. But mine still hadn’t technically ended. I felt sluggish and dazed, and really in need of a big hug.

  Ahead of me, Arthur came down the stairs from the west wing, talking on the phone. He stopped when he saw me. “I can see her now. Do you want to speak with her?”

  I glided to a halt on the step below him.

  “For you,” he said, handing me his phone.

  I cautiously put it to my ear. “Hello?”

  “Hey.”

  “Jase!” My legs went wobbly. I sat down on the step. “It’s so good to hear your voice.”

  “I’m so sorry I haven’t spoken to you before now. I’ve been trying to call since the day of the funeral, but—”

  “We’ve been ignoring the phones.”

  “I know.” There was a long pause. “How’s my brother?”

  “He…” I dragged out the e. “He’s gone—most of the time. He won’t talk. Barely eats.”

  “He just needs to be reminded.”

  “Reminded of what?”

  “What he’s got right in front of him.” His gentle, kind voice made me miss him so much then—the way he could say something without actually needing to say it; the way he could make you feel something without telling you what he wants you to feel. “Just get undressed in front of him,” he added lightly. “That should do it.”

  I laughed aloud, and it sounded so unnatural to me now. “You think?”

  “Have you had makeup sex since you got back together?”

  “Um. Should you really be asking me that?”

  “I just did,” he quipped unapologetically. “So, have you?”

  “No.”

  “Exactly. So just show him some skin. It’ll be that easy. Trust me.”

  “O…kay. I’ll give it a go.” Right now, I thought.

  Jase laughed softly. “Okay then, sweet girl. Take care, and I’ll come visit soon.”

  “Okay, Jase. Thanks for the call.”

  “Anytime,” he said, and hung up the phone.

  Arthur held his hand out. “He’s been calling non-stop.”

  I placed the phone in his hand. “I’m glad he called.”

  “He’s worried about you.”

  “He doesn’t need to worry.” I stood up, hugging my long beige cardigan around my chest. “I’m focusing on revenge right now. It’s keeping me going.”

  Arthur nodded once. “When is the next council meeting?”

  “After lunch. We’ll talk strategy then.”

  “I have a few ideas,” he said, tucking his phone into the back pocket of his jeans.

  “I’d love to hear them—before the meeting.”

  “Do you have time now?” he asked.

  I was about to say no, until I heard David’s voice emanating from the Great Hall. He must’ve woken up after I left, and the idea of walking back into an empty room just felt too lonely. “Your room?” I suggested.

  He gave his approval with a gentle smile and headed back up the stairs. I followed, saying nothing until he closed his door behind us and offered me a seat at th
e table by the fire. I warmed my hands over the roaring flames instead, looking at all the pictures on his mantel. There was a sepia one there of a small boy, which I assumed was David. But I never asked him who it actually was. I liked assuming it was David.

  “I can’t make sense of it, Arthur,” I said, feeling him just behind me.

  “Of what, my dear?”

  I turned around to face him where he leaned against the table, his arms crossed like a hug over his chest. “Drake. He values family. He doesn’t strike me as the kind of man that would kill innocent children.”

  “Or lock them up for centuries because they were immortal?” he offered.

  “I guess you’re right.” I toyed with a button on my cardigan.

  “He wants me dead,” he said out of the blue.

  I looked up at him, meeting his shining cobalt eyes, and a lot of the fear about how we’d kill Drake and the heavy feeling I’d had the last few days just slithered away, as if Arthur could fix everything. “I know. What do you plan to do?”

  “Give him what he wants.”

  “What?”

  He unfolded his arms. “Use me as bait—when we have a plan of attack. We can lure him out by offering me up.”

  While I considered his proposal, I moved around and sat at the table. Arthur followed, sliding his bottom around the edge so he now leaned beside me.

  “I don’t know all that much about Drake. Do you think he’d fall for that?” I asked.

  “I think there’s a chance he might. And I think we have to take any chance we can get.”

  I’d had plenty of chances: the day I tried to shock him with my Light; the day I met him in the Garden of Lilith, with my sword on my hip. But a chance wasn’t what we needed. We needed a weapon—something that could deconstruct the indestructible. As a few points of the conversation I had with Drake in the Garden that day came to mind, alive with the warm sun and the yellow glow, I frowned up at Arthur. “I never got to ask you.”

  “Ask me what?”

  “Drake told me you were the one that told David’s father he’d have an evil son?”

  He closed his eyes slowly.

  “So were you fighting for this prophecy to come true? You told me you knew of it, that you didn’t really believe it was connected to you, so why did you tell him—”

  “I knew of a legend, a rumor, not a prophecy, Amara,” he said sternly. “But I’ve had my reasons for bending the truth or staying quiet about what I do know.”

  “What reasons?”

  He walked away and opened his drawer, turning around again with a shiny silver talisman in hand—like mine, but without the stone. “I work for a higher power. One higher even than yourself.”

  “God?”

  “You might say that.”

  “And, so God told you about the prophecy?”

  “This god I speak of has given me information over the centuries: just smaller details of a larger plot, based on what I needed to know at the time. When I came here to this manor, She was the one that requested my presence, although I did also have orders from Drake. But I came here on a mission for Her.”

  “To… impregnate me?”

  “Yes. But her orders changed shortly after we arrived. However”—he cleared his throat into a fist, shifting his feet awkwardly—“I, unfortunately, had already… touched you.”

  Both of us cringed.

  “Why didn’t she tell you the orders had changed?”

  “She would have, if I’d agreed to meet with her.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “When I discovered the truth about the Dagger of Yahanna, or what I thought was the truth—that David had to die—my mission became self-serving.” He laid the Tree of Life talisman down on the table. “I aimed to have you carry my child to save him, and what the goddess wanted no longer mattered. Nor did this greater plan that we’d spent centuries overseeing.”

  “Why did She want you to impregnate me?”

  “She never gave me a reason. And I could not have imagined that she wanted me to father the child in order to prevent the birth of Anandene.”

  “So, if She wanted to prevent it, why did She change her mind and decide She didn’t want you to impregnate me?”

  He moved his head as if to shake off the confusion. “Perhaps She knew you were already pregnant and it no longer mattered. Perhaps it was another reason.”

  “You didn’t ask?”

  “My dear, it is not my place to question the goddess.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I am but a humble servant in the greater plan of the gods.”

  I rolled my eyes, leaning on my hand. “And you all accused me of being naive and easily-led.”

  He laughed. “Following the word of a god is not naivety, my dear.”

  “Foolishness then?” I calmed myself with a calculated breath. “Look, I get it, okay. But I don’t understand why She wanted to prevent the birth of Anandene and then suddenly didn’t. Does that mean She’ll try to kill her now?” I put my hands on my belly. “And I don’t get why She told you to tell David’s father about an evil twin.”

  “She did not ask me to tell David’s father.”

  “She didn’t?”

  “No. That was the first and essentially last time I took matters in to my own hands.”

  “Oh.” The obvious guilt in his eyes made me feel bad for accusing him then.

  “She warned me in good faith that one of my descendants would bear twins and that, of those two children, one would be a child of impurity, and that I would need to protect the pure one at all costs. When Elizabeth was in her final trimester, she was carrying larger than most women. I assumed she would bear the twins and so I took it upon myself to warn her. She was the one who told her husband.”

  “And Jason suffered his entire life because of that!”

  “Could I take it back, I would,” he said calmly, as though he’d already had this conversation of regrets with himself a thousand times. “But I cannot fix the past.”

  I folded my arms. “So which goddess is it?”

  He cleared his throat and looked around. “The same goddess you speak with.”

  “Lilith?”

  “She goes by many names.” He folded his arms too. “But, yes, Lilith is one of them.”

  “Well—” I didn’t expect him to tell me the truth. “Then…”

  “I can hear your brain clicking everything into place.” He laughed.

  “She… She wanted you to impregnate me so I wouldn’t have David’s evil child, but then, as soon as She finds out I’m having said evil child, She suddenly decides I need to be with Jason. That doesn’t make any se—” My eyes rounded and as I felt the blood drain from my face, Arthur leaned down to look right into it.

  “Amara?”

  “She called him a pure soul.”

  “Who?”

  “Jason.” I started getting excited as my tiny Sherlock Holmes moved the pieces into place inside my head. “She said kind and pure soul, or something to that effect.”

  “And?”

  “And that’s it!” I stood up. “Arthur, she wanted to prevent me from having David’s baby when she thought he was the pure soul. Once I conceived with him, she didn’t care, because—”

  “David is not the pure soul,” he said, his voice deep and heavy with realization. “Jason is.”

  “Jason’s the firstborn.”

  “It all makes sense now,” he said, cupping his chin, his eyes distant. “Elizabeth—the reason she grabbed my hand, made me repeat what she said to me: that the child wearing the bangle she received on her wedding day would be named David, and he would be the first born. I left the room then while she gave birth, and when the nurse brought us the infants, Elizabeth was already gone.” Excitement filled his eyes too. “She could have asked the nurse to put a bangle on the second child and name him David. We’d never have known he wasn’t the first unless she said so. But she didn’t.”

  “And no one was the
wiser,” I said.

  “And Drake will lose, because Anandene will not be born. Your child will be…” He looked at my belly.

  I cupped a hand over her. “Soulless.”

  The whole world sunk around the two of us. It all finally made so much sense. The reason I never felt that ‘connection’ other mothers claimed to feel. I thought it was just a new-mom kind of thing, but no… my child had no soul to connect to.

  “What could Lilith have meant then, by saying Jason will save us all?” I asked.

  “I have no idea. But clearly, he was the Son of Knight you were supposed to be with all along, which means that when Drake finds out the truth about this, he will hunt Jason down and lock him away until that infant”—he pointed to her—“is sixteen, and then they will be forced to bear a child together.”

  My jaw dropped. “But she’ll need the soul of Lilith.”

  “And she will have it if Drake gets hold of you.” He reached out quickly and grabbed my arm. “You need to run. You need to leave without saying a word to anyone and get as far away from here as possible.”

  “I can’t, Arthur, don’t you get it?” I yelled, my eyes full of tears. “She’s soulless. I need my father to transfer my soul into hers, or she’ll die when she’s born.”

  Arthur leaned back a bit, closing his eyes. “You can’t let her live with your soul, Amara.”

  “How can you say that?!” I shoved away from him. “You expect me to just let her die?”

  “Too many people have fought for this outcome, Amara—to see that Anandene is never reborn. When the truth comes out that there is still a hope of saving this mortal world, you will become a target. Your child, if she bears your soul, will be a target. Drake will hunt her down and lock her away. She will suffer unimaginable things, Amara. You cannot let that happen.”

  “I have to tell David,” I said, crossing my arms over my body. “If no one else, I have to tell him.”

  “You can’t. He—”

  “I swore to him, Arthur. I swore there’d be no more secrets. He needs to know. He needs to be given a chance to protect me—fight for our daughter.”

  “He can’t protect you!” he yelled. “The only thing he can do to keep you alive is see to it that that child dies.”