Atone: A Fairytale (Fairytale Trilogy) (26 page)

“That does sound like an interesting experience.”

He sat next to her and she leaned against him, his warmth comforting her. She told him what had happened in the Fae Realm, heavily editing in some areas. She’d been feeling mostly okay when Alex and Lilia had been there, but now that they’d left, the nausea had returned along with a feeling of exhaustion.

“Violet—I share my emblem flower with her—she obviously has some kind history with this Beorn guy. You could cut that tension with a knife. And she’d told me she’d loved a beast once. I think she meant him. I think she still loves him.” Becca felt Nicholas’s muscles tense. “I didn’t really believe in love until Alex and Luke,” she admitted to him. “My parents, they love their kids, but that’s different.”

“We learn lessons from our parents,” he answered in a low voice. “And it’s hard to unlearn lessons learned that young; believe me, I know. I’m still trying.”

She ran a hand through the silky strands of his mane. “What lessons did your parents teach you?”

He was silent for a moment. “Too many. The worst of which was to not care for anyone but myself.”

“You cared for your grandmother.”

“Never like she deserved. She tried to help me unlearn that lesson, but I don’t think I truly unlearned it until recently.”

Her hand stilled in his mane and she swallowed against the churning in her midsection. “I’m going to figure out how to break the protection curse’s hold on you. The three sisters seem to think I can.”

He looked away from the window and toward the mirror spell—at the violets worked in alongside the wicked claws. "Given a second chance, would you not come looking for me?"

"No matter how many chances I was given, I'd chose every time to be here with you."

He looked down at her. “Then maybe we should stop calling this a curse. It’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”

She wanted to cry and laugh. She settled for resting her head against his fur. How could she feel so happy and desperate and sick all at the same time?

She felt him dip his head until it was close to the top of hers. “It were all one that I should love a bright particular star and think to wed it. You are so above me,” he whispered into her hair.

Becca tilted her head up and smiled at him. “You’re changing Shakespeare now?” Not only was her stomach revolting, she felt a throbbing pain in her middle.

“It’s true. You’re so far above me. I might as well love a star.”

Becca blinked back tears. “You’re my bright star,” she told him, fighting against a wave of dizziness. “You make the night brighter.”

“You shouldn’t have to settle for night. You should have nothing but the brightest day.”

“I thought you were all about science, and yet you sound like a poet.” She gasped as another dull pain shot through her stomach.

“What’s wrong?”

“I just feel a little queasy. And tired. I probably need to rest.”

“Here,” he changed position so that he was no longer sitting but half-lying on the floor. She sprawled against him, it was all she could do to not collapse—she was suddenly so tired. He tucked her into his arm, curving the rest of his large body protectively around her. “Sleep,” he whispered.

“Goodnight, Nicholas,” she whispered back as her eyelids drifted shut and she snuggled her face into the warmth of his arm.

“Goodnight, Becca.”

She thought he whispered something else, but she couldn’t quite hear it as she slipped into the familiar dream of claws and golden magic.

~

Becca woke up wet with her own sweat. She was shaking with chills. She must have a fever. Nicholas’s body still felt so warm, but not warm enough.

She squinted at the window. The sun was up. It was so bright. It looked so hot. She just wanted to be warm. And she wanted her stomach to stop hurting.

She stood up unsteadily, swaying back and forth before finally feeling like she was okay to move. She crept away from where Nicholas was still laying on the floor; she didn’t want to wake him. She didn’t want him to see her looking this bad. Not that she’d looked in the mirror recently, but if she looked even half as bad as she felt, then he’d probably panic.

She went down the front stairs gripping the rail, one stair at a time. The throbbing in her stomach had spread to her whole body. Why was she in so much pain? Could it be from the fever? She lifted one hand to her forehead—she felt cold. Her forehead, her hand. So cold.

Becca managed to get the front door open and walk out onto the grass. The sun was warm, but it wasn’t enough. She turned her face up trying to absorb more of its heat. She was so sick…so dizzy…

She fell to the grass with a thud. Everything hurt. Her body felt like it was being pulled inside out and shaken apart. She stared up at the impossibly blue sky. The sky and clouds overhead seemed to swirl together like they were being sucked down a drain. She blacked out.

“Becca!” She heard his voice, scared and urgent sounding, right next to her ear. She had no idea how long she she had been sprawled unconscious on the grass. She wasn’t even entirely sure she wasn’t still unconscious. She wanted to tell him that she was all right, that she’d be okay, but she didn’t think it was true. Or if she could even make her voice work at all. The sickening dizziness and the feeling of being slowly pulled apart hadn’t dissipated.

She felt herself being gathered up in his arms. It felt like being held by a furnace. She managed to crack her eyelids open. The sun was so bright it made her feel like screaming. She could see the sky—it was still twisting and distorting—and against it, Nicholas. He had her in his arms, cradled against his chest, walking, no running, on his hind legs. She could see his jaw, his mane, but only a bit of his face. He looked different. Not swirly like the sky, but somehow less like an animal and more like—

“N-N-Nicholas.” Her voice sounded as if her throat had been scraped raw. It felt kind of like it too.

“Becca!” He looked down at her. The relief that flickered across his face was quickly replaced by fear. She wondered briefly if she looked as bad as she felt. She must. His pace had quickened. She felt as if they were flying, but she didn’t know where he was taking her and she didn’t have the strength to ask.

The cold of the air conditioner answered the question for her. Of course he’d brought her into the house. Goosebumps raised on her arms and legs and she was grateful for the heat emanating from Nicholas’s body.

“Do you know what’s wrong? What’s hurting you?” he asked in a rough voice. She could barely manage to shake her head in response. A low growl rumbled through his chest. She could tell he was frustrated, could feel the barely leashed tension in his muscles. She wished she knew what was wrong so she could fix it; make it stop hurting.

He was running through the house. Becca couldn’t focus on anything but the curve of his jaw. Everything else was a twisting, turning, kaleidoscope of pain.

“Magic,” she finally gasped out.

The growl was louder this time. “Whatever is hurting you is magic?” Anger lashed through his voice, but he didn’t slow his pace. And then suddenly he stopped. Becca’s head hurt too much to try to look around to figure out where she was, but the light was different, sunlight filtering through large windows and glinting off the highlights in Nicholas’s fur. The mirror room. He must have already known, or suspected, that whatever was wrong with her was related to magic, because he’d brought her here.

“I’m sorry.” He held her closer to his chest, but his grip wasn’t tight, it was gentle, so very gentle. Becca wondered if she could just go to sleep there against him. Snuggle into the warm fur on his chest and never wake up.

“This is all my fault.” The words seemed to tear from him on a sob. “Becca, I lo—”

Pain—like a raging, all-consuming fire—shot through Becca. She arched up, her body bending back in a perfect arc as a scream ripped from her throat. Her eyes were open but unseeing. The sound of Nicholas’s roar mixed with the rushing in her ears.

And then she was flying again but still in his arms. The cold pulling of the magic on the surface of the mirror tingled against her skin. A brief moment of panic filtered through her pain-fogged brain. Nicholas had never been through the mirror, never been into the Fae Realm. She couldn’t protect him.

And then they were through into the Fae Realm, or at least she thought they were. She couldn’t feel or see much beyond her small cocoon in his arms, the pain was still too intense. She couldn’t even feel the usual change in the ambient magic. It was as if all her senses were on overload from whatever was happening inside of her and couldn’t correctly process any other information. Except for Nicholas. Cradled against his heaving chest, she could feel each breath as it expanded his chest and pushed out. Could hear the wild racing of his heart. That was her whole world.

Something was different, though. He was holding her, still gently cradling her close, but he felt...smaller somehow.

“Please!” he screamed. “Please, help her!” There was a soft thud, and Becca jostled against his chest. She realized Nicholas had fallen to his knees. His body curved over hers protectively, but through the bright gold haze in her vision she could tell that he wasn’t looking at her but out to the distance, to the forest that edged the large, open field.

No one was there. Would any fae respond to a human, let alone Nicholas, who they saw as more beast than man?

He kept repeating “please” over and over again, not screaming now, more of a low, frantic chant. And he was rocking her back and forth. Becca felt like there was something she wanted to tell him, but the pain was getting worse again. All she could focus on was the underside of his jaw, his warm chest, his ragged voice.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw colors shift and change; lilac, spring green, deep yellow. She felt the warm rush of their magic, sympathetic and easing. It didn’t take the pain away, but it lessened it. Violet, Bryony, and Saffron.

“Can you help her?” Nicholas didn’t sound afraid of the sisters, though they could be an intimidating sight. “I’ll do anything.”

There was a pregnant pause, and Becca knew then that they
couldn’t
help her. It was an odd feeling, knowing you were going to die. She wasn’t scared, but her heart was shattering into a million tiny pieces. It didn’t seem fair that she was going to die before she could tell Nicholas how she felt about him, especially after having spent—wasted really—so much time fighting with him.

“It would help lessen her pain if you laid her down,” one of the sisters spoke.

Shut up, Bryony,
Becca thought. The last thing in the entire universe that she wanted was for Nicholas to put her down. If she was going to die, she couldn’t think of a better place to do it than in his arms. But damn it, Nicholas listened to the fae. She felt the soft grass under her back as he placed her gently on the ground and stepped away from her. Bryony was right, the pain was slightly less. But it wasn’t worth it. If Becca could have gathered the energy, she would have screamed for him to take her back in his arms.

“What’s happening to her?” Nicholas demanded. “Can you help her?”

Becca felt a cool hand on her forehead, and she blinked up into Violet’s face. Her aunt was crying, silvery tears slipping from the corners of her eyes.

“When Becca tried to break the mirror spell, she put too much of herself into the magic. She melded her power with the curse.”

“What does that mean? Is the curse what’s hurting her? What can I do?”

“Now that the curse is breaking, the magic is fracturing. It is breaking her too.”

Becca felt rather than heard Nicholas’s angry roar. She could see him out of the corner of her eye, rage and frustration evident in every line of his body. But she wasn’t focused on that, she was staring up into Violet’s eyes, searching for the truth of her words. The spell was breaking.

She almost passed out. Not from the pain that still flooded through her body, but from sheer relief. Her eyelids fluttered shut. Somehow she’d done it, or Nicholas had done it, it didn’t matter which. All that mattered was that the spell was broken.

“Becca!” She opened her eyes to find that Violet’s hovering face had been replaced with Nicholas’s. She tried to smile up at him, to reassure him somehow. The fear in his voice had been palpable, and she knew that when she’d closed her eyes he’d thought she’d slipped away.

“Can we stop it?” he asked without taking his eyes off hers. As long as she kept looking up at him, drowning in the brilliant deep blue eyes, she could almost forget the pain. “Stop the spell from breaking? Please, I’ll do anything.”

Another lightning flash of pain shot through her. It was so strong she couldn’t even scream. Her body bowed off the grass and he caught her in his arms, cradling her against his chest again. After a few moments the pain settled back down to just past bearable. Nicholas’s chest felt different against her cheek. His heartbeat sounded slower, more deliberate. She tried to press her face closer to his chest as if she could somehow anchor herself to his heartbeat.

Violet was saying something again. It filtered through Becca’s already hazy consciousness in fits and starts.