Bird Song (63 page)

I turned around to look at Robert, worried that he’d interfere; terrified that he’d assume that I had somehow managed to set this up as well.
 
His eyes narrowed, a frown burning creases into his forehead.

Not wanting to continue to face his scrutiny, I turned to look at Graham.
 
He should have looked captivated, he should have looked lost in Lark’s beauty and presence.
 
Instead, he looked just as angry as Robert did.
 
I opened my mouth, hoping to drive some sense into him, into both of them that this was not a moment to start fighting, but Robert pulled me away, my mouth shutting in surprise.

“Why did you leave?” Graham asked as soon as I was out of the way.

“I had to,” Lark replied, her words heavy with hurt and guilt.

“You didn’t have to.
 
You could have stayed.”

She shook her head defiantly.
 
“No.
 
I couldn’t.
 
I know what you want to say, Graham, but-”

“No, you don’t know what I want to say.
 
You don’t have a clue what I want to say because you never stayed to hear them,” Graham argued.
 
“But you’re going to now.
 
You’re going to hear how the minute I knew you were gone I couldn’t think about anything else but where you were and if you were okay.
 
You’re going to hear about how difficult it was for me to write that letter to you, how hard it was for me to admit to things that I’ve never felt before, and how afraid I was that after finding out what it said, you’d think I was an idiot and too stupid for you to bother with.

“But most importantly, you’re going to hear how painful it is to wake up every single day and not know how you feel.
 
I can continue to love you forever—I didn’t think that was possible and always thought Grace was being stupid for even saying stuff like that—but I cannot keep going around not knowing how you feel about me.
 

“It’s pretty selfish of you, if you ask me, to not tell me how you feel.
 
If you don’t feel the same then okay, I can accept that.
 
But at least tell me, dammit.
 
I’m a big boy—I can take it.
 
But if you do feel the same way, if you do care about me the same way that I care about you then you could at least let me know so that I don’t have to keep repeating myself here.”

Graham’s breathing was thick, his chest rising and falling heavily as he finished, sweat starting to bead on his face from nervousness.
 
Lark stepped forward and placed a hand against his forehead, slowly dragging the moisture away.

“I do care about you,” she said softly.
 
“I don’t want to.
 
I don’t want to feel these things for you because it isn’t right.”

“Why isn’t it right?” he asked in a low voice.
 
“Why isn’t it right for you to love me, too?”

“Because I promised I’d never love anyone else,” came her whispered reply.

Graham’s body stiffened…for a moment.
 
And then his features softened as he realized something.
 
“You loved someone else.
 
I’m not the first.”

She nodded slowly, sadly.
 
Her eyes brimmed with tears that bided their time, waiting for just the right moment to fall.
 
“I loved someone very much—someone who was taken away from me too soon—and I promised him that I’d never love anyone else, never feel that way ever again.
 
I broke that promise the moment I met you and no matter how much I might feel for you, it doesn’t erase the fact that it still hurts knowing I betrayed him.”

“You shouldn’t feel guilty for something you had no control over, Lark,” Graham countered, his hand extending to her, seeking her acceptance.
 

“You don’t get it—it physically
hurts
me, caring for you, missing you…loving you,” Lark whispered before turning away, rejecting his outstretched hand.
 
“I promised, swore on the very hope that it would be enough to last me forever that I’d never feel again what I felt for him.
 
He accepted his fate because of that.
 
We both did.”

Graham approached her and placed his hands on her shoulders in gentle solace.
 
“Who was he?”
 
She shook her head and he tenderly pressed his cheek to the top of her head, a loving gesture that forced her head to bow with something I could not decipher—shame?
 
Hurt?
 
It was enough to cause Graham’s arms to surround her shoulders, pulling her against him, and she did not resist.
 
Instead, she allowed him the small gesture, and he asked her once more to reveal who “
he
” was.

With her head held down, she began to speak, her voice low and flat, the choir of caroling bells gone, replaced now with the sadness of empty hope.

“His name was Luca.
 
He was my friend, my confidant.
 
He knew all of my secrets—the ones I could keep, anyway—and he never shared them with anyone, no matter how desperate or dark they were.
 
He was just like me—independent, free-spirited, and cynical of everything and everyone.
 
We didn’t see the reason or the purpose behind what it was that we were, what it was that we were meant to do, meant to be.
 
He felt that our existence wasn’t just about duty and obligation—that was going to happen no matter what.
 
Life, he said, was about living.
 
With all that we can do, why do we not let everyone know what we’re capable of, he asked.
 
What good was being able to do such incredible things if we had to keep it to ourselves?

“Together we disrupted the careful balance that had been set up by millennia of those who came before us.
 
We went wild, running around like two love-struck individuals with more power than we deserved and too poor judgment.
 
We terrorized everyone and everything.
 

“We created what was destroyed, destroyed what was created—we had no care for life, for thought, or for love save our own.
 
It was the most exciting and thrilling time in my entire life; he made me feel alive, feel for the first time that those invisible chains that hold all of our kind down with inherent rules and restrictions were loosening their hold, that we could break them and finally be free.

“By the time the Seraphim learned of our havoc, several decades had passed and we had done much to ruin our image in the eyes of the humans who should have been able to turn to us for help—now they ran away from us, seeking aid and solace in other things.
 
Almost too late, I started to realize that what we did was wrong.
 

“We were hurting not only others, but ourselves as well, and the worst crime imaginable had been committed time and time again:
 
We had caused the humans to lose faith in us, in our kind.
 
My mother—though she was gravely disappointed in me— convinced the Seraphim to give me another chance, to have the faith in me that I had stripped from others.
 
But…Luca had no one to speak out for him.

“He was stripped of everything; his abilities, his strength…even his beauty.
 
He was sentenced to live a mortal life among the very people that we had terrorized.
 
This is as close to a death sentence as one can get for our kind—it is the cruelest of punishments and the worst of fates.

“I chose to stay with him, having found no justice in his being allowed to die while I remained healthy and alive.
 
I watched him age, watched his human body suffer illness and wear, and I did it while enduring his never ending rage against me for not doing more to help him, not doing more to convince my mother and the Seraphim to be as lenient and forgiving with him as they were with me….not suffering with him.

“The slowest time period in my life spanned less than a year—I knew that the human mind, when aged and allowed to decay, could turn vile and angry; what I did not know was that
our
minds could as well.

“Luca’s anger grew uncontrollable and violent, with him never realizing that his lashing out never hurt me…just himself.
 
His once divine flesh, so strong and beautiful, bruised horribly, his bones breaking like glass thrown against a stone wall.
 
He forgot who I was after a while, resorting to calling me ‘girl’ whenever he needed me to help clean him up after his body had lost all ability to control its functions.
 

“The more difficult it became for him to survive without help, the angrier he became, and I was always the target for his rages, though after a while they became more verbal than physical as he weakened even further.

“When at last Luca’s mortal heart gave out, when God finally took pity on him and called him home, only then did he remember who I was, and he made me promise that no one else would ever mean as much to me as he did.
 
I promised him that there would be no one else, that for the rest of my existence I would only feel that way for him.
 
I lied to him and it’s killing me.”

“He did not love you, Lark-” Robert ground out.
 
“He used you to fulfill his sick, perverted games.
 
He hurt humans for fun, destroyed countless lives all in the name of rebellion that served no purpose other than to amuse.
 
He lied to you to further his deception.
 
Love doesn’t deceive-”

“Love doesn’t deceive you say?
 
You’re one to talk, brother!” Lark snarled.
 
“When will you confess to Grace about your own deceptions?”

“What?
 
What deceptions?
 
What does she mean?” I asked, my heart thudding loudly in my chest at the implication in her voice.

“Wait a minute-” Graham cut in.

The three of us turned to him, just remembering he was there.

“What are you talking about?” he said with nervous laughter.
 
“You’re speaking like you’re a lot older than sixteen, Lark—what’s this about several decades?
 
Powers?
 
Humans?
 
Watching someone grow old?
 
What is going on here?
 
What are you talking about?”

Lark and Robert looked at each other, their eyes wide with shock, their mouths stubbornly set in defiance.

“Will someone tell me what’s going on?
 
Lark?” Graham snapped, his arm releasing Lark and turning her around to face him.

“Graham, now’s not the time to-”

Graham turned to face me, his eyes blazing with anger.
 
“Shut-up, Grace!” he barked, cutting me off.
 
“I’ve always known that I wasn’t exactly allowed into your whole ‘circle of friends’ thing here—not after what I did to you last summer—but this has got to be some kind of twisted joke, right?
 
All this talk about powers and Seraphim and…mortals—is this some kind of obsessive fantasy game scenario you guys have cooked up or something, because right now, that’s the only thing that makes any sense.”

I looked at Robert, whose head was turned away, refusing to answer.
 
Lark was also stubbornly looking the other way, her lip trembling with hurt and…fear.
 
“Are you guys just going to let him keep asking?” I shouted at them.
 
“Lark, you let him hear all of that, but you won’t tell him anything else?
 
You won’t even explain any of it?”

She turned her head to glare at me, the tears that sat at the base of her bottom lid threatening to spill at any moment.
 
“He wanted to know—I told him the truth.”

I shook my head angrily.
 
“No.
 
No, you didn’t tell him the truth—you told him
part
of the truth.
 
He deserves to know everything.
 
He poured his heart out to you and you weren’t even
there
when he wrote that letter, so you know that this has nothing to do with charm or-” I looked at Robert, a fissure of pain starting to wind its way through my heart “-deception.
 
You know that what he feels for you is real.
 
Tell him the truth.
 
He deserves that much.”

Graham looked at me with hurt in his eyes, and then switched his gaze to Lark, whose tears finally fell forward, tumbling down her face.
 
Graham reached out to catch one and then gasped as the cold stone hit the palm of his hand.

“What…?” he breathed.

“There you are!”

Stacy stumbled through the thick brambles, her shoes in one hand, the hem of her dress in another.
 
“I swear, if I knew you three were planning on going hiking, I’d have worn a better outfit; this dress is totally ruined—my mother is going to kill me when she sees it.
 
What’s going on?
 
Why all the glum faces?
 
Lark…”

Lark and Robert remained mute.
 
I glanced over at Graham who was, in turn, staring at the minute crystal that sat cooling in his palm, a tiny rainbow glimmering from within it as though it possessed its own inner light.