Midnight's Song (36 page)

Aurelian quickly looked
downward.

“There are bigger
things after
both
of us. And now that we’ve involved ourselves with each other
there is a greater danger that will be seeking to destroy
us.”

“What are you saying?” I confusedly
murmured. Though, in my mind I already knew the answer.

“What has been watching you is now
watching me, and what has been watching me is now watching you. As
of today, there is no way for me to let you go through this
alone.”

Now I was lost. What was after him?
Having seen a glimpse of his powers, I knew that things would never
be the same. But, I was already in enough of a mess as it was. As
if it hadn’t occurred to me already, this put my family in even
more danger than before. A burst of anger rushed through
me.

“Why did you come here then?” I
seethed. “What is your purpose with me?”

“I came here today…because I wanted to
apologize to you,” he sorrowfully told me. Realizing that we were
probably going to fall into someone’s view if we stayed out on the
balcony, I quickly whisked him inside and shut the doors. Aurelian
immediately got on his knees. “I’m sorry that I’ve robbed you of a
life here – but perhaps things will work out differently. In any
case, I came to apologize to you…and to tell you the truth of
what’s going on around you. It’s only fair that as we’re forced to
be in this together that you know the truth.”

“Very well,” I meekly responded,
collecting myself.

I motioned for him to take a seat
somewhere around the room, though he politely refused. As someone
raised to be a man of politeness and appropriateness, it was
increasingly awkward for him to find a place to stand in my room,
let alone sit down. I tried to make do with the situation and calm
myself down, so I decided to kick off my shoes and slump myself
down in the chair at my vanity. Something in me knew that it what I
was about to hear wasn’t going to be pleasant, so it was best that
I took it all sitting down.

“First of all, you know I am a
prince,” Aurelian began. I nodded. “You know I’m not…from your
world.” I nodded once again. “But, my world is much like your own.
Although I have powers that your mortals do not, my world isn’t all
that different from yours. The same curse that rules your rules my
own.”

“Curse?” I echoed. “I suppose that you
could call the Magistrate a curse…but he’s a human
being!”

“No,” he sighed.
“You see – that’s it. He
is
the Curse. Well, no…he’s
inhabited
by it.”

Aurelian momentarily stopped speaking
when he saw my face. I was dumbfounded, so apparently his
explanations were getting me absolutely nowhere. Now I was lost
again. His words had fazed me just about as well as they would have
if Aurelian had been speaking gibberish.

“
Curse?”
I echoed again, Aurelian
immediately letting out a breathy sigh. It was going to be a long
way from here.

“Okay…how should I…oh yes – alright.
This might be a bit hard to wrap your mind around, but it’s the
truth. Your Magistrate is inhabited by a curse. A legitimate,
living, breathing entity. Everyone in his line has been possessed
by it, causing them to be merely puppets of its will. That’s why he
does such evil things.”

“Alright…” I let out, faintly
beginning to follow what he was saying.

“My world is the
same way. My people came to aid your people in war long ago – and
when they did,
your
curse became
our
curse. Your curse sits on the Magistrate’s throne. Our curse
sits on our throne. Only for your people, it passes on to the next
person when they die. Your people die natural deaths…but mine
cannot. For us, the predecessor must be killed by his successor.
It’s a bit complicated really, but that’s at least the gist of
it.”

Suddenly, I almost
felt like I understood. Crazy as it sounds, it seemed a logical
explanation for something so illogical. The gears in my head were
turning again. This story sounded very familiar…but at the moment
it didn’t really occur to me that I may have heard it before.
Hearing it come from Aurelian made it seem completely different
from what I had read in my big book of folklore. It made it
seem…
real.
Even
though his humanity was something I was unsure of, it made it
sound
human.

“I have a brother,”
he continued. This time he tried to simplify his language so that I
could better understand him. “An extremely delirious brother. He’s
my twin. All of my life, he’s raged with jealousy against me.
He
hates
me.”

“Because of this curse?” I spoke up,
believing that I was actually beginning to grasp this.

“No, actually. It’s
just himself. He’s always wanted the power, but in my world you
don’t fully embody it until you become king. The intense desire
he’s had to actually
be
embodied by it is what’s led him to become so
consumed with it.”

“So, then he
doesn’t
have the Curse?”
I posed yet again, feeling my mind veer off of the track I thought
it had been on.

“No, he does.”
Aurelian spoke up again. Alright, now I was completely lost.
Aurelian knelt down and inched in toward me, gently grabbing my
hand and giving it a squeeze. “Well…
now
he does. Now he’s sitting on the
throne. And now he believes that somehow I have this vendetta
against him and that I’m going to go back and kill him so that I
can steal his power. I honestly don’t want it – but he sees me as
enough of a threat to carry through with it. He’s made it his
life’s goal to destroy me. And now that he has the power…he
can.
”

“So,” I quickly spoke up. “If I’m
right…you’re telling me that your brother is a raging lunatic.
Correct?”

“I suppose if you’d
rather put it that way; then yes
.”
He awkwardly told me in reply before inching in
closer to my face and giving me a look of utter seriousness. “But,
I’m only telling you this…because I know that now it is entirely
inevitable that our lives will never be the same. This is what I’m
fighting against, and it’s what you have been inevitably brought
into. Faolan is after you, and the Magistrate is after me.
Regardless of how we feel about each other, our fates are
interchangeable now.”

It was obvious that he had no other
plans beyond this. Aurelian was simply just informing me of what he
thought was fate. We had both been in deep trouble, and now it
seemed that we had each found someone that was in just as much
trouble as the other. If this was fate, maybe we could work
together to change it. I realized that what I was dealing with
might not have been a death sentence after all, even if it had
seemed to be such. The powers I was dealing with now were much
bigger than I was, and somehow that offered me unexpected hope.
That gave me an idea that might save us both.

“Aurelian,” I
suddenly spoke up, tilting his head up toward mine. “If our fates
are interchangeable, perhaps we’re not really meant to die. Maybe
you’ve found me so that we can work together
.
Maybe we’re meant…to save each
other.
”

“That’s a hopeful thought,” Aurelian
darkly said to me, “but things are much more complicated than you
understand. You’re a human from a world without knowledge of the
powers of worlds beyond it. If anything, I should be protecting
you.”

“Perhaps I don’t come from a world
with magic,” I started in a nervous laugh, “but that doesn’t mean
I’m powerless!”

“Compared to the things that want me
dead you are,” he responded. “And besides, even if there was a way
for us to help each other – how would you propose we do it? A few
simple words of encouragement; a peace treaty? It’s not as if
somehow this is going to become what your people would call a:
‘kumbaya!’”

“I’m not expecting
that,” I told him in reply. “All I’m saying is that now since we’re
aware that we exist, maybe we’re meant to rely on each other
somehow. Strength is not all dependent on physicality. Aurelian,
everything that once seemed so unchangeable now seems as if it
could change! Just the fact that I’ve found that I’m not alone in
this proves that. We need to make a plan – to see each other again!
Otherwise, our fate
will
be bleak! Together…there might be a chance, just
a chance –”

I was cut off before I
could finish. My ploy was somewhat useless anyway, seeing that
Aurelian didn’t fully (nor would he in the future) find himself
able to grasp what I was saying. The prince was naturally a
pessimist, also accompanied with the nature of being a gentleman.
That made the idea of a team-up presently and extremely foreign to
him. Regardless, I’d later have the time to find that he cared
enough about me to listen to my ideas anyway. However – at the
moment our conversation was temporarily put on hold.

“
Lady Elissa!”
A voice sounded from
down the hallway.

It was Emily. I suddenly panicked,
rushing to get up and find somewhere for him to hide. Though, it
was already too late. She jovially swung the door open, whistling a
lively tune as she carried a stack of towels into the room. At
first her eyes were still on the hallway, so she actually didn’t
notice that we were there. Today she was happier than I’d seen her
in a long time.

Ironically enough, I knew it wasn’t
going to last much longer.

“The ladies in the laundry room just
got a fresh supply of linens! They’re scented like lavender! I
brought you some of them to try out!” She began, her head still
turned from us. As she opened her mouth to speak again, she took a
look in my direction. “I also brought you some fresh towels
–”

She had just nearly finished speaking
when she looked up and froze. Emily stared at me, then at the
strange man standing in my room. In shock, she lost her grip on the
towels and dropped them all onto the floor. She suddenly opened her
mouth to scream for help – but in a flash of panic Aurelian used
his powers to steal the voice right out of Emily’s throat and
forcefully bar the door shut behind her.

Emily kept on trying to scream, but it
was apparent to me that Aurelian had made it so that there was no
voice for her to scream with. After he did it, I looked up at him
in frustration and began arguing. All the while, poor Emily stood
there feeling utterly petrified.

“Why did you just do that?” I angrily
exclaimed.

“I – I panicked,” he stammered. “She
was about to run and tell someone!”

“So you
took
her
voice?”

“It was the only way!”

“Well I’m sure that she’s
going to have a lot to say now, seeing that you’ve stolen her voice
and barred the door behind her!” I agitatedly yelped. “What do you
intend on doing now? Are you going to make her forget that she saw
you, or are you going to let her remain mute forever?”

“No…I …I –”

“You should have disappeared! Why
haven’t you gone away? It’s seemed so easy to do all of the times
that you’ve spontaneously showed up and left me over and over again
in that last nine months!”

Obviously, when I said
nine months, Emily completely misconstrued what I was talking
about. Her eyes bugged out of her head and the poor girl fell back
against the wall in utter petrifaction.

“I don’t really disappear – it’s not
like that! It doesn’t work that way…there’s a degree to which I
must to plan it when I do! It takes preparation and focus, not to
mention magic…”

“You have to
plan
it?” I echoed back,
now fuming. “You mean to tell me that all of the times that you
deserted me, playing with my head as you left me behind – you
planned
it?”

“No, I promise it wasn’t like
that!”

“Then what was it
like,
Rhys?
” I
challenged. “What could possibly have been going through your mind
as you did it!?! Was it that you didn’t want to implicate me or
anyone else in this chaos?”

“Elissa, please calm down!” Aurelian
exclaimed. “We can’t sort this out if we’re always
fighting!”

I suddenly looked over and witnessed
the look of utter shock on Emily’s face. In the midst of all of the
arguing, I had almost forgotten that she was there. She was still
muted and clearly distressed. Aurelian and I looked over at her in
unison, realizing what a spectacle we must have made and quickly
fell silent. Emily dazedly shook her head in disbelief at what she
was seeing.

“Miss, I am so sorry…” The
prince began to explain, but it didn’t do much. He stepped toward
her and she immediately backed even closer to the wall.