Secrets [5] Echoes: Part One (67 page)

I know, and even she knows I can do her harm. She
expected
it. But I never thought, until today, that I would ever actually hurt her. I watched it all play out in my mind, though—saw it frame by frame—saw my arm swing back, saw it connect with her face and knock her to the floor. But it didn't stop there. I didn't stop. I couldn't. I landed on top of her with my hands around her throat, and it still was not enough. I needed to hit. I needed to make her bleed for the agony that ripped through me when she … I saw it. Saw just a flash in my brother’s mind as he sat at the table tonight, reliving what he did to her. Reliving it right there in front of me. Carelessly. Stupidly. Or maybe … cruelly. I’m not sure he realised I could read his mind. But I saw it. Saw him take her lips against his. Saw her look up at him with those pretty blue eyes. Saw those same blue eyes move down his arm before she kissed the Mark there. Saw his lips travel the length of her body, her naked body. My wife. My darling, delicate little wife. Naked. Under him. Under his lips. Under
someone
else's
lips. But he didn’t just kiss her skin. He…

I can't write it down. I can't make it real by documenting it. It never happened. I will never write it down and it will never happen.

Ara. Why?

And that was it. The next three pages were blank and the entry after that was dated over a week later.

I’ve suffered many grievances in my unnaturally long life—enough to know that anger soon turns to such an extreme sadness you come to wonder where the rage even began. But, sorrowful as I may be tonight, I know too well that the fury will return and, in that moment, I won’t remember how I felt now. I need to remind myself that no matter what she’s done to hurt me, I do still have a heart and that nothing inside me wants to see her hurt. She’s suffering right now. I can see that. Any fool can see that. Hell, I want her to suffer, but it kills me to be the one causing that pain sometimes. The anger just takes over again, though, almost like a reflex action, an automatic defense, and I suddenly believe that it is just. She hurt me, and I need to hurt her to make her understand. When did I become this kind of man?

A good question. But, in truth, he’d always been this kind of man—for at least as long as he’d been a vampire. I never wanted to see it. I was once afraid, so afraid I denied the thoughts, that I wouldn't love him if I understood just how deep the evil inside him went, and how easily that evil showed on the surface. But I’d seen the evil. He’d inflicted it upon me, upon a person I hold very dear, and somehow, someway, I could still see the good in him.

There’s no going back now,
I read on down a page written two weeks later.
I have to let her go. She’s unhappy without him—without the fight to be with him. But it is far easier to know what I must do. Much harder to do it. I can’t. I just can
not
see her with him. No matter how I try, every time they even look at each other, I just want to lock her away in a tower and throw away the key. Is this because I still love her, despite her betrayal? Maybe. Uncle Arthur seems to think so. I, however, am not so sure. I don’t see how any self-respecting man can still love a girl after that. And yet, when she walks past, something inside me holds onto a hope that she might look my way and I’ll catch a smile. Just one smile.

I looked up at the painting, leaving the page unfinished. He certainly wasn't as hateful in his journal as he was in person. But why?

As I read on, that question answered itself. He wrote about the days that had passed, how he’d come to hate me so furiously that the sight of me sickened him. He talked about the things he’d said to hurt me, how every time he saw the tears in my eyes, it eased his soul. He started using my pain as medicine to heal his heart. And then he wrote about the day he met my threshold—the point that I could take no more from him, and he almost lost me for good.

It felt like acid in my veins to watch Jason lift her off the ground and cradle her naked body to his chest. The blood dripped from her head so thickly I wondered for a moment if she would wake at all from what I’d done to her. But I had to knock her out. Or at least that’s what I have to tell myself. Maybe I shouldn’t have used a rock. Maybe… No. I had to. As it was, I should never have pulled her back from the spirit realm when she was so deeply embedded. The pain … it must have been…

I can't think of that. I did the right thing. She had no right to take her own life just because it would save me from taking my own. Stupid girl. Stupid, stupid girl.

It ended suddenly there and the next page started with a date at the top—the date I found out I was pregnant.

I hate her. I hate every breath she takes and I wish I’d let her die last night. No. In fact, I wish I’d never loved her.

Wish I didn’t
still
love her.

I tried. I looked at her, with her pink cheeks and her body full of life, and I tried to let that hate transfer to the unborn child. I said things to her that … well, that I can never take back. I was angry. I heard the news this morning and I was so overjoyed that my uncle nearly fell over backward when I smiled. But I couldn't let Ara see that. I couldn’t tell her how badly I wanted to pick her up and spin her around and say I was sorry. Tell her I forgive her and we needed to mend the bridges now before our daughter arrived. Lilith made damn sure I knew about Ara’s fate before I got anywhere near forgiving her. And when I looked at her looking at me, waiting for me to share in that joy, knowing she would share every moment of our daughter’s life after that single moment with the man who would one day be her husband—a man other than me—I hated her. And I hated that child for being hers, knowing that, because Ara is who she is, my
own
child will never call me Daddy. I shouldn't have said those things to her. I just … I went into default and I guess, if I analyse my own behaviour, I hurt her so she wouldn't see me hurting more. I never wanted a child. I never wanted any life such as this, until I met Ara. She gave me hope. She
showed
me this human life—this life of love and living. And now, she’s the one taking it away, all because her fate and mine travel different paths. If I have to suffer for her fate, then she can suffer along with me.

Maybe I’m wrong. In fact, I know that when I wake tomorrow I’ll feel nothing but the cold sting of regret for everything I said to her, but if I don’t push her away now, I’ll get close.

I want to get close. So badly, I—

No. God, help me. I can’t make sense of it all. Anger and responsibility mingle evenly in my mind as some sick form of justification. I know, after today, she hates me now as fiercely as I hate her. But, unlike me, she has no love left underneath all of that. And it’s for the best. I will never take her back, just as she will never again look at me like I’m her entire world. The best we can hope for now is a future where we pass each other without feeling anything—not hate, not love, nothing. Nothing. I am not her husband. I am not that child's father. I am nothing to her and she is nothing to me. She can’t be. I can't let her. I can't … I can't get hurt like that. Ever again. And if I let a child bring us closer, that is exactly what will happen, because fate will see to it that we fail. I won’t lose her all over again. She’s not mine to lose anymore as it is. And if I never think of that baby as my own, I’ll never lose her either.

My heart shook in my chest, making my hands tremble. I flipped quickly through the pages then, knowing I had very little time and still hadn't cleaned the flour off my face.

In the last thirty or so pages, a clearer-headed David wrote a short, compacted version of his own thoughts and feelings on everything. And judging from the date, it was written on the night of the ball—the one that ended in me being locked in my room.

I searched a hundred years for her. When I found her, I refused to let myself believe. But day after day, seeing her, talking to her, I couldn’t help but think maybe love was real. That maybe I could be happy. Yet so many times she was torn away from me. We had to fight against unimaginable odds to be together, and when we finally found peace, she threw it away. For my brother. For the man who kidnapped her, tortured her, bound her to him in a dream, disguised as another man. How could she lay with him? How could she stand the feel of him inside her? How can she have let herself fall in love with him when she knew how badly I needed her? She knows me better than anyone—better than I know myself, and yet she did the one thing. The ONE thing that would completely destroy me.

Until now, I didn’t understand. I thought it was to hurt me, maybe for leaving her after she woke from the coma or maybe as revenge for not being there the night my brother kidnapped her. But it all made sense tonight when she finally opened up to me. It changed everything. And it doesn’t make sense. Why would she leave that vital piece of information out of her confession? Why didn’t she just tell me that she slept with him to bear his child in the hopes she could save me—be with
me
forever? Doesn't she understand what this means? She said she realised she loved Jason in allowing him inside her, and she didn’t want him to die for me after that. But my hatred, my anger was more toward her reasons for sleeping with him in the first place—not what she felt after. I imagined them hiding behind bookshelves, kissing and giggling like teenagers, whispering sweet nothings into each other’s ears, then waiting until I left to do my duty as king before fucking in my bed.

But it wasn’t like that. She was tortured for having slept with him. Enough that she walked out to the lighthouse and, in her grief, she jumped. My sweet, beautiful girl actually jumped. And no one was there. No one saw it. No one caught her. No one held her and told her she didn’t need to do that.

She didn't tell me she jumped. She didn’t tell anyone. In fact, she planned to take the secret to her grave, but I saw it. I saw her remember the way the rocks felt as she hit them. I saw her remember the feel of the locket slipping from her hands. I saw how much she needed to keep that from me and I understood why. She’s scared of me. She thinks I’ll hurt her if I know the truth. But she jumped for the guilt she felt—for the pain she knew she’d caused me after what she did but, most importantly, she jumped because she didn't
want
to love Jason. She could have died and I would never have known she loved me so much that she would let me hate her that way, as long as I was alive. And what makes me smile as I sit here writing this is that … she’s not so very different from me. She’s strong-willed and, in all honesty, if it was in reverse, I’d have done the same thing. I would not have hesitated to fornicate with another to save her. I could handle her hating me as long as she was still alive.

Of course, the two of them are a pair of fools. They should have checked their facts first. Ara, I expect this from. But Jason should have known better. They were wrong. Completely wrong and I’m not sure where they got their information, but I bet they both feel pretty stupid now for blowing apart an entire marriage and all its history on a misguided notion that Jason’s child in Ara’s womb would make him king and give him the power to wield the dagger. We’ve all been misled by this ancient and well-constructed lie over the centuries, but this is the worst example.

As soon as she told me tonight that she was just trying to save me, I nearly grabbed her and hugged her right there on the stairs. Then she said she still loves Jason. And what hurt most was that I could see the love had grown. The damage I’ve done since that day has hardened her against me. She let him inside her heart and his love has taken over.

My mind
keeps going back to the private conversation I had with Lilith, when she warned me of a fate line that would see Ara and Jason together no matter what. If I stood in the way of that, terrible things would happen to Ara and, until now, I was happy to stand back and let her be with Jason—eventually, after torturing them both a little in the process—but when I realised she loved me, that she slept with Jason
because
she loved me, I just wanted her back. Like a toy given to my brother in a bad deal that I later regretted. She isn’t a toy I can snatch back while he’s sleeping, though. She is the woman I love, and nothing, not even her betrayal has ever changed that. Yet nothing, not even my heart on a silver platter, will ever make her forgive me. I do catch her sometimes—thinking that she wants me back, even though she hates me. But then she hates herself for feeling that way.

I asked Lilith not to tell Ara what I knew about her fate line, because I know also that I need to push her into Jason’s arms. I need to play this betrayal out like it bothers me beyond repair and use it to make her hate me. If she knows that I know about her fate, she’ll know instantly that I’m hurting her to push her away. She’ll know exactly what to say to convince me that Lilith is wrong—that we should be together at any
cost, because I don’t really need any convincing. It’s how I already feel. But I can’t ask her to accept the fiery repercussions just because I’m willing to. She loves Jason enough to be with him and eventually be happy with him. And that has to be enough for me. However, it’s much harder now my hatred is completely gone. I forgive her for what she did with Jason. I forgave her back when I thought it was a vulgar betrayal, but now this new information has come to light it’s taken all the hatred I had left and replaced it with a longing so bad I feel the only thing I can do now is leave and let her get on with her life. I locked her in her room tonight. I had to exude extra anger and hatred. I couldn’t let her see the love in my eyes. I couldn’t let her know how heartbreakingly beautiful she looked in that dress or how lovely her skin looked under the candlelight, making me glance her way the whole night. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. I had to take her upstairs and lock her away so I could concentrate. I saw her heart break just that little bit more as I closed the door on her, and I knew there was no going back. I heard her sobbing. She was so hurt and, as much as she needs to be, I am also fearful that it may have been the last straw—that she won’t come to love me again now. But I can’t hope for that either.