Son of Ra (8 page)

“A night out.”

I wasn’t sure what to think so I think so I didn’t say yes or no.

“One hour, the balcony, dress comfortable.”

Fine.  I couldn’t find any way to say no to him.  I’m not even sure I want to leave him no matter how mad he makes me sometimes.  And define
sometimes
. I’ve known him all of two days.  Yet, I feel like I’ve known him a lifetime.

Someone appeared around the side of him.  The guard.  Standing like the gothic picture of darkness I'd always equated to Vampires, he was blonde and a force to be reckoned with.

“Sir.” the guarded said to Cas.

Cas demanded my attention a second longer before rubbing a thumb across my cheek and telling me, “I need to take care of something.  Tonight.”  He ended with a assuming tone to his voice.

I nodded and watched both of them retreat away from me.  Why did I not notice that he was so take charge authoritative like?  I wanted to know who he really was.

Chapter Eight

…is not worth living.

We flew off into the night with a satcheled bag on his shoulder.  He’d filled it with two spiced ciders and leftover sweetbread found in the kitchen.  There was something else in there by the weight of it, but I couldn’t decipher the contents.

He brought me down to the ground softly and stood there sending a jolt of pure excitement up through the center of me.  I knew he was watching me.  By now, in this short amount of time, I didn’t have to ask.  I felt the same way, but I was not ready or willing to admit it yet.  I’d said enough with my lips earlier.  We sat on a stone bench situated in the center of a forest-like garden area. 

“Where are we?”  I asked still looking around conspicuous of where we were.  He still hadn’t stopped staring. 

“The place I was born.”

I looked at him slowly to hide my interest.  I was trying hard to be somewhat defiant.  “This is where you…are we at the Valkyrie gardens?” A small sound of irritation came to the surface.

“You’re safe,” he said quickly misjudging my reasons for asking.

“I know.” 

“As young as five, I used to lay here and count every star in my head until I fell asleep.  My father would pick me up and I’d wake up in my bed.”

“And you never saw the sun after you turned?”

He shook his head.  "Mostly no."  Sad!  Ironic.

“I used to lay here and picture you beside me counting too.”

That was bit creepy, but the awe outweighed it.

I felt conflicted.  Lying down now in the soft grass I wheedled out, “I spent as much time dreaming about anything but what my court involved.”

“You asked me not to give you half truths.  I’ll admit that I don’t think you’re ready for all of it, but I will try to give you more of what you ask.”

His face was beside me lying really close making me feel like my head was wrapped in a thermal blanket and muffled from anything else in the world.  “Thank you.”  If it weren’t for the fact that I knew more information was so close on his tongue and available if he’d just tell, I’d have been a little more elated. 

“I was told to continue to watch you after I changed and could stay safe with you.    I watched you one of the first times you hid in the garden.  Only, I was already there when you arrived.  I’d counted the constellations twice when you came there just waiting to see you.  I was as much enamored by you then as I am now.  You were so passionate and free and I couldn’t stop watching you,” he blinked rapidly.

I laughed at his way of describing my adolescent self, “That’s how you saw me?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t have described it that way then.  It was a young boy who’d been sent to keep a child safe because one day she would be queen.”

I jerked my head landing my nose in his shoulder blade.  The truth loomed over us like a wavering cloud.

“Yes.  No half truth here, you will be queen.  It has been foretold.”

I kept complete control of my mouth that landed right beside his, “By who?”  I crept slowly upward to look at his face closer.  I needed to avoid those lips for anything other than letting its secrets flow.  I fisted my hands behind my back to refrain.

He didn’t tell me what I wanted to know.  “They told my father, my father told me. They knew so much about you.  It scared me.  That was the day he and Lord Hathown told me when you were born.”

Uh, oh!  I didn’t see that coming. 

“And remind me that you know when that is?” I asked the stars letting his eyes lose their hold on me.

“February 29
th
.”

I sat up on my knees facing him and trying to remember if I'd told him that.  He followed and sat sideways folding his one arm down to hold himself up, and laid his legs perpendicular to his weight.  That one hand broadcasting a huge emerald stoned ring on his right hand that I
know
I hadn't mentioned yet.

“Ask me?”  I knew he meant me to ask his birthday.

I nodded an ardent yes.  “Yours?”

“February 29
th
.”

I stared.  I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut.

“Truths.”  He was testing to see if I could handle more.  If I showed any sign of TMI he was going to shut down.

“What does it all mean?” I let my breath out very slowly thinking surely I’m some super villain who would soon find herself faced with Armageddon like proportions.

“Mostly, that we were never really in charge with the possibilities, but ultimately we can choose to not follow our destiny,” he brushed a strong willed thumb gently across the length of my bottom lip.

“Interesting way of slicing it.  It still comes out in pieces.”  Or some strange horrible demon that’s trying to make me go insane with the fact that my life is totally planned out and I have no control.  And I seriously should get some credit for not saying everything I think out loud.
 
I tried not to laugh at myself.

“So philosophical!” he teased rubbing the top lip with the same thumb.

“Likewise,” I looked up into his eyes.

His hand shining just like so in the moonlight showed the ring on his finger. The slightest hint of ruby red sat beside the emerald
. 
It matched my ring, yet mine seemed to have several colors inside the stone. 
Odd that I didn’t notice before.

He lay back down. 

I watched his facial features in the moonlight.  I watched him so much for two days that I could see the way his eyebrows arched up not in anger, but in some kind of conflict he seemed trying to overcome.  “What is it?”

“You don’t have to tell me, but do you like the Hunter boy?”

No, I don’t.  Not the same.
 
  “I do.”

He was completely still.

“But not in the same way…you have a way of… of making me so mad I want to prove myself.  A way of…of making me melt ten times over just by looking at you.  Your thoughts drive me insane, yet it thrills me to nothing to want to hear more.  I think that Calum, he is my calm and you are my storm.  I feel right around him.  He makes me feel…”  What did I want to say, “Like a peace that makes everything okay.”   Describing it wasn’t easy.

“What do you feel when you kiss me?” 

Such hard questions.  Enraptured?  To tell him means to give him secrets only my own heart knows or can’t define as of yet.  I’m not sure I want to give that away just yet, though he knew most everything about me and could read pretty much the rest of it.

“I don’t think I want to tell you just yet.  I shouldn’t be boosting your ego.”  I pushed his arm meaning to be apologetic in a sense.

“Tell me?” He pouted his lip.  He really needed to know.  Wanted to know.  Had to know.  And I wanted to tell him.

“My insides fall apart.  I’m frozen there, right then with only you in my world.”  I knew what he was waiting for.  He hadn’t moved still.  “And Calum, I can tell now that I’ve tasted your lips,” this felt awkward, but right, “I only feel a comfort when I’m with him.  Like a brother.” 
There!  I said it.

He turned on his side and pulled my hand towards him to roll to my side.  I waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. 

“I don’t know what to say with you sometimes,” he confessed. 

Confessions surround the air we breathe.  “I have more to say than I’ve ever wanted to say to someone than I ever have, ever, in my life.  But I’ve only just met you and I’m deathly afraid to say much more for several different fear driven reasons.”

He smiled.  I loved it.  “Same here.”  He paused.  “What do you want to say?” his voice alone drew me in making me wonder if it was a Vampire thing.

“Um, analog or digital?”  Okay!  That was stupid. But he avoided the real answers I needed.

He scrunched his face up in confusion at my idiot question.  “Analog, I guess.”

“Sunglasses or hats?”  I wasn’t sure where I would go from here.

“Both!”  No deliberating.

“Boxers or briefs?”  I didn’t just say that. 

His cheeks actually reddened. 

“I’ll never tell.”

I freaking did say it.  This is so not me.  Change the subject fast!

“Um, Jeep or sports car?”

“1990 Bronco.”

Hmm!
I like. I thought a while on that dumbstruck with the face that we’ve flown, but not driven.
 

“If we are playing twenty questions, then you have sixteen to go?”

I didn’t know what to say. 

“Or I could take a turn?”

I nodded indifferently only to break the silence and pressure of not talking.  I’d just said I had a lot to say, but somehow was rendered speechless.  This boy really kept my stomach in knots.  I’d have to get away from him soon just to untie them, but did I really want too?

“Plane or train?”

My voice cracked, “Train.”

“Really, why?”

“Well, a train can possibly stop anywhere on the tracks, a plane can only land where it is clear for a landing.  I prefer an absolute more than the possibility of no survival.”

He studied me, no doubt analyzing everything.

“You’re afraid of dying?”

“Immensely!” 

“And you’ve never told anyone?” he guessed again.  I touched the ring to be sure.  It was against my skin. 

He guessed my anxiety and chuckled under his breath.  “Even though you heal?”

I nodded yes twice.

“Thank you!”

“For what?”

“My trust with your secret.”

I nodded unenthusiastically.  I seem to be good at least moving my head up and down in an attempt to look coherent, but it was a facade.

“Movies or stargazing?”

I gave him my best “you’re an idiot for asking” look.

He smiled.

“Grapes or strawberries?”

“Grapes with cheese.”

“Interesting.  Red or green?”

I turned to see his eyes wanting him to see me looking.  “Do they come in gold?” 

He figured it out by the raise of his eyebrows.  His eyes had already taken on the flames in the darkness of his eyes early on in the conversation.

“Seedless,” I answered.

“Wine, red or white?”

“White.  I like the way it rainbows in my glass.”  That was a very childish thing to say.

He was reaching in the satchel when I remembered what he said when we arrived.  He was born here. 

Out of the satchel came green grapes, red grapes, two glasses, and a bottle of white champagne.   My mother’s favorite.  I knew this because my father told me at every holiday meal where we celebrated and he relived his memories of her after finishing the entire bottle save mine and Szar’s glass.  I flipped my head sideways.  “How did you know?”

He didn’t say.  He was sitting with one knee propped up and facing me.  I sat my legs sideways to take up as little space as possible.  I watched the bubbles in my glass turning this way and that to catch the rainbows dancing in his eyes.

“Why were you born here, at my gardens?”

He was waiting for it.  He watched his own glass as he spoke, “I was born a Valkyrie.  Here.  In the same place as you.”

My eyes were wicked large and waiting.    

“Remember your father knew about me?”  He pointed to where the sun is.  “We were born on the same night, your brother, you, and I.”

I was overwhelmed even though he premised it earlier.

“And when my mother died she left the same kind of letter that the gods had deemed enough for us.  My real father killed himself later and left me behind.  I stayed and grew up two floors down below you.  The Vampire lord turned me in an attempt to protect me from the fate that the three of us were destined to that night but it was leading right into what would all play out anyway.  Your father helped him.”

I opened my mouth, but he slid one finger in front of me to stop me.

“This may all come out jumbled up, but I’ve never spoken it aloud.  My father turned me for various reasons.  I lost my place in the Val court that day.  I only returned the day your father resummoned me and asked for of my help only to fulfill the original destiny back to its place.  Since my sired father was dead not many years after that, I was left alone to make decisions that were already in the making.  I didn’t have any decision to make after that first night to watch you again.  I knew.”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?” he was surprised, I guessed.

“For all that you went through.  No one should have to question where they belong or lose the ability to choose what or where or how to go anywhere.” 

“Thank you, but I did choose.  And so did your brother.”

“Szar?”

“He chose to be taken, beaten, and withstand malnutrition for your safety.  He is truly courageous and admirably underestimated.  He will be a great leader.”