Mark of Betrayal

Page 44

“Stop!” I yelled into my hands. “Stop it. I can't let myself believe I loved him!”
Oh, you loved him. You did, and you know it.
“No!” I stopped the thought abruptly, but it crept back in to betray me with its truth.
What is it that hurts, Ara? She asked from deep inside my nightmare. Is it that he’s gone, or that you’re psychotic and perverted for loving him?
“Both,” I said, finally defeated enough to admit it in this real world—away from the pressure of snakes or falling from cliffs.
This will kill him, you know, this will kill David when he finds out.
“No! Stop it, please. I've done nothing wrong!” I shouted. “Nothing!”
Nothing?
A wild summer wind swept over the sand and brushed it stiffly across my legs; I composed myself with a few jagged breaths, wiping my soaking face. I was exhausted. That’s what this was really about. Even my soul was tired. I just needed rest. If I could just go to sleep, I’d wake up and see that everything really was okay—that maybe it was true, maybe I did love Jason, but maybe it didn't matter, because he was gone, and I still had David.
The shadow of the lighthouse, sitting high atop the cliff, stole the white from the sand as it stretched across the beach in a grey shadow. Behind it, the sun blinded me when I tried to make out the distance from here to the top. I wanted to jump up there but, exhausted as I felt, I’d probably slip and fall off. So, I wandered away from the windbreak of the cliff and let the ocean breeze wrap around me, bringing the soft scent of frangipani fabric softener and salty sea spray. And with that smell, a tiny little positive crept up to make me smile; at least I never have to do dishes or laundry, ever again. That’s pretty cool.
“Amara?” The confused tone of a pleasantly deep voice made my shoulders sink as a hand came upon me.
“Hello, Arthur.” I glanced back and smiled.
“My lady?” He stopped beside me. “What are you doing out here by yourself? You should be resting.”
“I know.” I nodded and folded my arms across my chest. “I didn’t feel like being alone.”
“But—” Arthur looked around. “You are alone.”
“Not like I am when I'm inside.” I turned to the thrashing waves and flicked my head so my hair blew away from my neck. “Out here, I have the wind and the open air to distract me—it kind of makes my heart beat for me, you know, but when I'm alone, in the still, it’s like I'm too warm, wrapped up in a blanket I can't get out of.”
Arthur’s brows pinched in the middle, and my eyes, as I looked at him, watered from the blinding light of the high afternoon sun. “You're not all right, are you?” he asked.
I shook my head.
He let out a breath and wrapped one arm, then the other, over my shoulders, and tugged me until I fell into his chest, my cheek against the indent between his breastbones. “Just cry. My darling girl. Let it all out.” He stroked my hair. “I’m here. I’ll make it all better.”
My chest heaved, each breath a jagged shriek that coughed back out. Arthur’s embrace was so firm that I no longer felt the wind, so tight that my lungs struggled to draw air, and so loving I almost felt like his girl.
“It’s been a long few years, hasn’t it?” he said in a low, soothing voice. “You've been through so much for such a young girl, and I imagine you've probably not spoken of how deeply you're hurting?”
My chest shuddered, the sobs turning to short, quick breaths as I settled myself. When I pulled slightly away from Arthur and saw the wet outline of a face all over his white silk shirt, my cheeks burned. “Oh, my God, Arthur, I'm sorry.”
He looked down too, wiping his hand over my mess. “I wear the tears of the queen with honour.”
I laughed once. “It sounds funny when you say queen.”
His teeth showed on one side as he breathed a smile. “Yes, but you are queen. And we are all so proud of you.”
“I thought I failed, you know.” I stepped away from his arms and let the wind dry my cheeks. “I can’t tell you how scared I was that I’d let everyone down.”
He only nodded, as if waiting for me to speak. Then, like falling asleep with a heavy book on your chest and suddenly waking to lift it off, I sat in the sand with Arthur, by the lashing whitewash, and, leaving out the part about David being alive, told him everything. Everything. Told him all I saw on the Walk of Faith, everything I came to face—all the failures, all the truths—especially the truth about Jason. And he listened, with his hands linked together, his arms falling loosely over bended knees, smiling, nodding every now and then.
As the blanket of shame, fear and sadness blew away in the wind, I took a deep, shaky breath and turned my head to look at him for the first time since we sat down. “I'm sorry.” I grabbed his arm and looked at his watch. “I’ve been talking for an hour.”
“Then you have nowhere near been talking long enough.” He touched his hand over mine.
I sniffled. “You're a good friend, Arthur.”
He opened his mouth, his chest lifting with a deep breath that he let out slowly. “I'm glad you told me all this.”
“What do you think it all means—all that snake business?”
He sighed. “I'm not sure. But, like you said, this snake, this entity who came to you, it wanted you to realise the truth of yourself, right?”
I nodded, more than a little eager to hear his take on it.
“Perhaps, that is the truth. Perhaps you loved them both—Jason and David, and maybe when you come to terms with this, your life can take a journey on a new path.”
“I have come to terms with it, Arthur. So where’s this new path?”
“No, my dear, you have not. You have admitted it—barely, but you have not come to terms with it.”
“Aren't they the same things?”
He laughed softly. “No.”
“Well, how do I come to terms with it?”
“That, my dear child, you will have to learn on your own. One day, you will wake up and everything will suddenly make sense to you—the path you must take, the road you’ve been down, all the questions you ask yourself about why—it will all make sense, and then, and only then, does it mean you have come to terms with what is in your heart, and essentially, what you, deep down inside, are.”
“What I am? What do you mean by that?”
He looked out at the ocean. “I mean that…you perceive yourself as this confused little girl, who thinks she knows what's right but doesn’t trust herself. You also believe every impure thought you have—perhaps thoughts for another man—make you a bad person, somehow. But you’re not. You are, for all intents and purposes, human. And you make human mistakes and feel human emotions. You berate yourself far too harshly for what you feel, Amara, and that will, in the end, be your undoing.”
“My undoing?”
“Emotionally. You cannot rule if you are not strong, in here.” He tapped his chest. “And you cannot be strong if you do not love yourself—or at the very least, understand yourself.”
I nodded. “That’s the problem. I can't understand how I could feel anything for Jason at all. I can't understand how I can love anyone else but David. He…” I looked ahead, closing my eyes for a second. “Even though he’s gone, he should still be the only one I ever love.”
“Amara, don't be so harsh on yourself. You cannot expect to be alone for the rest of your days.”
“I know. But what about when he was alive?” I said. “I loved Jason then, Arthur, and I can't forgive myself for that.”
“Did David ever know how you felt about his brother?”
“He asked me a few times—but we always got interrupted and just never continued the conversation.”
“What do you think he would say now—if he were to find out?”
I went a little stiff. “I'm not sure. I think he’d hate me.”
Arthur nodded.
“Really?” I looked at him. “You’re nodding. So, you agree?”
“Unfortunately, my dear, I can't honestly answer that. You see, David spoke to me shortly after he first saw you. And we had many conversations preceding that, where I learned two things. One; David had lost faith in the world. He believed there was no good left in anyone—not vampires and not humans. The other thing I learned was that, through reading the minds of humans for a hundred years, David had a bitter hatred for their kind. Until you came along. He saw in you a pure soul; he said all your thoughts were battles between right and wrong and he had never met a girl so innocent, so undamaged by the world, that he instantly fell for you.”
“Undamaged?” I scoffed. “Arthur, I have to be just about the most damaged girl in the world.”
He laughed. “Yes, but he meant that you were not tainted by the world’s ways. You weren’t mean, harsh—you thought of others before yourself.”
“I did?” I rubbed my hairline. “Boy, did he have me figured all wrong.”
“No, my dear, he did not. He was right. Sometimes you look past other people, too busy worrying about how not to hurt them, that you do just that. I know what you are, and David fell in love with what you are. He told me he learned more about compassion and kindness in a week with you than he did in an entire century from the human race.” The sun made his nose look longer as he looked at the ocean again. “He loved you fiercely, my dear, and it was because you are a good, pure soul.”
“Which is exactly why he’d hate me so much if he realised that I'm not.”
“By loving another?” Arthur frowned. “You think you’re impure because your heart wanted his brother?”
“Yes.”
“Did you have his brother? Did you cheat on David?”
“No. I mean, I don't really know. I held hands with Jason and I know I kissed him, but—”
“But this was in your dreams.”
“Mind-links.”
“Or maybe they were merely dreams, Amara. You don't actually know, do you?”
I shook my head slowly. “I guess not.”
“And, if Jason were here right now, alive, would you be with him?”
“Um, no. Not if David were alive as well.”
“Why?”
“Because I love David. I'd never want to hurt him like that.”
“Precisely.”
“So, what are you saying? What's your point?”
“My point is…David would hate you for doing the wrong thing, Ara. He would likely be immensely angered to learn you had feelings for Jason, but unless you acted on those, I doubt he could ever bring himself to hate you.”
I shook my head. “Even then, it doesn't make having feelings for Jason right.”
“No, but you are not declaring that you didn't love David by facing the truth that you love Jason.”
“Yeah, I guess not.” I laughed, moving my toes to make patterns in the sand under them. “But…I still lose sleep over it.”
“Well, if ever you find yourself unable to sleep, come to my chamber,” Arthur said. “I have some herbal remedies that assist with relaxing the mind of a vampire.”
“Do you have one that makes the heart stop feeling anything?”
“No. And you do not need such things.”
“Hmpf!”
“Amara—” He turned my face to look at him. “You're a young girl, nineteen, to be exact. You are still learning the inner workings of your heart. Most girls your age have had many boys in their life at this point to learn from, but you, my dear, have had one.”
“No, two,” I corrected.
“Ah, of course.” He drew a breath through his teeth. “Mike. But, Amara, falling for, having feelings for, and even acting on those feelings for boys, does not mean you are bad or promiscuous—it simply means you are young.”
“So, are you saying I shouldn’t have gotten married—that I can never be monogamous in my heart because I'm young?”
“No.” He tilted his head. “Simply that if your heart wants, don't hate yourself for it. A wise young girl once told me that the heart lives by its own set of rules.”
He smiled; I smiled back.
“Unfortunately,” he continued, “the world has created its own rules about how love should be, too. That doesn’t mean it’s natural. Queen Lilith, for example, had four husbands—”
“But I thought she was promised to marry Peter?”
“She was. He would have been her fifth.”
“Then why do we see him in the dome, and not the other husbands?”
“Because he was the catalyst that saw her demise.”
“What did he do?”
“He gave Drake information on how to kill her, since it was he who discovered that if a pure-blood is beheaded, they will remain in a state, like death, until reassembled. We didn’t know that. We figured she was indestructible like her father and brother—aside from the fact that her venom was deathly to vampires.” Arthur smiled, tapping his tooth. “And that fact was the only thing that rendered Drake compliant when Vampirie stripped him of his title as king.”
“Why did Vampirie do that?”
Arthur cleared his throat, sniffing once. “Drake’s love for his new wife Anandene turned to obsession; he became reckless, nonchalant in his duties as king. Vampires were out of control again and wreaking havoc on the world. It was more than the Set leaders and the World Council, combined, could control.”