Amber Frost (39 page)

“I stayed in that tree for weeks, months, mourning your death. I’d never wanted to die so much or any time since. My desire for death was strong enough that I might have been able to die if I hadn’t known that I must live to find you again, so that we could be together… it was all that kept me going.”

“I searched for years, Caoilinn, hundreds upon hundreds of years but I never found you. Eventually, it became too much. My mind wasn’t meant to hold that many memories, that many experiences. Things started fading, my memories were slipping away. I was afraid I might forget you, forget the secrets you had shared with me, forget the spells I was to save and protect for you so I had it all tattooed on my body, encoded in designs I knew only you or I would ever be able to decipher.” Sebastian smirked down sardonically at me as he spoke. I wondered if he even realized that he had said Caoilinn not Gracelynn, if he differentiated me at all from this dead priestess of his past. Though perhaps we were one and the same soul, I also knew that I was a very different person than she. I may have been this Caoilinn once but I was not any longer; I was Gracelynn, I was me.

“I searched for you for years by myself. I was so lonely, I longed for company, for a companion, for a friend. And that’s when I started to create the Others,” he admitted quietly. He dropped his eyes in shame. “One by one I’d meet them, befriend them, grow to love each of them in their own way, enough so that I wanted them to become like me. But they were never you. I was never satisfied, I was never truly happy. For a time I’d think I was happy or at least content living with the family, the brothers and sisters I’d created. The world was our playground – we got whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted it. There were no rules for us, no consequences for our actions – or so I thought.”

“I told the Others about you and at first they helped me search, perhaps wanting me to find happiness or at least wanting to be close to your power once you were found. But soon the Others stopped wanting to find you, they realized what it would mean. I was already more powerful than any of them, and they knew that once I found you, I would be even stronger, sharing your power through the Binding between us. It scared them. They began to discourage and distract me from my search. They wanted me to forget and slowly I did.”

“I first forgot how to decode the designs, then I forgot what they might mean at all. It should never have been possible, but somehow I eventually forgot you and in doing so, I forgot myself. Maybe it was because I was so tired from my search, so full of heartache and hopelessness that a small part of me wanted to forget. I don’t know why... I’m so sorry,” he murmured, his eyes pleading, begging for my forgiveness. I tried to smile back reassuringly at him; all I could manage was a slight twitch of my lips. I was nearly frozen in shock.

“I always felt like something was missing though, like something was wrong. And so one by one I erased the Others’ memories of me. I abandoned them; left them to find their own way in the world, unable to age and with strange and dangerous powers that once given were impossible to take away. I didn’t want them to remember or find me though, so they didn’t, they couldn’t,” he explained.

“I was disgusted with myself for creating and then abandoning the Others, for the horrible, conscienceless way I had lived when I was with them. I was so tired, so exhausted, lonely, and depressed, and more than anything I just wanted to forget it all – my past, my self, even my true name. I didn’t want to remember who I was or the horrible things I had done. I didn’t want to remember any of it; I just wanted to crawl into a little hole, curl up and fall asleep and be forgotten myself. And so I did,” he finished with a simple smile.

“Your… hibernation?” I asked tentatively. He nodded his confirmation.

“Yes. You know the way my life went after that. Fate, eventually, brought me back to you. After thousands of years, I finally found what I’d been searching for and I was almost stupid enough to lose you again,” he added bitterly. The angry twist to his words didn’t sound right coming from his beautiful, soft lips, spoken in his wonderful, lilting voice.

“You were stupid,” I agreed.

“Not for wanting you to forget me,” he objected, his voice and expression serious. “I would do it all over again if I thought it would make you happy, if I thought it would keep you safe. But I realize now why it would never work – at least not for long,” he added upon seeing my frown. “I was wrong to try to push you away, even if it did seem to be for the best at the time. I should have known I couldn’t fight fate that way. I should have remembered you – should have realized that your wants would ultimately always be more powerful than my own.”

“What are you talking about?” I demanded, shifting beneath his jacket as I spoke. I had momentarily forgotten about my arm and winced in expectation of the searing, blistery pain. The pain exploded down my arm and side, my skin throbbing with a sharp, stabbing ache as if it had been badly sunburnt and then cut by a hundred shards of acid-soaked glass.

“Do you want your arm to hurt still?” Sebastian asked curiously. I frowned back at him, annoyed by his sarcasm and how he had avoided my question.

“Of course not. But what – oh!” I gasped. As soon as I said the words, the pain instantly left my arm and my side, evaporating like mist in the air. I sat up, shoving Sebastian’s jacket aside and inspecting my arm, wiggling my fingers and flexing my muscles. The dark tattoo was still there, dancing on my skin as my muscles and ligaments flexed beneath its intricate, twisting pattern. I stared at it almost admiringly, disbelievingly.

“It stopped hurting once I decided I wanted it to,” I gasped, speaking my thoughts out loud. “Am I… am I like you now?” I held my breath as I waited for his answer. He leant closer to me so that his face was right in front of mine, his eyes full of a thousand years of sadness and bright with his hesitant joy.

“You’ve always been like me,” he answered with a soft smile. He leaned in even closer and slowly kissed me, his lips soft and smooth, his mouth warm and welcoming. My head began to spin dizzily. It took some effort to break apart from him even for air. I certainly didn’t want our kiss to ever end. “You don’t remember yet how to control your ability, it’s going to take you some time to learn. Just now for example, you couldn’t want the pain to stop enough for it to work, until you were near your breaking point. And though you’re infinitely more powerful than I, your abilities are also that much less predictable. You’re like me but different; you’re like no other. No one has made you this way Gracelynn, it’s just who you are. Your power was not given, it is your own – that is the ultimate difference.”

“I don’t understand,” I objected, my head still spinning with my disorientating thoughts. “Why was I aging then? Why haven’t I always been able to make what I want happen? Why now? How is this possible?” He smiled patiently, lightly kissing my forehead and erasing my confused frown.

“The magic has always been there inside you, Gracelynn, lying dormant, waiting. Just like the Binding between us has always been there though now it’s doubly strong. I was already pulling strength from you through the Binding – that’s why I started to remember things after I met you, why I gained so much control over my ability, why my power increased. You couldn’t remember your magic in this life though, maybe it seemed too impossible to you and so you never tried. But then, after I took your memories, you wanted to remember who you were enough that you did. And you remembered not just who you are in this life, or who you were in the past but who you
truly
are, just as I remembered my true self. When the memories came back to me – it was too much, I couldn’t handle it. Hundreds upon hundreds of years of memories, experiences and emotions… I nearly lost my mind, nearly lost myself to my past. When you recast the Binding spell between our souls, it reaffirmed the connection between us. You were like an anchor tying me down, a lifeline for me to cling to as you lent me your strength and your will for me to survive. You saved me, Gracelynn, as only you ever could. And in Binding your soul to me again, and bearing the mark of our connection, you came into your true self, you reaffirmed who you are. The magic has been inside you all along, and now you’ve reawakened it,” he solemnly pronounced. Chills ran up and down my spine at his words. It took me a moment to recover myself enough to speak. I was so overwhelmed, I just spoke aloud the first thought that popped into my mind.

“I suppose that explains breakfast this morning then,” I commented. It was a weak joke and ill-timed, I couldn’t quite manage an accompanying smile. Sebastian arched a curious brow at my tone. “It was the strangest thing – all of the eggs had double yolks and no one could really explain why, but I guess I’m going to have to get used to strange things happening around me now.”

“What did you just say?” Sebastian demanded. His hands were suddenly on my arms, squeezing me roughly, urgently, lifting me up off the floor.

“At breakfast this morning, all of the eggs had double yolks,” I repeated as I scrambled to my feet. His eyes went wide, his expression shifting to one of horror and sudden fear.

“They’re here,” he gasped, his face going pale. A wave of cold dread swept over me as I instantly understood what he meant.

“The Others?”

He nodded, staring at me aghast.

“How can you be certain?”

Sebastian’s eyes darted about wildly. He began scrambling around his room, searching through his few unpacked belongings. He distractedly answered my question as he moved.

“The strange things that happen around me are a direct result of my ability to twist fate to get what I want. When I twist fate, it’s like throwing a pebble into a pool – it causes ripples that flow outward, their direction and rhythm are beyond my control,” he explained. “But my ability was never the same as yours, it was only an echo, a similar power that you gave me but one that I could never fully understand or control because it was never truly meant to be mine. As I said, your ability wasn’t given to you by anyone, it was yours – it
is
yours. It’s a natural part of who you are. You don’t cause any ripples because you don’t twist fate like myself and the Others do; you
change
fate, you will it to be different and it is. The strange, uncontrollable events only occur around me, Gracelynn, me and the Others.”

“Walter,” I gasped as the realization hit me. It seemed so obvious now, I couldn’t believe I’d been so blind. “When I left the house, he said something about you protecting me. He
knows
Sebastian – he must be one of them.”

“Tell me exactly what he said,” Sebastian instructed urgently.

I nodded, quickly thinking back. “He wanted to see my necklace, he tried to make me give it to him but I wouldn’t. He became angry and I could have sworn the sky outside darkened. Then Clarke arrived and – well, you know what happened next. Walter tried to stop me when I was leaving, or rather, he tried to get my Mother to. He said something about you protecting me – he knew I was going to you. He said I was going to ‘ruin’ them all,” I quoted. Sebastian’s eyes widened though the rest of his expression was one of sudden deadly calm.

“I’ve met Walter – I don’t remember him. I know I’ve never met him before,” he told me. “That means some of the Others must have given him his abilities, and recently I’d bet. The Others aren’t as strong as you or I; it would have taken several of them to give Walter even the smallest ability, which means that there must be at least three here, in Victoria – four including Walter – maybe more. Once I met you and started to remember that there might be others like me, I started to want them to know me, to find me… I must have caused them to remember me.” His face was ashen as he spoke, his eyes hollow and black. “I’ve brought them down upon us. And if Walter was asking about your necklace, that means he knows who you are, he’ll know the power you’re capable of. They’ll want to keep us apart, to stop you from regaining your full powers, to stop you from making me more powerful. They’ll try to kill us both,” he pronounced, his voice hushed with his own building fear. “If they see your arm, they’ll know you performed the Binding again and they’ll assume you’ve regained your full ability. It could scare them enough to band them together. United in their fear and by their wants, they could kill us quickly and easily.”

I stared back at him in silence, reading the building fear in his beautiful eyes. “What can we do?” My voice came out quiet and monotonously calm.

“We run. If there are only four of them, we should be able to get away. If there are five, we’re dead.” Chills ran down my spine at his cold pronouncement. “You’re not strong enough yet, you don’t remember enough, you don’t have enough control – five could want our deaths enough that it would be so.” I nodded, trying to calmly and rationally consider his terrifying words.

“If we run, can’t we just not want them to find us?”

Sebastian shook his head with a slight frown. “If only it were that simple.
All
of the Others will want to find us now, not just the ones who are already here. They will
all
remember, and they badly outnumber us, Gracelynn. Our only hope is to stay out of their clutches for long enough for you to regain all of your powers and for us to decipher my tattoos. And then we’ll have no choice but to hunt
them
. Only you are powerful enough to stop them, to take away their ability – it’s the only way to ensure our safety. I’m so sorry Gracelynn. I’ve given you the added burden of fixing my mistakes.”