Bird Song (67 page)

“He fights with himself when he’s with you:
 
He loves you, he wants to be with you to the point where it is physically painful to stop himself from doing so, but he does.
 
He doesn’t know how to cross that barrier, Grace, and he’s afraid that once he learns how, he won’t be able to stop himself from doing just that.
 
He’s as new to this as you are, but you weren’t born with built-in limitations like he was.
 
You can help him conquer that obstacle and learn to control how he feels and finally form that physical bond that your relationship is lacking.”

“Are you suggesting that Robert and I…”

Her nod sent a hot flush to my face and I turned away.

“Grace, I’m your mother.
 
If anyone is allowed to speak to you about such things, it should be me,” she chided.
 
She placed a cool hand beneath my chin and lifted my face.
 
“Now, pay attention.
 
This is important.”
 
She turned my face to my friends, their conversation growing heated as the topic returned to who it was that had become Lark’s wing-bringer.

“I don’t understand why you’re so upset about Grace being the one to make your wings grow.”
 
Graham stood off to the side, his hands shoved into his pockets as he watched Lark and Stacy, their hands held in front of each other, one face solemn, the other slightly annoyed.
 
“If she’s the one who did it for Robert, it makes sense that she’d do it for his sister, right?”

Stacy rolled her eyes while Lark’s frown turned into a full-blown grimace.
 
“It’s like I’m being punished,” she whispered.
 
“I lost Luca, and now I’m going to lose the two of you as well.”

Graham and Stacy instantly attended to her sudden grief, unsure as to what she was referring to.
 
Robert hissed, understanding and sympathy quite clear on his face.
 
The sound caused me to flinch as a sharp pain shot across my forehead.

“You’re not going to lose me,” Graham said with fierce determination in his voice.

“Hey, I’ve got some time left,” Stacy said with a slight laugh.

Recognition suddenly dawned on Graham and he wrapped his arms around Lark, burying his face into her dark hair.
 
“I didn’t understand.
 
I thought…never mind what I thought.
 
I’d give anything to be able to stay with you forever, but I’ll take what I can get.
 
Fifty plus years with you is far better than a single day without you.”

Lark’s angry laughed shocked all of us.
 
“You don’t get it, do you?
 
Of course not; you have no clue.
 
If it hadn’t been Grace, it would have been one of you, and then I’d have been stuck having to decide whether or not to turn you while leaving the other to wither away and die.”

“What do you mean by ‘turn’?” Graham asked, confused.

Stacy, too, seemed perplexed by Lark’s words.
 
“Yeah, I don’t get it either.”

Lark’s laughter grew louder as she pointed an angry finger in my direction—or at least, the direction of my body.
 
“She’s Robert’s wing-bringer.
 
Because of that, Robert can now ask permission to turn her, to make her immortal.
 
Instead of accepting this, she turned him down, over and over again, knowing what it will do to him when she dies and simply not caring.
 
And now, now there are two people whose lives could have benefitted from being my wing-bringer..

“Instead, it’s her, the one person who would turn down immortality because it goes against her whole ridiculous plan of being ‘normal’.”

Graham looked at my body and then at Robert, seeing the grief that was on his face as the truth of Lark’s words touched home.
 
He looked back at Stacy, whose eyes had turned red with unshed tears, her face growing pale as she realized what she had lost.
 
“What caused it—your wings to grow?
 
Do you know?”

“Of course I do,” Lark replied, her eyes whipping around to glare at Robert, who growled angrily in response.
 
“I saw what’s going to happen when Grace learns the truth about Robert, and her pain, her heartbreak at that betrayal is what triggered my change because I’m just as tied to her as he is.”

Graham and Stacy both threw accusing looks at Robert, whose lips were curled back as his growl grew deeper.

“You’ve said enough, Lark,” he hissed, and I fell to my knees, the pain cutting through my head like a torch.

“No, I haven’t, but I’m not going to be the one to tell her, Robert.
 
You will,” Lark said firmly.

“What did he do?
 
What did he do to Grace?” Graham asked, his hands clenched into angry fists at his side as he stalked towards Robert.

Lark and Stacy both grabbed him, Lark being more successful.
 
“That’s not for me to tell.”

He tried to shake his arm free, but Lark’s steel grip minimized the motion so that all you could see was his shoulder twitching.
 
He turned to stare at Lark, incredulity written on his face in deep lines.
 
“You know this is going to hurt her, break her heart, and yet you won’t tell her?
 
She’s my best friend!”

“I cannot break the laws of my kind,” Lark argued.

“But you can skirt around them?” Stacy asked, her eyes wary as she took in the gravity of the scene before her.
 
“I know you’re not supposed to tell Graham and I what you are, but you did anyway.
 
You broke all of those laws of your kind when you were with Luca, and now you decide that the rules can’t be broken or even bent a little because it involves Grace?”

Lark’s head began to shake in denial.
 
“No, that’s not it at all.
 
What I saw, these are visions of the future, things that I see only because I can see the thoughts of others who can, and I know that when they happen, Grace will be shattered.”

Lark’s words caused me to turn to face my mom once more, shock and anger coursing through me.

“This is what I needed to hear?
 
That Robert’s betrayed me somehow?”
 
When she nodded, I scoffed at the response.
 
“Why?”

“Because the choices you make afterwards will affect not just yourself, but everyone else around you.
 
What you decide once you wake up and hear the truth cannot be undone.
 
Your decision will affect the generations to come.
 
You must remember how much he means to you, how much you love him.
 
Remember that; promise me, Grace.”

I looked away, unwilling to promise anything to anyone, not with the fissure that had opened up in my heart starting to groan under the weight of what it knew was coming.

I closed my eyes and pressed my fingers against their lids, the throbbing that had remained long after the shooting pains had gone only increasing as I did so.
 
I could see in my mind the sadness that took over Graham’s face as he realized that his life would one day end, while Lark’s would go on.
 
I could see Stacy’s understanding that she could have had a chance at beating her disease had it not been for me.
 
I could see Lark, her pain from realizing this future loss so acute, it physically hurt to acknowledge it.

And I could see Robert.
 
Stubbornly holding onto whatever secret he had hidden away amongst the other secrets that were kept from me, secrets that would break my heart, that would cause a pain so great, simply seeing it had been enough to cause Lark’s change to happen.

I opened my eyes, needing to ask Mom one more question, but instead, I saw the worry filled eyes of Robert staring down at me.

“Oh thank God you’re alright,” he breathed, his mouth bending down to press against my forehead, his cool hands and lips pressing against my skin.

I pulled away.

“Grace, what’s wrong?” he asked, concerned.

I looked at Lark, Stacy, and Graham, their faces expectant.
 
Only Lark’s eyes held pity.

“Tell me,” I managed to whisper.
 
“Tell me the truth.”

He pulled back suddenly, shock causing his body to turn stiff and hard, making my position in his lap uncomfortable, like I was sitting in a crevice made of sharp rocks.

“I can’t,” he said with finality.

“You mean you won’t,” Graham snapped, offering his hand to me.

I grabbed it and pulled myself up.
 
“Tell me the truth, tell me what you’ve been keeping from me, what Lark saw,” I demanded, trying but failing to keep the minute vibrations in my hands from traveling up my arms.

He shook his head and looked away as he stood up, dusting the debris from his pants.
 
“I can’t.
 
I’ve seen what it’ll do to you.
 
I cannot do that to you.”

“You’ve already done it,” I accused.
 
“You owe me the truth now that it’s been done.”

He turned his face towards mine, the silver in his eyes nearly blocked out by the jet black of his widened pupils.
 
“I promised not to hurt you.”

“You lied.”

“When I first saw you, when I first came in contact with you, it was like a bolt of lightning had struck me directly in my heart and set fire to everything I ever knew about what it meant to be what I was, what it meant to love someone.
 
It seems cliché, especially among your kind, but I knew from the moment I saw you that you were the one, not just my wing-bringer, but the one person that I would love above all others, above myself.

“I saw in you something, something unlike anything else I had ever seen in another human being in all my fifteen hundred years.”

“You’re fifteen hundred years old?
 
You cradle-robbing bastard!” Graham shouted, lunging once again toward Robert.
 
Lark’s unnaturally quick hands managed to keep him at bay, her head shaking.

“I’m sorry you feel that way, Graham,” Robert said sadly, never taking his eyes off me.
 
“I love Grace.
 
And my age was never a problem with her; her opinion is the only one that matters.”

“I still say that’s pretty sick!”

Stacy grunted.
 
“Lark’s over five hundred years old, Graham.
 
What does that make you?
 
A dinosaur hunter?”

Graham choked at Stacy’s words, and quickly initiated a quiet conversation with Lark while Stacy rolled her eyes, continuing to chuckle at the turn of events.

Robert walked towards me, his hands extended.
 
I pulled mine away and hid them behind my back.
 
He saw this and stopped, understanding what it meant and continued with his confession.

“I wanted everything to be perfect for us, I wanted things to feel more like a fairytale, but I didn’t understand that fairytales are impossible for humans—it’s why your kind dream about them so often.
 
Instead of a fairytale, we fought—almost immediately—and I could see my future with you fading.

“When you were hit by Mr. Frey, I saw that as a second chance for me, saw that as an opportunity to brand myself into your soul.
 
I told you, Grace, that I’ve been fighting to keep you alive, fighting against the very thing that makes me who I am to keep you here.

“On the night that you were hit, you were supposed to die; Sam…Sam was there to end your life.
 
When I got there, we argued over you.
 
He told me that allowing you to live was going against his call…and mine.
 
I told him that it didn’t matter to me; you were my life, the call be damned.”

“What
is
your call anyway?” Stacy asked, curious.

“You know that I can’t-” Robert began.

“Tell me, yeah, I know,” Stacy sighed in defeat, cutting him off.

“Thank you,” Robert acknowledged.
 
“I don’t think you’d like me much if you knew, though.”

“If what you’re going to tell Grace is as bad as Lark’s making it out to be, I don’t think it’ll make things any worse,” Stacy quipped before turning away.

Nodding, Robert returned to his explanation.

“Sam finally relented when he saw what I was going through for you, and he left you with me so that I could save you.
 
I didn’t show you that part because you weren’t allowed to know who Sam was, or what he was to be more precise.”

“And yet you introduced me to him at Hannah’s wedding?” I asked, surprised.

“Of course.
 
He was my mentor, Grace.
 
Whatever he was supposed to do, I was the one who prevented it from happening.
 
He was doing what he was meant to—I’m the one who went against the rules.”

I threw up my hands, unconvinced by his sudden defense of Sam.
 
“He went against the rules, too, when he left you with me, didn’t he?
 
You’re sticking up for him—why?”