Stay (27 page)

And as she followed Derek from their table and across the floor I watched the cord stretch and rapidly begin to fade.

No!
I inwardly screamed and leapt out of my seat. My limbs didn’t belong to me then as I jerked the hood of my cloak over my head and let the curse fill me. My eyes fixed on Derek and Lissa’s retreating backs and I glanced at a nearby server.

I felt the familiar tug and pull of energy twisting in my gut and concentrated on the floor beneath their feet. Sure enough, the server slipped on the suddenly wet floor and the contents of their tray landed on Derek’s finely tailored suit. He growled while others around them hissed and shushed him.

Distantly Cain continued to play as his voice faded and Lissa moved to help Derek. Before she could touch him, I snatched her hand in mine and pulled her with me, away from her dark beloved and his weightless promises.

I glanced over my shoulder as we darted up the stairs and through the secret room, out the double doors and into the frozen city. Lissa started shouting the moment we had passed through the doors, when the hood fell back onto my shoulders.

“Orona, what’s the big idea? Why did you do that?” Her wild green eyes searched mine and demanded an explanation. She looked at me as though she had never seen me before and this was when I glanced at the glass window nearby and saw my glowing reflection. Colors of every shade and others no human could see with their weak eyes dashed rapidly across my skin. I fought to keep it under control.

I shook my head, willing her to somehow hear me as I said, “You must not go with him!”

Lissa cursed and marched up to me until the fury of her scarlet aura clouded the space between us. “Like I said to you before, it’s none of your business, Orona! Why can’t you just let it go! I don’t care what you think. I’m not good enough for anyone but at least Derek pays the bills!” As she finished I watched the thread that had bound her soul to his, to Cain’s, finally snap. The light in her emerald eyes, the brief joy I had watched take her in his embrace, dulled and faded to nothingness.

“What about Cain?” I feebly replied.

Her eyes flickered to mine and she clenched her long-nailed fingers into tight fists. “Shouldn’t you be asking yourself that question?” With another shake of her head she sighed and added, “I’m going to hail a cab.” She turned to the street and the nearby hub of vehicles and traffic.

I followed, desperate to stop her and myself from the temptation once more dangled in front of me. But the curse was too strongly a part of me now. And in this moment I embraced it.

“Taxi!” Lissa yelled as she chased down one of the yellow-painted vehicles.

“Rona?” Cain’s voice called
distantly from behind me. Like a match his voice sparked the light I had been missing and I finally knew what I had to do.

Lissa stopped as the taxi began its approach. I picked up my feet as I unleashed the full power of Seid’s curse raging inside of me. Like the tempest its maker was fashioned from, the power built and burst and merged with the ice on the street. I watched as rivulets of scarlet energy grabbed hold of the taxi’s wheels and pulled at them.

A terrifying metallic screech filled our ears as the vehicle came rushing towards us. Lissa froze in horror as the headlights turned and filled our vision. I reached her just as the sickening crunch echoed loudly against our bodies, as the front of the car gave way and drove into the nearby pole.

My arms held Lissa in place as I took the full brunt of the impact and our eyes met and the truth of what I was faced her. She continued to scream until she passed from consciousness. I knew she
would not remember this moment later.

But something was wrong. I felt pain as I had never known before, not since Seid first cursed my body into something immortal, unnatural. Lissa needed to survive and so I held onto her anyway and lifted my head up as we both hit the ice
-coated concrete.

The club’s entrance blurred and then refocused as other figures emerged from within. Cain rushed ahead of them, shouting and screaming unintelligibly. I wanted to draw up the hood of my cloak and let him forget me at last, to push this behind me as a sweet and terrible dream. Instead I felt the pain give way to a cold numbness, the same I had lived with for an age.

I was fading. I released Lissa, crawled away from her body with broken and torn limbs. I felt thick hot wetness underneath me and for the first time in two thousand years, knew I was fully human again.

Seid’s words haunted me
.
“Cursed you will be ever more, until time’s end, until it is broken…”

I stretched my arm out and rested my cheek against it, again marveling at the oddity of feeling so much. Every breath felt as if it were ripping my insides apart again. The urge to sleep was suddenly overwhelmingly powerful. The last thing I heard was Cain screaming Lissa’s name and then there was nothing but empty weightlessness.

Floating in that endless sea of peaceful blackness was not as terrifying as I had imagined as a child. Instead, I felt secure and
full
of all the things I had been missing all my time under the curse. Of all the things I could have done, allowing the emptiness to carry me on forever, to the next port, I remembered Cain.

We watched the snow fall again from the warm safety of his apartment. His arms were wrapped securely around me and he broke the long silence to speak when he thought I wasn’t listening, “Having you in my life is enough.”

Perhaps it was this memory of his voice that made me return to the land of the living. Maybe I never left it to begin with. All I knew was I woke hearing his voice.

“Wake up, honey. C’mon, please don’t leave,” he begged. “Please…”

I opened my eyes to find the pain in my body had receded and I was still lying alone in my own blood, my cheek pressed to my stretched arm.

Cain had Lissa cradled in his arms, his words whispered over her in a silent prayer of tears.

My heart broke for the second time and I wanted to die then, to return to the blackness. And then I felt it, that tug and flicker of something else burrowed deep inside me, Seid’s imprint on my soul.

Why can you not leave me to die in peace?
I silently asked him. I had broken the curse, but why did I feel the stirrings of power anew?

A sob escaped my lips and I held in my sorr
ow as I watched Lissa open her eyes and wrap her arms around Cain’s neck. He clung to her like life itself and neither of them turned to face me. Other lights and vehicles and people had arrived since I came back to life. None of them glanced my way or followed the trail of my blood.

I wondered how I was alive, besides the possibility of Seid’s sick and twisted idea of a joke. Truly I wanted to think the worst of him.

But what if he wants you to live, not to punish you, but because he cannot bear to let you go?

A sense of fulfillment washed over me as I watched Lissa and Cain embrace. I knew they would live long and happy lives together.
Eventually, when others asked how she survived the crash, they would not remember. They would push the memory of me away until it was nothing more than a vague dream. Perhaps it was for the best they remain ignorant of a hidden world they could never see.

I
had never been able to forget their faces, the ones I managed to save and failed. But for this last time, I knew I had passed the test given to me. I had chosen life, for them. So too in that moment I realized I was no longer bleeding. My body no longer felt numb but more vibrant and alive than I had felt since those stolen hours in Cain’s arms.

I stood on slightly unsteady feet and smiled faintly at the crowd of onlookers. Everyone watched on as Cain help
ed Lissa walk to a small crew of uniformed men. And my eyes flickered and fastened onto a pair of coal-black orbs, eyes that saw farther than most humans. Mrs. Nguyen beamed at me enigmatically and I nodded to her before turning my back on the club and the people who called it home.

-beth

Epilogue

I wasn’t sure what I was now, immortal or mortal, human or something more. In the end, none of it seemed to matter anymore.
In the past I was always being called somewhere, being sought. This time I felt strangely alone and knew it was my choice, by my terms now.

I stared out at the sea, away from human eyes and modern blemishes that covered the ruins of my people
’s culture. Standing in the very place we stood all those years ago, preserved miraculously for reasons I didn’t know, I could still remember it so clearly. I remembered the moment that Seid cursed me, binding me to him in a way far different from what I imagined. How could our love have become so twisted, so wrong?

For the first time in millennia, I allowed my tears to flow for him, for us and the way we loved. I had not seen him for ages, but I could never forget. I had been tested by the human who wore his face for a time, to awaken me
to the truth.

At least Cain and Lissa had found each other again. I prayed that she endeavored to deserve him. Impossible as I found it to comprehend, my heart still ached to think of my human. I gave him up because I
had finally been brave enough to make the better, harder choice. I wasn’t going to cause others to suffer for my joy, or run away from love because I was too afraid. My time had passed ages ago. My place was here, by the sea, and little as I cared to own to it, with
him
, wherever he was.

Clouds rolled over a sea so green I shivered to see its beauty once more. There was a reason I never came here. Now that I had this newfound freedom I was uncertain where to go next. My heart told me to come here, where it al
l began and where it must end.

“Seid
,” I whispered, my words instantly captured by a gust of strong sea air. My hair pulled against the wind, rolling in waves before me. I closed my eyes when the rain began. Moments before the skies had been clear. The storm should not have come so quickly, yet I was not the source of this change.

My nerves stood on a thousand ends, the rain like a cool kiss, washing away my tears and my pain.
I felt the piercing presence of eyes upon my back, tracing my fragile frame. My heart began to race and pound loudly in my ears and I turned slowly, deliberately. The wind whipped my curls up and over my head, so powerfully it was nearly impossible to see.

For a moment I told myself this was a dream, an apparition of the mind. Those cerulean eyes could not belong to my one true love. His skin was dark as the storm, once more, only this time, the lightning that traced patterns over his skin was because of a different emotion. He bore the same face
as my human, but this was where their similarities ended. Seid’s eyes were ageless. His close-cropped black hair looked surreal, like a wisp of smoke, and his chest was bare of all markings.

He moved with a graceful ease that most men could never try to possess.

I breathed shallowly, waiting, hating myself for wanting things I had already turned my back on long ago.

He leaned as though to step closer, then hesitated. “You
left,” he said at last in his voice that sounded so foreign and yet belonged to no people.

I gasped, not expecting his answer, dreading and hoping as he took two more strides. Only these last steps and he was standing before me, illuminated by
setting sun and pale moon. The golden glow cast on his dark skin made his strong handsome features more pronounced. I felt as though I was drowning, not because of his imperfect beauty, but because of the indecision in his eyes.

A small smile quirked at his lips a
nd he said, “Did you know, the first time I saw you it was like waking from a dream, or maybe falling into one instead. I knew that I knew you, Rona, even though we had never met before.”

I exhaled the breath I didn’t know I had been holding when he reached out and began to twist a s
tray curl between his fingers. He laughed bitterly and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, whether he was about to take me in his arms or cast me off forever.

Gulping down another breath, I frowned, puzzled by his vague explanation. “I do not understand.”

With a wry twist of his mouth, he released my blonde tresses and replied, “Of course you do. It’s been so obvious all along, but you were too afraid to see it. Can you honestly tell me that you didn’t know the truth, from the moment you saw Cain? The moment you watched me
see
you? Why else did you think he was able to see through my own invention?” he said while fingering the silken edge of my cloak.

My lips parted and shaped into a silent
, “Oh.”

His eyes crinkled at the corners, yet the expression on his face was anything but lighthearted. In fact, he looked poised to pounce on me, leaning so close into my personal space. I couldn’t just see, but could actually feel how much he wanted to grab me.