The Light of the World (28 page)

His arms wrap around me. He holds me to him and
kisses my cheek. His kisses are soft and sweet. His touch is gentle
and compassionate.

"What happened?" He whispers into my ear.

"Willow." I sob. I can't say anything else. She
was so beautiful in my dream. I know it wasn’t a dream. She came to
see me like the dead do. I sleep with the dead.

My body convulses. It feels like she took the
light with her, all the light there was inside of me. It's gone
now.

All of the goodness I had, was from her. She
saved me, every inch of me. I could have grown up evil and angry
from being abandoned and instead I was raised with love and
kindness.

"Shhhh. It's okay Rayne. I won't let anything
happen to you." His body forms around mine and for the first time I
notice the stomach twinges I have. I look back.

My body tenses and panic rips through me.

"Wyatt? Where am I?"

Wyatt frowns, "You didn’t know you were with me
did you?" The question hurts, both of us.

I sniffle and shake my head. How could the Nixie
betray me like this?

I don’t have the energy or anger to fight
him.

"Come here. Lie back down. I swear I won't hurt
you."

I shake my head and pull further away.

His dark blue eyes flicker in the dim light of
the candles lit. I don’t recognize the room. My brain played tricks
on me. It saw my room at Constantine's. I wanted to see it. I
should have known I wasn’t there though. The dead never take me
when I'm in my room at Constantine's. I can't help but wonder if
the reason the Nixie brought me here was to make sure I could be
with her. Or they really are just angry with me.

"Where are we?"

He sits up and pulls my face to his. He looks
deeply into my eyes and kisses my cheeks, "Fitz's house." Chills
run up and down my spine.

"Please let me go. Please."

He shakes his head, "I can't."

I close my eyes as silent tears drip from
them.

He kisses them away, "I can't because they're
looking for you. You're safe here. My uncle felt your mom die. They
were handfasted too."

My eyes open fast, "What?"

He nods, "Fitz and Willow were in love for a
long time. They kept it secret. He says that’s how Lucifer tricked
her into revealing where you were. He used Fitz as bait."

I feel sick.

"No. No."

He smiles and kisses my cheeks again, "We
weren’t the first ones to handfast I guess."

I sob.

"Wyatt, I killed her."

He holds me tight, "No. Lucifer killed her
Rayne. Fitz felt her light go out. That happens to witches who take
on some of the original sin. She lied to him and took his evil.
Lying to an Arch Angel is a sin. Fallen or not. She protected you
because she loved you."

I look up into his dark blue eyes and get lost
for a minute.

He bends his face and presses his lips against
mine, "I love you too."

I let him kiss me and hold me and soothe me.

I close my eyes and let him lie us both back
down. He holds me, and the dead take me.

When I wake I am alone in the small dark room. I
look at the candles lit and the shabby chic décor.

"She loved you child. You saved her as much as
she saved you."

Fitz looks rough. He's sitting in a corner with
a big bottle of something.

I watch him take a drink and shake his tear
stained face, "She loved you so much she sacrificed everything for
you." His tone has a hint of bitterness in it.

"I'm sorry." I whisper. I guess he was one of
the things sacrificed.

He looks at me and smiles, "No. Never be sorry.
She did what was right. She loved you and wanted you safe and she
gave up everything to make you safe. Never be sorry for that. Be
grateful."

I nod.

"Be grateful such an amazing creature wanted to
help you." He looses it. He bends over and sobs. His sobs are the
harsh broken kind. He hides his face from me and shakes with
pain.

I climb off the bed and walk to him. I wrap my
arms around him and we cry together. Our pain is the same.

He looks up at me, "You have to live, for her.
You have to. Her sacrifice can't be for nothing."

"I'll try."

He kisses the top of my head and hugs me
hard.

He gets up from the chair and leaves the
room.

I walk back to the bed and try to process it
all. I grab the cordless phone next to the bed and dial Mona's
number.

"Hello?" She sounds confused.

"Hey it's me." My voice is lost. It's a hoarse
whisper.

"Rayne?"

"Yup."

She sighs, "Oh my god where are you?"

"I don’t know. I'm with Wyatt somewhere. I don’t
know where it is. Are you okay?"

"Yeah. They’ve been here like three times
looking for you. Wait what? Wyatt? Oh my god they have you?"

"No. Wyatt and his uncle seem to be on my side.
Fitz and Willow were handfasted."

"Shut up. No way. Weird."

I nod and look around the room, "Yeah. I have
bad news though."

She doesn’t bite right away. She braces herself.
I can almost hear her doing it. "Okay."

"Willow, uhm, well, she died. I think it was
yesterday." My voice cracks.

She is silent.

"She's gone."

"I'm so sorry Rayne. How? Want me to meet
you?"

"No stay there. I have to figure out what's
next. I'm pretty lost right now. I'll come for you in the next
couple days okay?"

She sounds down, "Yup. Be safe. Please for the
love of god be safe."

"I will."

"I love you Rayne. I'm so sorry about your
mo-Willow."

I shake my head and try to swallow my tears,
"Say mom. She was my mom."

"Mom. I'm sorry about your mom."

"Thanks."

"See ya in a couple days."

"Yup." I hang up and lie back.

"Are you okay?"

I glance up at Wyatt standing in the doorway. He
almost takes up the entire thing.

I shake my head, "I'm confused and lost."

He walks to my side and sits on the bed, "I
know. Me too." I glance at the ring finger on his left hand and
feel a pain I have never felt before. There on his hand sits a
silver ring.

I feel like I've been stabbed in the heart.

"You got married?"

He looks at the hand and then tucks it under
him, "No this is the promise I will marry her. We replace the
silver with gold when we do the ceremony."

Relief floods me. He isn’t married yet. He's
still mine in some twisted fucked up way.

I look into his dark blue eyes and get lost.
They're like the sea. I can float in them and let myself imagine
possibilities, without the pain of reality attacking me.

"You know I love you and I know you love me, but
I don’t know how to be what we are and be together."

I watch his eyes and smile, "Me either. Your mom
wants me full of sin and then dead. My family is a shit show. I
don’t even understand how he killed Willow."

"The Fae are made up of the Light of the World.
The small piece of light is what makes them Fae. The Nixie light we
used to heal you is from the light of the world. Those Water
Witches are Fae. All the witches are Fae. They are bound by a rule,
one rule. A golden rule. ‘Do what ye will and harm none.’ They are
bound by it."

"This is like following a bread crumb trail but
like the crows ate half the stupid bread crumbs."

He laughs, "Anyway! The light is easily
corrupted. A dark deed, a lie to an angel, murder-not in
self-defense, theft, any of those sorts of things can kill the
light. When the light is gone the Fae die. They were made of the
light, in the light. When they're murdered their light may be
taken."

I shiver, "Like the Nixie who died to save
me."

He nods, "They cleansed you. They removed the
sin you ate but at a cost. Sacrifice. Everything with God is
sacrifice. Willow sacrificed her light to save you."

"I wish she hadn’t." Eleven people have died for
me.

He kisses me lightly like a feather would, "I'm
grateful to her. I would die without you."

I kiss him back and try to forget there is a
silver ring making promises I don’t want him to keep.

His fingers trace along my tank top and
shoulders. He makes chills and shivers everywhere. He kisses my
shoulder and up into my neck. I push him away, "Please don’t."

He pulls back and gives me his grin, "You want
this Rayne. I can feel it."

His fingers knead into my thighs.

I nod, "I do, but I'm scared you'll take away my
pain."

He kisses me again and whispers into my lips, "I
want to take away your pain.

I shake my head, "I deserve it. I need to feel
it. It makes her real."

I feel his defeat.

"Okay. Let me hold you?"

I curl into him. He lies back and wraps himself
around me. I can feel him pressed into the back of me.

"Will you marry her?"

He kisses my ear, "You feel like adding to your
pain do you?"

I shake my head, "I want you to tell me no."

"Tell me you don’t love Constantine Basarab and
I will."

I roll over and look at him, "Not the same way I
love you. The girl I was before, Ellie, she loves him. Her memories
and mine are merging. The things I remember are all hers. I
remember bad things about him too. Not just the way she loved him.
He betrayed her, me. He gave her to your mother. He stabbed her
with a sword and made her weak. I remember it."

"I would never betray you like that. You must
know that."

"You already did. You got engaged to that girl
and you let them take me to the tower. Fitz betrayed me then
too."

He shakes his head, "No, my mother lied. She
said the first Sin Gatherer wouldn’t be full for months. She lied
to Fitz and me. And I got engaged because I must. My entire family
has arranged marriages. Always has."

I watch his eyes, "Why didn’t Fitz ever get
married?"

He smiles his huge cocky grin, "Lied and said he
was gay."

I laugh. I don’t mean to but it's funny. Lying
about being gay to avoid an arranged marriage is genius.

"Does she want to marry you?"

His cocky grin gets bigger, "What girl wouldn’t
want to marry me Rayne? Of course she does. She loves me. She
thinks she's won the man lottery."

I frown, "Gross. Lucky you're humble cause that
could really inflate your ego. Man lottery. That’s disgusting."

He laughs.

I don’t. "Thanks for that. I needed something to
cool me off. That worked. I'm going back to sleep again. I'm
exhausted."

He grabs my arms, "Oh come on. It was a joke.
No, she doesn’t want to marry me, okay? Happy? No. She is as
annoyed and devastated as I am. She's playing pretend very
convincingly though. Whereas I am the shame of my family."

I laugh again, "I could have guessed that
easily. Your sister seems like she is your mother's pet
though."

He nods, "She is. She is the one who called our
mother when Constantine sent the vampires to collect you the first
day you came home with me. She is exactly like our mother."

I frown, "You knew those vampires were coming
for me, even then? You knew about Constantine then?"

He looks like he might lie or at least attempt
it, but he doesn’t. He nods and shrugs, "He's always been after
you. For the last three lives you’ve had, he has been with you.
Always as a husband. When you said you were with him again I
panicked. I thought you'd gone bad again."

I frown, "How do you know about this?"

"Lore."

"What?"

His smile stays on his face but I can see it's
forced, "Lore. We have legends and stories about you dating back to
the beginning."

I push him away, "You knew this was my last
life?"

He nods, "I only found out after you ran away
from me. I'd studied you my whole life but I never knew who you
were. We always assumed Lucifer had you kept somewhere. When you
got away from me, Fitz fess'd up about knowing about you all along.
He had helped Willow several times at keeping you safe."
I shake my head, "I don’t remember him. Not at all."

"Well besides her stabbing me in the neck, I'd
never met her either. They kept each other secret. Very
secret."
"What was life like before I came along?"

He laughs, "Plain. I trained and hung out and
had regular girlfriends and planned my life after university.
Obviously it's always been the family business for me, but I never
imagined it would be this annoying and stressful. You have a gift.
Let me tell you. Stressing me out is not easy, and yet you do it
with ease."

I blush and snuggle into his embrace, "Why
didn’t you ever just tell me the things you knew about me?"

"My whole life has been training for the moment
you would be reborn and killing the things that go bump in the
night. You and I are enemies Rayne. Natural enemies."

I close my eyes again and sleep. All I ever do
is sleep.

"
RUN RAYNE! RUN BACK TO HIM! WAKE
UP!"

I open my eyes and look around the room. I heard
Willow. I swear I did.

"
RUN!"

The voice isn’t Willow's but I can hear it
outside of my head. The voice is screaming at me like the Nixie
did. I climb from the bed and open the door to the hall.

I open it a crack and look around the empty
hallway. I close the door and go back to the bed. I pull on all my
layers of clothes Fitz cleaned for me. I pull on my boots and try
not to notice the slight dampness from the sea.

"
RUN!"

I sigh and look up, "I'm fricken tired of
running okay." I whisper to whoever is screaming at me.

I open the door again and slip out into the
hallway again. The dead are sparkling around me, whispering. I
follow their whispers down a long hallway. I open the door they sit
in front of and peek inside. No one is there. The room looks like
an old-fashioned weapons room.