Epilogue - Villain Til the End
A fter lightly dabbing the ointment on his cheek, Noble gently applied the bandage to the sleeping witch’s poor bruised and battered face. Ollie’s nose and eyes were now red on top of everything else, the man having cried himself into further exhaustion. The witch hadn’t woken even once while he’d washed him and changed his clothes.
Having done all he could for the man’s injuries at the moment, he made sure Ollie was covered up, before tiredly wandering out of the bedroom and heading downstairs.
In the kitchen, instead of getting a drink as he intended, he found himself blankly staring out of the window above the sink, not really seeing anything at all.
Ollie would have questions… He’d been too tired, too heartsick…just too devastated to think right now, but they would come. And he would…hurt Ollie in a whole new way, because he had no hope of answering any of them truthfully.
Noble was just like that bastard, Mikael…a witch hunter. Fucking hell, Mikael… If only he hadn’t delayed killing the man for so long, or if he had just left his house earlier… No, if he had just s tayed away!
This was all his fault. Noble rubbed his face with a groan.
He flinched when Red jumped onto the counter. Noble eyed him, the familiar staring back.
“You know…when I first saw you, I recognized instantly what you were, and made the decision to kill you.”
“Could you have?” He couldn’t help but ask.
“I could. I wouldn’t be able to do much after, but I’d get the job done. I’m just not quite capable enough at the moment, to hold a barrier in place while fighting a skilled witch hunter.”
Ah, that explained it. “You were keeping him hidden.”
“I was hoping either you would show up…or that his grimoire would have stopped being a bastard and have gotten him out of there.”
Noble sighed. “What is with that thing?”
“I don’t know… I do know it went to him, when I was first stabbed in the chest. I don’t know what it said, but I suppose we know the results.”
Had…Ollie’s grimoire been responsible for the man’s…transformation? Noble wasn’t sure it could be called that, or what to call it at all.
“So…why didn’t you…kill me, that is?”
“Something stopped me. I don’t know what…but I hesitated…and then I heard your mind. I had read it long before our first talk. I saw your resolve, your world as you knew it, wavering more and more as the months passed, and I considered how much having a hunter on his side could protect him.” Red chuckled. “Once I had the thought…I couldn’t shake it. So much so, it became more of a knowing that you had to stay, as much as I didn’t like you.”
“Ha, well, can’t say I’m not selfishly happy about that.”
Red snorted. “But I think I was wrong.”
“What? You want to kill me now?”
“No…that’s not what I was wrong about. I was wrong about what you were protecting.” Red swallowed. “I couldn’t…I couldn’t reach him. He looked right at me and didn’t hear a word I was saying. But when you spoke, it was like you were his entire world.” The familiar laughed in disbelief. “You aren’t here to protect him from others. You are here to protect him from himself.”
Red’s words felt so heavy, yet they seemed to hang in the air.
He questioned how someone whose soul was beyond redemption even hoped to stop someone else’s from being destroyed…
Ha, no, that was a lie. He knew. He knew exactly how. Noble would become the devil himself if it meant he could keep even a speck of darkness from landing on Oliver.
The man wouldn’t forgive him once he knew all he had done, but…to have tasted heaven and then have it taken away… Well, Noble supposed that was a punishment he readily deserved.
Ollie…my sweet, heartbreakingly kind witch, I’ll be the villain, so you don’t have to. No matter how bloodstained I get in the process, I will remain so. Even when the time comes where I can only protect you in the shadows, I will do so happily until my last breath.
The End