7. Kiaran
Kiaran
F rom the moment Amelie arrived, I could sense that she posed little threat to me. What I did not expect was for her to come back to me riding one of my wolves who I had spent the better part of three hundred years training to hunt and kill. She said he licked her, like a fucking dog?
As she approached the house, she was wearing a new cloak of confidence. She thought she bested me. I guess in a way she kind of had, but I’d be damned if I gave her the satisfaction of telling her that.
When I heard her trying to creep out of the house earlier, my gut rolled. I didn’t want her to leave, and I felt… hurt? She’d been all too happy with just Fern. It was stupid to assume she wanted company. My company, anyway.
“Fern seems to have made you some tea. I can smell it from here.”
She reached for the door frame and lingered on it for a minute. “Thank you, friend.”
The way she endears this sentient, inanimate object was odd.
Fern had a lot of personality, most of which, though, came in the form of a shitty attitude towards me.
Even when I tried to charm her she’d been the bare minimum of cordial.
Or as cordial as a house could be. Watching Amelie treat the cottage with such kindness and gratitude had been humbling, to say the least. I wondered if I deserved Fern’s cold shoulder this whole time.
“Can you just not torture me when you kill me? Just make it fast?” Amelie stunned me by blurting out. Mortals never ceased to amaze me with what they chose to say under duress, the few missions I’d completed with my father as a child told me that much.
But not once on those trips had any of those souls requested to pick their demise. “What a strange thing to ask. Who said I was going to kill you?”
She pondered the question, no doubt mulling over the tales I was sure she’d been told about the Whispering Forest and the things that live in it.
“I just assumed. Why else would you want me here?”
I’d been asking myself that same question since dinner when her dramatic performance had her in a pile on the floor asking how much time she had. She could’ve landed a lead role in the village play with that one.
Since I introduced myself earlier tonight, all notions of scaring her away had become blank puzzle pieces in my mind.
All my time on Earth had been spent waiting.
My first thought was surely this was the sacrifice I would have to make, but I could never love a mortal, nor could a mortal be crossed into my fate.
The High Table made sure of that long ago, it was too messy.
It was pretty pathetic if you thought about it.
I was well on my way to becoming a powerful High Priest. I would’ve ruled all of Avonya with my fated mate at my side.
Whether I would’ve been a good ruler or not was no question.
I wouldn’t have been. That was why the High Priestess was so hard on me.
She never let me forget that I was a disgrace to my family.
The darkness that followed me since I was a small child wasn’t one that ever faded away.
It was my shadow. I loathed it. Everywhere I went, it loomed over me.
The boys who would be my friends were all bad, and not friendly at all.
They were the sons of Witches who were exiled from the Coven.
The High Priestess allowed them to go to fundamental school so they wouldn’t run amok with their magic but it only fueled their fire.
They taught me things that a young Witch shouldn’t know.
The Black Magic that their families had to channel in order to have any magic at all was dangerous.
I was plentiful with good magic. I came from a powerful family, but I ruined any chance at a normal life in Avonya.
The Black Magic clung to me and everyone who saw me , saw it .
They wanted nothing to do with me. All because I was a restless kid, hungry for something more.
Amelie hadn’t mentioned the shadows that followed me. She either didn’t see them because she’s mortal, or she wasn’t afraid of them. Either way, I thought I could enjoy having someone around who didn’t see my darkness.
I thought I could enjoy simply having her around.
The way her perfect, pouty lips twisted together when she was deep in thought, or her obnoxious laugh that filled a room and made it feel like flowers might grow out of the pores of your skin, or watching her twirl knots into her chocolate curls, all of it.
She had only known about me for a few hours, but I’d been watching her for days, and I wanted all of her to stay right here with me.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve had company, pretty girl.
” I paused, not to show the desperate part of me that seemed drawn to her.
“I don’t mind you. You’re kind of annoying, very messy, and have a bit of an attitude problem, but at least you’re nice to look at.
” She turned away from me, but not before I caught a blush painting her pale cheeks.
“Right. Well, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go to bed now. Same time tomorrow?” Her quick redirection to humor when she felt anything other than happy was endearing, but her sad eyes told me it was just a mask.
She strode across the kitchen to my old room. “One last thing, stop calling me pretty girl .” She turned to look at me. “It’s Amelie.”
I laughed. “I know.”
Then I added one more wink for good measure. She left me with pink cheeks and a bite of her lip to keep herself from smiling.
The sun threatened to climb over the Earth’s edge and I hadn’t so much as tried to close my eyes for five long nights now.
The cot Fern conjured for me had to be stuffed with jagged pebbles from the pond.
I swore she was keeping it freezing on purpose, but it didn’t matter because the girl sleeping in my bed downstairs was all I could think about.
It’d been almost a week of Amelie knowingly living with me, and I’d gathered a few things about her.
Number one, and the most prominent, she was very strange.
She dances to music she sang herself. Not well, I might add.
Unfortunately, I learned she was utterly tone deaf.
She has absolutely no table manners, and I assumed she found herself to be very funny because when she told jokes to Fern, she laughed at herself every time.
For example, after her evening stroll, which, turns out, was just her putting her toes in the pond and talking to the frogs, she bounced into the house telling Fern that she had a question for her.
She had a small stick with a pointy end on it, waving it around like a sword. A defenseless one, at that.
“What is the best way to carve a piece of wood, Fern?” she gleefully called out. “Come on, take a guess!” She was already laughing at herself for asking the house to answer her. “Just kidding! The best way to carve a piece of wood is whittle by whittle.”
It was such a stupid joke, but she landed in a pile on the floor, arms wrapped around her waist, as her laughter filled the cottage. Fern opened and closed her shutters softly. After having Amelie in the house for a few days, I learned that was Fern’s way of showing that she was pleased.
Number two, she was resourceful. Fern supplied her with many more activities than I was ever gifted, but Amelie has been tinkering with all kinds of things that had been here since I arrived.
There were some pictureless frames stacked together behind the couch in the sitting room that I’d never cared to look at.
Amelie found that there were cracks all around the perimeter.
She muttered to herself, that simply won’t do.
She was gone for a while and came back with two of the frames tucked under her arm. Vines wrapped around the edges, and strategically placed flowers filled the empty spaces. The gold frame had pink and purple flowers, the silver one had flowers of three different shades of blue.
She asked Fern to pick the perfect paintings to fill the frames. Fern did just that, and at dusk, the flowers were glowing around the paintings.
“How’d you get those to stay alive after you cut them?” I asked Amelie, completely perplexed. The Forest was full of magic, but dead flowers were still dead flowers.
“I asked the Forest?” she replied, confused why I didn’t know that already. She looked at the flowers like they were the most beautiful things she’d ever seen. I wondered how often she looked in a mirror.
And last, she was absolutely radiant. Pure fucking sunshine. Her eyes weren’t that solid sapphire color I thought they were. They are less opaque. Rivers of gold flowed from her pupils, making her irises that of an enchanted pool.
Her hair was always a mess. The women in Avonya wore their hair in intricate styles at all times, it was a sign of power and class.
Amelie would bathe and braid her hair but she never sat down for very long so she would always return with wild locks.
Loose ends and the random spiral curls bounced over her shoulders.
She was slender but definitely adding a few needed pounds to her bones due to Fern’s cooking. It looked amazing on her, she was looking less gaunt and frail and more like…. a woman. She had a round, perfect ass and perky breasts that weighed in on the smaller side. She was too perfect.
The first few days after she tried to escape, I taunted her relentlessly. From intimidation to playful humiliation, but her heart seemed to be made of bricks. Nothing bothered her. She laughed like I was joking when I told her she eats like a barbarian.
I learned to tune out the sounds of slurping and smacking at meal times. She hadn’t said much to me, but when she was alone with Fern, she spoke like she was talking with a friend. As if Fern was answering her in their own secret language that I wasn’t fluent in.