23. Amelie
Amelie
T he Forest was alive with all of my favorite colors and washed a romantic hue of light across the top of the cottage.
Kiaran looked so fucking good in the oranges and pinks that flickered over his face.
His blue eyes were twinkling, competing with the sparkling of the Fae and enchantments happening below.
It was killing me to not tell him about the Prophecy. Ethel said that I would know in my bones when the moment was right to tell him but until then, take the time to understand it for myself.
To understand that God himself once created a love so great that the world wasn’t ready for it. That he separated it and wrote it into the stars that one day those two halves would find themselves whole again.
He’d asked me no less than one hundred times about it since I returned and I could feel in our bond how anxious he was becoming.
His fingers were constantly tapping along his thigh, his curls were always mussed from running his hands through it.
He’d shut himself in his room every time I dodged his questions and would return after pacing back and forth in the attic .
Now, while we sat here under the magical light of the Forest painting in memory of my father, I wondered how there could ever be another moment to absolve his anxiety and be honest with him.
“I think I’m doing your father a disservice by holding a paintbrush,” Kiaran admitted before sticking the tip of his tongue out again in concentration.
I laughed at him, my father would’ve been so proud to see two people painting, being creative.
“You aren’t, he used to say that there is no such thing as a bad painting. No matter what, somebody will be proud to hang it on their wall.” I smiled at the memory of my father’s words, I knew that Fern would be happy to have our artwork on her walls.
Kiaran and I decided to turn our canvases away from each other so whatever was displeasing him was still a mystery to me.
I was working on my dream come true. Painting the cottage was easy, then I added the pond and made sure to count each flower so they all had a home on this still frame.
The bridge was executed perfectly and in the doorway, Kiaran and I stood hand in hand.
Fern’s warm light shone all throughout the house.
“What do you miss the most about him?” he asked, leaning to the side of his painting to look at me.
There was a long list of things that I missed about my father.
His voice, his jokes, the way he could ground our family and make it all not seem so bad for a minute.
I missed when he would check on me before I went to sleep, especially on the days I came home black and blue at the guard’s hands.
He would sit on my bed and smooth my frizzy hair while telling me a fairy tale to let my mind drift into a dream.
But what I missed the most was, “His hugs.”
Kiaran bowed his head and reached his hand to take mine. “I’m sorry. ”
“A lot of people have said that but I’m not sure why.
As much as I miss him, he’s not suffering anymore.
He doesn’t have to live in Holleberg, being driven mad and hollowing his soul out any further.
” A tear slipped from my eye and one from Kiaran’s joined it.
“Really, dying is a much better fate than living a long life back home.”
“I’m still sorry. I always dreaded the thought of losing my father, even though immortality makes those losses few and far between, I could never stomach the idea.”
“Not your mother?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
Kiaran laughed but it was humorless. “My mother can’t die unless she is killed, no one is brave nor stupid enough to try that, so I never gave her passing much thought.”
“How is that possible?”
“It’s a perk of her position at the High Table,” he replied.
“The Adjudicator?”
“Yeah.”
Returning to putting the finishing touches on my painting, I decided now was as good of a time as any. “My turn to ask a question?”
“Shoot,” he replied by also picking his brush back up.
“Do you feel anything special when you think of me?” I chewed on my lip, knowing that question sounded fucking weird.
Kiaran chewed on his lip, tamping down his smile. “I already told you I loved you, pretty girl.”
He had told me that, and I froze. Never having said it to anyone outside my family, barely understanding the feeling.
My heart had only just created a pocket of space to feel it, and I’m sure Kiaran was filling it up tenfold.
I fiddled with the paint brush in my hand, uncomfortable with how to continue.
“What are you hiding from me?” he didn’t have to be perceptive to know my question had ulterior motives.
“I’m not hi– ”
“Don’t. Please. I’m going to stop my own heart if we spend one more day teetering around the secrets between us.”
I knew he was right but now I wasn’t sure if this was the moment Ethel was talking about.
“Wait, what secret are you keeping from me?” I replied defensively.
“I’ll tell you. I won’t skip any details, but you need to go first.”
I conceded only because I was especially irritated now and I wanted to hear what he’d been hiding.
“At our dinner with Ethel’s family and my grandfather’s, Al mentioned something about a prophecy.
With everything else I learned that night, I couldn’t round back to that one so I went to ask Ethel about it. ”
Kiaran held a stone expression, nodding but not giving anything away.
“She told me all about it, what they meant by if the stars had finally aligned.” I trailed off while Kiaran’s eyes dug deeper into my mind. I tried to clear my thoughts so he couldn’t read them. “And that’s all.”
Kiaran wasn’t believing it. Moving from his painting completely now and squatting on his knees before me, he took my hands and kissed my knuckles. My lying soul was being given too much love in this moment and if it was a way to guilt me, it was working.
“Okay, fine. That’s not all,” I blurted.
“You don’t say,” he quipped, pressing another kiss to my wrists.
“It’s us, we’re a part of a prophecy, or are the prophecy, I’m not sure. I’m still trying to understand it myself.”
“Us?” he reaffirmed and continued placing kisses all the way up my arms, making my skin break out in goosebumps. “About us being fated mates?”
His woodsy scent distracted me as I melted into him. I didn’t hear him correctly, so I questioned the words he’d just said. “What did you just say?”
Kiaran tilted his head, the colors between us moving so fast it was a blur of color rather than its usual segmented blend of a rainbow.
“Fated mates?” he asked but it wasn’t a question, what he knew was not what I knew.
“We’re fated mates?”
Both of us stared at the other waiting for someone to fill in the missing pieces of our secret puzzle we apparently had both been working on.
“Yeah?” He watched me cautiously for my reaction. Hoping to not fully give myself away, I steeled my features and took a deep breath before continuing.
“When did you decide this?” I asked first.
Kiaran squinted his eyes, seeing through my defense. “After dinner with Ethel and the Souls. Well right before that actually, when we kissed, but it was confirmed when we learned about your ancestry, I realized that was why we could speak to each other without words.”
He was holding me tight. I couldn’t move if I wanted to, if I made a sudden movement to escape, I could fall off the roof. I was trapped.
My heart began to race and anger flooded my bones. He had been sulking that I was keeping secrets from him but he started it.
“You’ve known for weeks?” I shouted at him, removing his arms from around me and turning to face him. He grabbed my hands before I could create too much distance between us.
“Because I didn’t know how to tell you.”
I scoffed at him, trying to regain possession of my arms but I lost that fight.
“Terrible fucking excuse.” I bit out, my lips flattened and I felt my nostrils flaring. A trait I remember my mother having but never until now knew I inherited .
“That was the first night we kissed,” he started.
“I remember. Something changed when we kissed but you never fully explained what that was.”
“We changed, our fate,” he explained, “because our kiss locked everything into place. I felt it and it made my entire body lock up.”
“The prophecy locked into place?”
Kiaran hung his head like this was bothering him, but our fate was supposed to be beautiful. A miracle that it was written just for us, so his reaction was unnerving.
“Prophecy, curse, same thing,” he said in a near whisper as he studied our hands.
“No, Ethel didn’t say a thing about your curse.”
Kiaran’s eyes snapped back to mine, genuine confusion painted more boldly across his face than the pictures on our canvases.
“What did Ethel say?” he questioned.
I cleared my throat, now feeling like maybe this wasn’t the right time. That I’d already fucked up fulfilling said prophecy.
“Just that we have been fated to be together for a very long time,” I summarized, leaving out the romantic details.
Kiaran mulled over my words for longer than anyone should have to sit in silence for.
He bounced his eyes back and forth between our hands and his lap, then to the Forest and back to our hands again.
His jaw kept twitching and honestly I wished he’d come right out and say what he was thinking, because for some reason the bond that we had before was weak now.
It didn’t work when Adan was here, or when I was with Ethel and now I was sitting mere inches from him and I couldn’t hear a thing he was thinking. It was really nice being able to hear his thoughts so when he got all broody I didn’t have to guess why.
“It’s okay if you don’t want that. I understand. ”
As if he forgot I was sitting here, he shook his brain back to the present and stared straight through my soul.
“No, it’s not that. It’s just…” His mouth gaped open like he’d just discovered a new kind of creature. “Fuck.”
“What?”