31. Amelie
Amelie
S itting around the fire with my family and Kiaran, I took in each detail of their faces.
The orange and red hues danced across their faces, illuminating different details of each of them.
Al was clean shaven now with a structured jaw and eyes like my father’s.
Niklaus and Josef were a perfect combination of my mother under the guise of night.
All of them held themselves as if they were once soldiers, protectors, always on guard, but soft enough to pay attention to you when you were speaking.
My father was the glue, but my mother was the paper my family was written on.
She created me and my brothers within her own body, nearing death in Tildan’s delivery and still had enough left in her to love us until she couldn’t anymore.
So with each piece of herself that grew into a child, my father kept us together.
Just as I needed my father’s hug, I wondered if she needed hers when she was melancholy. If one big embrace from her dad would’ve made it all better.
Friedrich was a replica of my dad. While my uncle Arthur looked just like Al, funny how that worked.
At dinner, it was overwhelming seeing them all around the table like we were a real family.
Bright faces under Orla’s light on full display but here, sitting in their element, halfway hidden by the blend of moonlight and fire glow, they were just the Lost Souls who found each other.
Kiaran was kindred with them. He was lost too. His shoulders relaxed as we approached my grandfathers hand in hand. They welcomed us with warm smiles.
He was constantly searching for something else, something more.
Never satisfied and always choosing the wrong path simply because he had the privilege of turning around and changing direction if he so pleased.
Kiaran’s life wasn’t based on survival, as deep rooted as his insecurities and restlessness was, he’d been just a boy.
His mother berated him for not focusing on his studies and honing his magic.
Shamed him for not living up to his family name.
But he was just a boy. His mother and sister’s lives were put on his shoulders and he failed.
But he was just a boy. He’d spent the better part of two hundred years feeling like he failed, but you could not fail in something you did not know the extent of.
My failures came from knowing my brothers were hungry, our mother bedridden, my consequence for stealing from the palace.
I knew the end result for me would be my life.
But I was mortal then. I woke up every morning knowing I would die one day and my life would be a long list of missteps that I had to recover from until one day I didn’t.
He was born knowing the end was nowhere in sight. How could he possibly have the full understanding of a consequence? This wasn’t fair.
He was just a boy .
The man sitting next to me now understood what a consequence was.
He understood that not fulfilling the sacrifice tomorrow night would end his life, potentially mine.
It allowed him to think about his decisions and the High Priestess knew that when she enacted his curse.
Telling him that every resolve he tried to find would be of no use.
She put it into an order that he must mirror the pain he caused.
Not that he had to feel it, it just had to mirror it.
Why did he not understand that? It was as simple as the illusion of a disappearing house.
If he didn’t want it to be seen, it was hidden.
When he did, he unveiled it. I had less than twenty four hours to convince him to walk with me into the last attempt at breaking his curse.
If he wouldn’t, then I would lie to him for the very last time.
Kiaran squeezed my knee, leaning in to press a kiss to my temple. I blushed at the public display of affection in front of the origins of my blood. Al gave us a soft, approving smile and I wondered if they knew how this would end.
The music around us grew louder, a song made for bouncing around the fire until you were begging for air.
Kiaran must’ve felt the shift too and stood from the log with an outstretched hand.
He smiled at me, no embarrassment in his expression whatsoever.
I took his hand and he pulled me into his body before placing his other hand on the lumbar of my back.
He danced like a maniac, leading me no which way and I went right along with it. Singing every word, I realized it was the same song he serenaded himself with when he was baking the absurd amount of muffins for our dinner.
Now it’s time to stop a while
Forget your worries everyone
Kiaran was an anxious, nervous person. Shy and reserved usually but in front of all his kindred Lost Souls, he sang loudly. His voice attracting stares from everyone while my family around us looked at us with so much affection it made my heart hurt.
Like hand and glove, could this be love?
Is there magic in the air?
As beautiful as his voice was, his dancing was just the opposite. He swung me around to no specific beat, he was marching to his own. This free version of him made my heart ache further.
With the one who sends me in a trance
If not, at least, you’ll get to dance
Down at the ballroom of romance
He leaned in as the song quieted, the end was near and the metaphor made my heart fully break open. Pressing the lightest kiss to my brow, he rested his forehead on mine. “I love you.”
I love you more.
I leaned into him, linking my pinky finger with his.
Pinky promise.
He pressed a gentle kiss to my lips. My skin heated and visions of our future flashed in my eyes. The wedding, a little girl running around with Kiaran’s curly, black hair and my eyes, and two rocking chairs positioned on the balcony overlooking the sea I’d always visited my prince at.
Tears pricked my eyes, but before they could fall, I swallowed them. Keeping them stashed away for when there was something to cry about.
“I’m going to go sit with Al for a bit.”
He nodded into the top of my head, placing a kiss at the crown of it for good measure. Breaking his hold, I rounded the fire and sat next to my great-great-grandfather and he greeted me with an arm around my shoulder.
“What’s going on in that mind of yours, girl?” he asked in a gentle voice.
“Can I ask you a few questions about tomorrow?” Al tensed, as if I was bringing forward a forbidden subject, but agreed anyway to my inquisition.
“Is there a loophole in Kiaran’s curse?” I whispered, not wanting the man in question to hear.
Al nodded slowly.
“Okay. Do you know what it is?”
His head moved back and forth .
“If I told you what I think it is, would you know?”
Al took a deep breath in and exhaled, rolling his shoulder back and giving the slightest nod.
“My dreams…” I started, searching his face to see if it was the right direction. He gave away nothing. “I can use them like portals. Travel places.”
Another nod from Al. My heart rate picked up and my blood heated. I could feel how close I was.
“I think I can alter things here, in the real world. I think what happens in my dreams appears to the naked eye to be happening right in front of them.”
“You are a wise one, girl,” he replied after a moment of silence. A smile spread across my face and my eyes sparked to life.
I relaxed into my seat with grandpa Al’s arm lovingly hung around me now. “Now I just need to find my father before tomorrow.”
Al turned slightly. “He’s been visiting you has he?”
I nodded.
“Good man.”
“I’m not sure how yet. I saw his casket be lowered to the ground, we mourned his death–”
“Do you understand the Bloch blood yet, Amelie?” Al inquired, making the hair on my neck stand at attention. From what I read in Orla’s journals and the little that Ethel knew, we were called Originators. But I didn’t know what that meant, I only knew that our minds were a powerful place.
“Can you tell me how it works now?” I leaned in close, like I might miss the answer if I wasn’t close enough.
“We are Originators. Without us, the world wouldn’t exist. So we get to make changes to it as we see fit.”
I flattened my lips in a thin line and shrugged at him, still not totally aware of what it all meant.
“Aren’t you a Christian?”
Ha! I nearly fell off the log we are sitting on in a laughing fit. To ask the girl who came from a poverty ridden village, beaten and raped more times than she was told she was loved, and less food than most insects ever having been in my belly was insanity.
Who could believe in a God that watched his people suffer that way?
“Amelie?” he asked, more concern this time in his tone. Kiaran and Niklaus’ conversation was stopped as they looked over to see what all the fuss was about.
“What does believing in God’s hyper masculine teachings have to do with our blood?” It was a rhetorical question because honestly fuck my grandfather for asking. We were in a magical Forest, Christians believed magic was derived from Hell itself.
“You haven’t learned anything of it yet?” He was confused, clearly under the impression that I’d found the true book of answers somewhere and was coming to him with an all knowing knowledge.
Kiaran sat down next to me, sensing the change in energy between me and Al.
“Learned what? I am so sick of everyone asking me what I know instead of just telling me what I’m missing!”
I laughed at the ridiculous statement. Kiaran had done it too, inquired about the knowledge I already had, keeping key details in his pocket for when he felt I was ready for them.
“I have ten brothers and sisters, they are placed all throughout the world to watch over the mortals. Take care of them, place miracles on the sick, those kinds of things. We are the original Angel’s God took in, then he sent us here.”