8. I Guess We’ll Just Be Enemies, Then
8
I Guess We’ll Just Be Enemies, Then
Aliza
I couldn’t move. I writhed and twisted, but ropes bound me, preventing me from fleeing the approaching flames. They slithered and darted over the wood piled around my shackled feet. Their crackling roar wasn’t enough to drown out the jeers of the crowd. They bayed for my death, chanted for my screams.
I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t give them what they wanted.
Heat scorched my skin. My flesh melted, splitting and peeling away from my bones. My blood bubbled, cooking me from within. When I screamed, it billowed from my mouth as red steam.
“Aliza! Aliza!”
They wanted me dead. All of them. They wanted me to suffer.
I did suffer. I wailed.
“Aliza!”
I wrestled against the ropes holding me, screeching as I fought.
“Aliza, it’s alright. You’re alright. Aliza, listen to me!”
Idris.
Idris was here. It was him holding me still, not ropes. Flames weren't eating me alive. A nightmare. Only a nightmare .
Sweating and shivering in feverish terror, I wrapped my arms around Idris and seized handfuls of his T-shirt, preventing him from leaving me. He had to stay. He had to keep me safe.
It had been so real.
He cradled my head to his chest, swaying from side to side in an attempt to soothe. I only sobbed against him, my body heaving and buckling as I fought for breaths of the cool night air.
He’d come for me. He’d pulled me from the flames. Brought me back to life. As long as I was with him, I was safe.
Safe.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured into my hair. “You’re alright.”
He repeated the words over and over, his voice soft. At length, my tears slowed, the roaring in my ears dying down enough for me to catch the beat of his heart. Its rhythm called to my own, and my heart slowed to match, a runaway racehorse, caught by an outrider.
When I’d regained my composure, I extracted myself from between his arms, shuffling away with difficulty thanks to the cloak tangled around my legs. Had I thrashed about that much? Was that why I’d dreamt my legs were bound?
I swept a trembling hand over my sweaty, tear-stained face. How long was this going to go on? Would I ever have another peaceful night, without the ghosts of my death coming back to life, however briefly?
Maybe it was only the adrenalin racing through my veins, driven onwards by my frantic heart, or maybe it was my new form, reacting to being back in the world it belonged to, but I felt rested, all things considered. Like I’d had a full eight hours and then some. But the woods were still shrouded in velvety darkness, with not even a hint of dawn to lighten the sky .
“How long was I out for?” My voice was hoarse, no doubt a result of my screaming. It was a wonder the monsters hadn’t surrounded us already, lured by my call.
“Two hours. Maybe three.” Idris scanned me with concern, as though searching for some defect, but he didn’t waste his breath asking how I was feeling. The answer was pretty obvious.
My ears heated, and I blew out a long breath, rolling my shoulders in an attempt to ease the knotted muscles. I knew I had nothing to be ashamed of, that I’d been through hell, and that my reactions were perfectly normal, but that knowledge did nothing to dispel the twisting of my gut.
Pathetic. Weak. Cowardly.
I untangled the cloak and hugged my knees to my chest. What must Idris think of me? The things he’d endured in silence, and then here I was, having nightmares and crying over a few brief moments of pain. He’d lived through centuries of agony.
“This one was worse,” I admitted. “This time you cut it, as well.”
He smiled softly, reaching out to twirl the ends of my boring hair around his fingers. I tried to pretend that the gesture didn’t have me fighting for my life as my heart sputtered and leapt.
“I wouldn’t dare.”
“Glad to hear it.”
We lapsed into silence, but Idris kept his gaze fixed on me, even after I looked away. I felt its weight, equal parts comforting and unnerving. What was he thinking? Why did he care enough to help me, to look after me as he had? Or was it only pity? Did he see me as some weak, floundering mortal who couldn’t deal with a bad dream, when he had endured so much worse ?
“How long was it between your son and the curse?”
I didn’t need to be specific. Didn’t want to use words like murdered or died. He knew what I meant. Not that my omissions shielded him at all.
Idris dropped my gaze. “Eight days.”
Eight . In the human world, that was barely enough time to arrange a funeral. I didn’t dare ask what had become of his son’s body. All I knew was that he’d had no time to come to terms with what had happened, never mind grieve, before being thrown under the curse. He’d told me time had passed differently during the next few centuries, a sort of semi-aware drift, on the edge of waking, between eternity and a heartbeat. His grief was both as fresh as the day it had happened, and older than anything. Yet he was the one comforting me . It was wrong and twisted, and I was selfish.
I swiped my arm across my eyes, then took a moment to look at him. Really look.
His eyes, still downcast, were ringed in bruise-like shadows. His skin had lost its ethereal glow. Despite all the ice cream he’d consumed, his cheeks had hollowed. Sick, that was what he looked. He was unwell. Exhausted. Broken. And still, he tried to care for me.
We sat in silence, each consumed by our memories. Eventually, my heart slowed to something resembling a normal rhythm, and the heat left my skin, leaving me shivering, even with his cloak bunched around my knees.
“Are you cold?” I whispered the question, afraid to break the stillness of the night .
Idris blinked as though pulling himself from a reverie. “I’m fine.” He gave his head a tiny shake before offering me a small, close-lipped smile. “It’s much colder than this in the sky.”
That made sense. I wrapped the cloak around my shoulders. “I don’t think I’ll get any more sleep tonight. You should try to get an hour or two. I’ll take over the watch.”
He cocked a dark, arrogant eyebrow. “And what will you do if something sneaks up on us?”
My lips pulled into a grin. “I’ll wake you up to deal with it, obviously.”
It was a mark of his exhaustion that he only glared for one moment before sinking down into the grass, using his arm as a pillow. “Be certain that you do. At the first sign of trouble.”
His eyes drifted shut before he’d finished his sentence.
“Night,” I breathed.
One side of his mouth quirked. “Goodnight, Aliza.”
I looked away, huddling inside the cloak as I stared through the dark tree trunks, trying to decipher the shadowy shapes beyond. I’d never kept watch before, and now that Idris had surrendered the helm, the responsibility was daunting. But all was quiet. Leaves shivered in the faintest of breezes, and the distant hum of the waterfall was like white noise, soothing me. The occasional hoot sounded in the treetops, and once I thought I glimpsed a bat darting past, but nothing scarier than that.
At my side, Idris breathed softly through parted lips, the only sign he gave of being alive. He didn’t so much as squirm in an attempt to get comfortable on the bare ground. The poor thing was more exhausted than I’d thought. His persistently rogue lock of dark hair had fallen into his eyes once more, and the urge to sweep it back, to let those silken strands glide between my fingers, took hold. Instead, I waited a few minutes for him to sink into a deeper sleep, then removed his cloak and draped it carefully over him. He didn’t stir, even when I untied my hoody from my waist and wrestled my way into it.
Well, this is boring.
I chewed my lip, shifting on my numb arse. If only I’d thought to pack a book, though I wasn’t sure I was allowed distractions as a watcher. Was this why Idris carried his sketchbook everywhere? He had his drawing of his son, of course, but I suspected that even before that tragedy he’d been an avid artist. His incredible talent was obviously a natural gift.
I shifted again. A dull ache had begun in my lower back. I clambered stiffly to my feet, twisting to ease the tightness. Idris slumbered on without so much as a flicker of his eyelids.
How long until dawn? I peered at the sky, hoping to see a tinge of grey signalling the imminent arrival of the sun. Nothing.
Movement between the trees caught my eye. A shadow, as tall as me, shifted, and my heart jumped to my throat. I opened my mouth to alert Idris, but the shadow moved into the moonlight.
“ Jacques?”
The vampire was barely recognisable. Gone were the starved hollows, the protruding bones. His face had filled out, and he would have looked more at home in a gym than on the runway, but at least the shark-like smile was all him. He edged nearer, his otherworldly eyes flickering between me and the sleeping prince. “It has been a while, ma belle. ”
He halted a healthy distance away, but I could make out the strange gleam in his eyes from here. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been battling Idris in my bedroom, while I bled out from the deep puncture wounds on my neck. None of us had left unscathed, and though I suspected I’d taken the brunt of the damage, Jacques had certainly come off worse than Idris and had been forced to flee. To top it all off, it was my fault. All of it.
“You’re okay,” I whispered, knowing he’d hear me. I saw no signs of scars peppering his skin, whereas Idris had plenty of slowly healing slices and angry, red scars. Souvenirs of his attempts to protect me from the vampire.
“You are far from it.” His gaze raked over me. “You are one of them now. Did he do this to you?”
The accusation in his tone grated at me. My fault or not, Jacques had almost killed me. Idris had done nothing but protect me. The vampire had no right to imply otherwise, and certainly no right to judge Idris. “It was the only way to save my life.”
“That is what he says, of course.”
“Why are you here?” I snapped. I wouldn’t hear criticism of the prince, not from someone who had left me for dead. Where had Jacques been as the flames took hold around me?
The vampire shrugged, the picture of disinterest. “To apologise.”
Oh. I hadn’t expected that. My flare of protective anger drifted away on the breeze. I didn’t blame Jacques for any of it, not really.
“I should not have allowed myself to be swayed. I had hoped to find you healed… now I understand why you have been so difficult to track.”
“What do you mean?”
“You smell.” He flashed me a stark white grin. “Like one of them. You are one of them. I have been searching for a human.”
“I’m still me.”
“You reek of magic.”
I barked a single note of laughter before clapping my hand over my mouth. At my feet, Idris twitched but slept on.
“I don’t have magic,” I hissed. “But anyway, you don’t need to apologise to me. It was my fault. I’m not angry. If anything, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have taunted you.”
“I should have resisted. I knew my limits, and I crossed them.”
I rolled my eyes and took a few steps toward Jacques. He retreated deeper into the shadows. Was he afraid of me? Or what he might do to me? “You were starving.”
“I had managed long enough.”
“You look good. Have you started hunting humans now that the rifts are open?” I wasn’t sure I would like his answer, but I had to ask. Had to know how many lives had contributed to his new physique.
“I have not left Neath, and no humans have come through.”
“But you would kill them if they did?”
Jacques regarded me warily. “They are the natural prey of my kind.”
Icy threads of panic slithered around my heart. “You were human once, weren’t you? Don’t you remember what it was like?”
“How could I forget, ma cherie?”
“Then why would you kill them?” I pressed, thinking mostly of my parents, but also of all those innocent, oblivious people. How could he have such disregard for life? “Why not just take a little?”
“I remember conscription. I remember rich men sending people just like me to die for their war. I remember humans slaughtering humans. Leaving their own kind to die in the mud.” Jacques smiled. “Even if humans were the innocent, harmless creatures you would have me believe them to be, you saw firsthand how little control I have, and I care about you. Imagine if I did not.”
This wasn’t going at all the way I wanted.
“Besides,” the vampire continued. “I could try restraint, but it would not mean my people would. They are free to hunt, Aliza, and I will not be the one to stop them. This is why I did not drink you dry the first night we met. I wanted to. My mouth was watering at the scent of you, but I needed you alive.”
“Why?” I already knew the answer, had heard it from him before, but I ploughed on anyway, determined to argue the cause of my world.
“We have all suffered under Maelgwyn’s rule. I needed you to break the curse and open the rifts. My people needed to feed.”
“You gave up one meal for the promise of a banquet.” I was a meal ticket, nothing more. The cookie he’d resisted so he didn’t spoil the Michelin star dinner he had planned.
“Oh, come now, there is no need for that tone. You knew what I was. What I am.”
“You used me.” No surprises there. Everybody only cared about what they could get from me, except maybe Idris. Would anyone have spared a glance at me if not for the curse? Would anybody have helped me? I knew the answer, had known it for a long time, and it soured my stomach and heated my blood.
“What choice did I have? Would you have preferred me to kill you on the spot?”
No. Maybe. I didn’t know. All I knew was that my ignorance was once again in a blinding spotlight. Despite knowing his intentions, I’d grown to trust Jacques, to believe we might be friends, but all the while, he really had been considering his stomach. My only comfort was that my family lived far from the rift. Unless the vampires were comfortable with public transport, Mum and Dad were safe. Other people would die though, and there was nothing I could do about it. I was the cause of it.
“Yes,” I replied. “Looking back, maybe that would have been for the best.”
He dropped his glowing eyes to Idris, and his face transformed into something horrible, something full of hatred. It didn’t soften as he looked back at me, that monstrous gaze shifting to my pointed ears. “Perhaps you are right, if this is what you have become.”
I was right. If Jacques had slaughtered me on sight, the way he’d so clearly wanted to, the rifts would be closed. The humans would be safe. The vampires would still be trapped. But Idris would still be cursed. I glanced down at him, still sleeping like some beautiful, fallen angel. I couldn’t bring myself to be sorry for what I’d done, nor would I entertain someone who twisted his heroics into something terrible. He had saved my life in the only way he could, and yet Jacques spoke of him as though he was the monster.
“Go away, Jacques.” My soft gaze frosted over as I turned back to him. “I don’t want to see you right now.”
Jacques’ expression hardened. “You are truly one of them.”
He turned on his heel, melting into the shadows faster than he had any right to.