17. SEVENTEEN #2
I stopped running to let the silence settle.
Feeling eyes on me, I glanced toward the woods and glimpsed faces watching. From where I stood, I couldn’t tell who, and I began to wonder where Cillian was. Fionn had also been noticeably absent, and for a moment, I felt uncomfortable. Something about the situation didn’t sit quite right with me.
I returned my attention to Donte.
“Donte, wait! Thank God, you found me.”
He looked at me, but the happiness I expected never materialised. Instead, he stared through me with such sadness it stabbed my heart.
“She must know. You need to be the one to tell her.”
Seraphina’s voice came like a whisper across the gardens.
“Know what?”
“Donte! What’s wrong?”
He turned to me, and for a flashing second, I thought I saw relief with a touch of sorrow, I could see it etched into the lines around his eyes.
“I’m so sorry, Tilly,” he said, his voice low.
“It causes me such anguish to be the one to tell you the truth.”
My heart shattered at the sound of his words. I approached. Suddenly I felt something knock me back with such force that I landed winded on the ground. Donte watched me but made no move to assist me.
I rose to my feet and ran to him.
Again, I was thrown back by the invisible force, but this time I moved forward with extended arms.
When my fingers felt the faintest buzz of energy I stopped. Cautiously, I pressed forward and met a barrier as solid as stone, stretching beyond reach in every direction.
My heart sank as I realised Seraphina’s spell had been successful. Defeated, I stared at Donte standing a few metres beyond the barrier.
“Donte,” I said, reaching out to him.
When he didn’t return my gesture the tears that I’d been holding back finally released.
“Tilly, please don’t cry. It pains my soul to have caused you such pain. You don’t see it now, but in time you’ll understand that everything I’ve done has been for the binding.”
I stared at Donte like an animal caught in headlights.
The words spilling from his lips might as well have been foreign.
I couldn’t make sense of any of them. I reached unconsciously for the rose clasp I wore in my hair as a badge of my feelings for Donte.
For a moment I was tempted to rip it from my hair and hurl it at him.
“Donte...if I weren’t here standing in front of you, I’d almost think this was a dream, but I’m looking at you close enough to touch, yet so far away. Please tell me what’s going on. What are you talking about? What greater good? After everything that’s happened, this is all you have to say to me?”
The world tilted. My knees threatening to buckle.
Donte watched me with haunted eyes.
“Youcan’teven speak to me? You have no idea how muchI’vemissed you. I deserve answers. Not silence!”
He took a deep breath as though steeling himself for what he was about to say.
“Idescendedhere today to give you answers, Tilly, but seeing you is making it very difficult for me to do so.”
I didn’t move or blink. I stood like a glass doll on the edge of a shelf.
“What do you want to tell me?”
His gaze faltered, as though the words themselves were poison on his tongue.
“I shouldn’t be here, Tilly. I never wanted this meeting, and yet here I stand, about to wound you with words I can’t take back.”
“What words Donte, say them”
“I was never meant to stand at your side. Fate wrote me elsewhere, and for that.... I’m truly sorry”
Ididn’tknow whether to laugh or cry. The ache in my chest was too tangled for either.
“Did you rehearse those words?” I asked, thinking of Cillian and his brothers.How easily they spoke in riddles and half-truths. “I’ve heard them before.”
Anger surged through me.Was this truly Donte speaking, or had Seraphina’s spellripped out his souland left only a puppet behind?
He shook his head slowly. “No one told me, Tilly. No one had to. The truth has lived inmy bloodall along, andit burns like a dying starto finally speak it.”
I stared at him, stunned, “I don’t believe you,” I said trembling with anger. “This isn’t you. They’ve gotten to you somehow, twisted your heart into words you’d never choose for me.”
“Tilly,” he said, voice barely above a whisper, “my brothers haven’t poisoned my mind. This is the Varethym law a decree that must be upheld to break the curse before the Blood Moon rises in my world.”
“VarethymLaw.” I repeated the words, but they felt like venom in my mouth. “What do you mean by that? What law couldpossibly markmy life?”
“A dark law, Tilly,one that feeds on our blood to keep ourrealmfrom falling.”
“This will be difficult to understand right now. I was the only one who could get close enough to you without losing control of my emotions. If it had been any of my other brothers...”
His words trailed into silence. The ground tilted beneath me. This couldn’t be real. Seraphina’s spell had to be twisting what I heard. I shook my head in disbelief.
“My God.” The words barely left my lips. “What are you saying?” I took a step back, as if distance might soften the blow. “You’re telling me Cillian and the others, they’re your brothers?”
“This will be difficult to understand right now. In our bloodline, proximity to the Marked is a trial of the spirit. I was the only one who could get close enough to you without losing control of my instincts. If it had been any of my other brothers, their hunger to bind would have consumed you too soon.”
His words trailed into silence. The ground tilted beneath me. My God. I stumbled back further, as if distance might soften the blow.
“I need you to let me explain,” he said finally. He looked at me and something in his gazeshimmered. Was itremorse?
“Out of the four of us, I was the only one who could be certain of mybinding. That certainty meant Iwouldn’tlose myself to you.”
He paused.“I don’t know how to say this without breaking you further.”
He swallowed. “Do you remember the day we met?”
I did. Of course I did. But the memory felt different now,like a photograph held too long in the sun.
Four months ago, I was sitting outside the campus coffee shop, flipping through sketches for my fashion show.ThenI heard a voice that caught my attention. It was rich and warm, a voice that made me
look upand there he was, Donte, sunlight crowning his hair.
I dropped my sketchbook, my drawings scattering like fallen leaves. Libby and Lacey, the campusjoined-at-the-hip bitcheswere already
giggling. Lacey snatched a sketch before I could reach
it.Holding it up, she grinned, “Well, I guess she could always design Halloween costumes.”
Donte crossed the space between us without hesitation, kneeling to gather my drawings as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He took the sketch from Lacey’s hand with a calm yet cutting look that made her flinch, and the girls fell silent under the weight of his gaze.
“I thinkplaytime’sover. Why don’t you girls run along?” Lacey paled. Her fingers twitched as she nervously glanced at Libby, who sat frozen, her mouth slightly open. The girls grabbed their things and hurried away, chattering loudly as they glanced over their shoulders.
“Pay no attention to them,” Donte said softly, his smile steady. “They only mock what they envy.”
But those memories ache now; what once felt like fate now feels like a lie.
“Of course I remember. How could I forget?”
Donte’s eyes darkened, “It wasn’t chance. My brothers and I arranged it. We’d been watching you, hoping we had found the Marked. But we had to be certain.”
He paused.
“The only way was for one of us to get close.”
I rubbed my temple, fingers tracing the faint outline of the triangles. They were pulsing beneath my skin.
“I thought the mark confirmed who I was? Wasn't it enough for you to recognise me without subjecting me to all this?”
Donte’s gaze dropped to the ground, as if he could no longer lookat me.“The mark wasn’t apparent when we first met you,”he said quietly.“It appeared on your nineteenth birthday.”
I shook my head in disbelief. My world was crashing in around me and I seemed helpless to stop it.
I clenched my fists, nails biting into my palms.I suddenly became angry with myself. How could I have been such a fool?
“Tilly, I’m sorry. My soul bind isn’t you,”
He paused gathering a breath. “I had to know if you were one of the marked.”
I turned away, unable to bear the sight of him.
The air felt colder now, like his words had stolen the warmth from the day.
I stared at the trees lining the path, their leaves trembling in the breeze. Everything looked the same, but nothing felt real.
“Do notmistake this for cruelty,” he said, his voice low but steady. “The cursedidn’tchoose you out of malice. Itclaimedyou because the starsaligned in a way they haven’t in a decade and unless the Varethym Law is upheld, it will take you slowly and without mercy.”
He looked up at the sky, as if the constellations might confirm his words.
“That’swhy we watched you.That’swhy I stayed close. Not only for them, for you.”
He paused, and for a moment, I saw the weight he carried,not just knowledge, but grief.
“One day you’ll understand,” he said. “The starsare cruel. But theydon’talways speak in ways we want to hear.”
A bitter laugh clawed its way up my throat. How easilyI’dbeen fooled,tricked into loving someone whose purpose was never love.
“Soour meeting, our relationship… it was all a lie.” I looked at him, really looked at him, and saw it now,the precision, the restraint, the mind that had studied me like a constellation. “And poor, naive little Tilly walked straight into your web.”
He didn’t flinch.
He absorbed the words likehe’dexpected them, likehe’drehearsed this moment in the quiet ofhis own guilt.
“I never lied,” he said, his voice low. “Not about what I felt. But I did calculate. I had to.”
He stepped closer, and for the first time, I could see theastronomerbehind the smile,the one who knew the stars by name and had mapped my fate before I had even spoken to him.
“We couldn’t afford to be wrong, Tilly. Too much depended on it.”
It was confirmed that none of the brothers could be trusted. Not even Cillian.
Donte regarded me with compassionate eyes, but I found no solace in them.
“I won’t keep you from your journey any longer,” I said, turning away.
“Tilly, wait!”
Though looking away hurt more than I could imagine, I started to walk away. Even though I was tempted to glance back just one more time, I kept moving.
“Tilly, I don’t have much time,” Donte said with a sigh. “I hope one day you understand my reasons. It was never my intention to hurt you!I’mtruly sorryfor everything. Goodbye.”
Only then did I turn, the finality of his words stabbing at my heart like a knife.
I watched him step into the vortex. It shimmered, brightened, and then collapsed inward, winking out like a dying star.
The light shifted and returned to normal.
Birds began to sing, and water gurgled from the fountain.
“I was livid, but I would not cry for him. Let him vanish. I would survive. I had to.”