Chapter 19 #2
He exhaled, letting the memory wash over him. How long had it been since he’d thought of it? There was a time when it was all he could think of.
He walked over to the mats and sat down, crossing his legs, bracing his forearms on his knees. Eleanor stayed put. Her eyes were glued to him.
“I fell in love with a human once,” he said.
“And I thought she loved me back.” He blew out a long breath, loathe to recall the dark days he’d been born into.
“This was during a time when magic was feared. Witch trials and inquisitors and exorcists.” Her eyes went wide.
He’d expected that. He didn’t look a day past thirty.
“The world fears what it does not understand, and in those times, humans feared anything they could not explain. Now you have stories filled with boy wizards and magicians and vampires. Women read books about dominant wolf shifters and all the naughty things they do.”
She blinked. Red crept up her neck. Hmm, interesting. He’d explore that later.
“Things have changed, sugar. The world has changed. Not so, when I was young—young and naive.”
“What happened?” she whispered, inching closer.
Good.
“Come and sit. I’ll tell you.” His heart was racing.
She nodded, finally creeping over.
Once she was seated on the floor, he began again.
“I fell in love with a human named Sara. She was bright and loud, the daughter of a well-loved magistrate in a large village in eastern Europe. I was born there in that region, you know, in Europe. Didn’t move here to America until a hundred years ago.
“In those days, women were expected to be silent, but she would walk into a room and speak, and everyone would stop what they were doing and listen. Being the daughter of a magistrate, she had more freedom than most, even though religions were sweeping the European continent at the time. I should have known that kind of sway could be dangerous in the right circumstances.” He pressed his teeth together, inhaling through his nose.
“I cannot say for sure, how she found out about me. I tried to determine the truth for years after. For a while, it ate me alive—became an unhealthy obsession. But I realized that to move on, I had to give it up. It was freeing. But, I digress.
“One afternoon, I ran into her in the market. We’d been courting for months.
My mother and father had warned me against getting tangled up with humans.
I didn’t listen. I was going to marry this girl, and then perhaps eventually, tell her what I was—or not.
I truly didn’t mind if she never knew. What kind of love forces a person to keep secrets? ”
“The kind that isn’t really love,” Eleanor managed, her eyes wide and understanding.
He nodded. “As I said, I was young and naive. But, back to the market.” He smiled—or tried to at least. There was so much he remembered vividly about that day.
The smell of autumn, crisp with the scent of decay.
The screaming children playing tag. The farmers walking their livestock past the outskirts of the village center.
“She was shopping with a friend. We caught sight of each other and she signaled to me, so we retreated around the corner of a building. After kissing her soundly—because it was hard to do much else in those days—she told me that her father had found out about us, that we couldn’t be together because he didn’t approve.
I was…” He shook his head. “I thought I was heartbroken. But she told me she wanted to run away. Knowing she would give it all up for me, leave everything behind, cracked my heart wide open like an egg. I should have known, even then. Sara wasn’t the kind of girl to forsake her family, her life.
But all the daydreams I had, the promises, us owning our own farm, raising a family together—” He huffed.
“We agreed to meet just after midnight that night, behind the blacksmith’s forge.
I was to get a couple of horses, pack up as much as we’d need to move a few towns over and resettle. ”
“Oh, Bastian,” Eleanor whispered, blanching.
He swallowed. “I agonized all evening, packing and unpacking, just to make sure I got it right. I lived by myself at the time. Though I was young, I wasn’t young enough to cling to my parents. But I had no problem leaving everything behind—all I’d built for myself. I’d done it before.”
“How old were you?” Eleanor asked, breaking his trance.
“I looked, perhaps twenty? But I was already approaching fifty.”
“And you considered yourself young?!”
“For a goblin-fae, yes.”
She nodded. “Fine. What happened after? Did she meet you?”
“No. I was ambushed at our meeting place. Taken by surprise. What little magic I had was useless. I could have defended myself against a couple of humans, not a mob. I was taken into the blacksmith’s forge. They were ready for me. Turns out, I was in league with the devil, or some such nonsense.”
“Did someone see you doing magic?”
He snorted. “I had little magic in those days. Magic matures with age. By my people’s standards, I was little more than an adolescent.
That was before I truly learned how to use metals.
” She nodded. “But it didn’t take much for them to figure out their theories were true.
You see, like all other supernaturals, I don’t die as easily as a human.
” He summoned a knife, slid the blade down his forearm, and opened a gash along the length of it. His blood swelled.
“Bastian! What are you…?!” Eleanor’s words died as the cut healed.
“So, you see? You can imagine their surprise when it came time to force my confession.”
Her eyes widened and she gasped, covering her mouth.
Those hazel orbs filled with tears. It wasn’t exactly the reaction he was hoping for.
To distract her, yes. Not to make her cry.
And yet, seeing her emotion over something that had once torn him apart was somehow…
gratifying. It told him that what he’d felt was warranted.
“That was the day I learned exactly what humans are capable of. And since that day, I have never allowed myself to forget it.” Which was why he needed to remember it, even now.
Eleanor wasn’t like any human he’d met, but he’d once believed the same about Sara.
Even if they were different in so many ways, it was a risk he couldn’t take.
That wasn’t going to stop him from fulfilling every dark desire he’d dreamt up.
He was what he was, and he would never apologize for it.
But when the time came, he would have to let her go.