62 #3
A strange knot around my heart suddenly eases and I can breathe easier.
“It mattered to me because I was his lover. Before Gatilla died and he came here to heal. And we never spoke again.” I can’t hide the bitterness in my voice. I turn away and dangle my boots into the hot spring, soaking up its healing magic.
“He broke your heart,” Meanara says quietly.
“No. I broke my own heart. I left. I ran.”
“Why?”
“Because…” I swallow. “Because I was afraid that I was just a tool to him. For him. A tool he wanted to get rid of, which he could now that my aunt Gatilla was dead.”
“You thought that he would kill you?” she asks incredulously. “Why, when you and he were lovers?”
“Because he never loved me. He can’t love.” I spit out the last sentence as if it’s poison.
“Maybe he can. You don’t know that,” she states gently.
I look at her. Really look at her. “You’ve got the same creepy talent as Melody, right? Reading auras?”
Meanara’s eyes widen. “How did you know? Did she tell you?”
“Nope. But hells, you even look like her when you watch me like that. Like when she’s reading my aura and annoys the hells out of me.”
Meanara laughs, a quiet, beautiful sound. Light. And I think that I’ve never really seen her smile.
“I think he can love, to some extent, Blair. I’m sorry that you never got the closure you wanted though.”
I look into the water, pooling silvery like a plate of polished platinum. “You know, it no longer matters. It finally no longer matters. And since I came here, I can breathe again. For the first time in twenty years, I can breathe. Like real breathing. Deep breathing. Does that make sense?”
“Perfect sense.”
I glance back at her. “So what’s up with I shouldn’t be here and all that stuff? Why? Who brought you here? What happened?”
Meanara searches my face for a long, silent moment. And I hold my breath, because I sense that it’s a test. And that I couldn’t stomach it if I failed.
“I was once part of a prophecy. It was said that I would be the reason the world would fall into darkness. So they wanted to kill me. My brother saved me before they could. He brought me to this world through a portal, hid me away, smuggled me over the continents, and I finally ended up here.”
“He also a hellborn?”
She nods slowly.
“He also got a tail?” I ask, squeezing hers. She slaps my hand away, hissing. I chuckle. “Yes, or no?”
“Yes,” she snaps, but not really angry. Rather…embarrassed again. As if I’ve pointed out a weakness of some sort.
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know,” she answers truthfully. “We managed to come to this world when I was very young. I was too small to remember the rest of my family, or our parents. My brother raised me alone in a small village, just the two of us, until I was sixteen. One day, he didn’t come home.”
She looks down into her lap. “He got captured by Palisandre because he’s a good blacksmith.
” She casts me a long glance. “Too good. Elven king Lorvil collects rare talents like queens collect shoes or robes. I fled the same night because he always told me I should if anything happened to him. He always said it was important that I create a life for myself. Somewhere where no one would know me. So I did. But it was a long time ago. I never heard from him again.” She falls silent for a long moment, gently running a finger over the heart-shaped ruby.
“And what’s up with that necklace?”
She shrugs her delicate, bony shoulders, the claws protruding out of her back twitching. “I don’t know. He just gave it to me, saying it’s important. And I kept it. Of course I did, because he gave it to me.”
“Looks fancy,” I say. “And a little bit over the top.”
She cringes a little, but that warm smile stays as she looks at it fondly. “You know, my brother gave it to me, and that’s the reason I’m wearing it. But I’ll admit that I hide it under my robes.”
“Not fitting for a healer to run around with a chunk of a red ruby,” I tease.
She bites her bottom lip and shakes her head. “No, indeed not.”
I get up from the ground, fetch a towel, and wrap it around Meanara’s shoulders before I glance up at the first silver on the horizon.
“Listen. I know we’ve just been fucking, and well, I won’t bear you a grudge if that was a one-time thing.
But I’d still be honored if you went to the ball tonight with me.
” I hold out my hand to help her up. Her hand is small and slender in mine—but tipped with long, thick, deep-gray nails. That woman has claws.
After, she lets go of my hand and takes a measured step back. I summon my own claws back into place and sigh when I finally feel the familiar extension of my body.
Meanara just watches me carefully, before she nods once. “I will meet you there at seven,” is all I get before she turns on her heel and walks away from me.
I jog after her. “Wait,” I say when she opens the door to her room.
She raises her brows at me.
“Why do you live like this?”
“Like what?” she asks, clutching the towel tighter around her body, a frown creasing her smooth forehead.
“Simple. I mean, that room is barren. Hells, it just has one tiny window. I mean, why? In all honesty, it’s depressing as hells.”
She looks into the room as if she’s never seen it before, or maybe not in that light.
But when her head turns back to me, her eyes glimmer again in that strange, burning way.
“Maybe you’re not the only one who thinks she doesn’t deserve happiness, Blair Alaric.
And who had to live a life she didn’t choose for herself. Sleep tight.”
With this she slips into the room and closes the door in my face, leaving me standing there with my hand splayed against her door, her perfect scent still in my nose and all over me.
For a second, I pause, listening. My ears strain for her. Would she slip into bed? Would she sit on her bed and look out the window, watching dawn? Would she maybe not sleep at all and get up, tending to her duties?
Would she think about what happened tonight? About the ball? Does she feel nervous about seeing me again? Excited to go with me? Does any of it mean anything at all?
Okay, I’m mind-fucking myself and should definitely stop.
I walk away, my leathers dripping with every step I take out of the temple.
Dawn, indeed, greets me in a fiery inferno of an aurora I have only ever seen in the snowy winter lands, when it hung there over frost-encrusted blizzard lands.
It had been the only color there, always ominous. Always far away.
But today, it feels like a beginning. Like a new dawn.
Maybe you’re not the only one who thinks she doesn’t deserve happiness, Blair Alaric. And who had to live a life she didn’t choose for herself.
Meanara’s words echo through my mind and stay with me as I stroll back toward campus, ready to strip naked and spoon with that sleepy, grumpy demon.
But after I stop in my own room to get myself some really needed orgasms.
Yeah, maybe I wasn’t the only one.
But I am no longer that person.
Maybe I do think that I deserve some happiness after all.