19. A Good Blue
19
A Good Blue
Rory
C alliope looks too pale, haggard, though he would never say so to her face. Her shoulders are bare, her hair pulled back in a loose braid that is threatening to come undone any second now. His earlier lesson was unnecessary, he knows, but his mind is still reeling from the implications of dinner with the Claytons tomorrow night. Pot roast , he thinks with a shake of his head.
But the dinner is just a distraction from the real thing that’s rolling around in his head: the distracted kiss she pressed to his cheek when he handed her his measly gifts, both purchased from work on a whim, a small act to make up for being so cruel earlier. Even now, an hour later, he feels the softness of her mouth against his skin, like an imprint of her lips has been burned into him. It’s why it took him a minute to realize what she said, so shocked by the physical contact and the affection in the action.
She was right; it wasn’t fair to bring up the incident with Officer Burton. And anyway, this whole entire thing is his own fault. He’s the one who imposed the two-week limit. He’s the one who chained her up. He’s the one who bit her in a sorry attempt to save her life. And deep down, if he’s honest with himself, he doesn’t truly feel as if what he’s given her is salvation. He can’t fault her for what happened with Office Burton. It’s instinct. He knows better than most how hard it is to act against that need, that hunger. He knows how startling it is to realize that you can no longer live by the same moral rules you’ve grown up with. Vampires are not considered human in any sense of the word, after all, and their sense of morality is measured against different standards.
That Burton still walked away from Graeme House relatively unharmed is a point in her favor. After he pushed her away, she could have lunged forward again. She could have attempted to overpower him and rip Burton’s throat out.
But she hadn’t. She stood, pale and panicking, rooted to the floor. She saw the gruesome possibilities play out before her and she refrained from further action. That calm reaction took him centuries to perfect, and she’s done it in less than a week.
He watches her as she sits on the porch steps, in a small triangle of shade, a glass of blood on the step beside her. She’s sketching the view of the lake below, the scratching of the pencil melding with the sound of the pigeons cooing overhead. In the distance, the tiny black speck that is Kane flies in tight circles above the lake. He wonders if she’s adding Kane in her drawing, too. The manacles on her wrists keep dragging across the page, smudging her handiwork.
If they are to have dinner with the Claytons, he will have to remove the cuffs, or explain why she’s wearing them, neither of which he wants to do. He has a feeling once he takes them off, Calliope will smile sweetly up at him and ask that they remain off—and how is he going to say no to the woman who was dying and he selfishly brought back into a half-life, forever straddling the line between life and death because he didn’t want to see anyone else die that night? And if she gives him a kiss on his cheek again? He will be completely and utterly lost to her whims, he’s sure of it. I already am, he thinks, rubbing his hand roughly across his face.
It wouldn’t be the first time he found himself growing inordinately attached to a woman. He knew Irina Dobrev for all of five days before he let her bite him—and he made good on his pledge of devotion until Edward Vale came along and usurped him.
He’s read Sabine and other accounts of the Blood Wars in which he features. In some, Youngblood is but a footnote, but in most he’s peppered throughout, and, in rare cases, he has an entire chapter to himself. Regardless of the number of words dedicated to him, there is always one thing that is consistently reported: that he and Edward were rivals. The truth is that their rivalry was remarkably short-lived and, if pressed, Rory would be more likely to call Edward a friend than he would Irina. He wonders briefly where he is these days. Maybe they’ll cross paths, and he can introduce him to Calliope? He shakes his head. That’d be a nightmare, especially if Irina was still sniffing around. And anyway, Rory reminds himself that Calliope will be gone soon. She never did respond to his offer to extend her stay here.
His thoughts stray back to Irina and Edward. He had been angry at the time of course, but he was already knee-deep in battles and war plans. It was only later he realized that the tumultuous end of his relationship with Irina impacted how he fought.
And it was at least three centuries later when he realized that it wasn’t just the end of their relationship that was tumultuous. Every moment they spent together had been tinged in viciousness.
Her words were as sharp as her fangs, and she knew where to strike for optimum hurt and bloodshed. She told him that’s what love is, a twisted rebellious thing that must be wrangled into submission.
He was a fool to let Irina Turn him and an even bigger fool for letting her convince him that his brother deserved power—that his family deserved power. She whispered poison words in his ear, and he fell for it all. Deep in his thoughts, he doesn’t immediately register when Calliope turns to ask him a question.
He blinks at her. “What?”
“I said, could we go for a walk?”
He feels a jolt in his belly at the use of the word we .
“The house gave me everything except paint,” she adds, “and I was thinking we could collect some flowers and leaves to make some.”
We .
“Sure.” He finishes his glass of blood and points towards hers. She nods and swallows the rest, eyes closed briefly as it slides down her throat. He takes both glasses and leaves them in the kitchen sink.
It’s not even mid-morning yet but the sun is strong. He grabs his baseball hat from the hook beside the kitchen door, along with the wide-brim sun hat that most certainly was not there before. “Good thinking,” he says, feeling a little foolish for talking to the house. He is marginally comforted when the lights flicker in reply.
In a trice, Graeme House is receding from view as they walk into the forest, a basket swinging in the crook of Calliope’s arm.
“Keep an eye out for any brightly colored flowers,” she tells him. “I would love to find a perfect blue for the lake. Larkspur would make a good blue. I don’t know if it grows out here though. And perhaps a nice yellow, like dandelions. ”
“Would berries do?” he asks, pointing to a tree with dark black fruit. “Plenty of mulberries out here.”
“Perfect.” She smiles and holds the basket out as he drops in a handful of freshly picked berries. They continue, Rory sticking to what little of a trail there is while Calliope walks parallel, deep in the underbrush winding its way around the oak trees. She’s wearing a long white dress that reaches down to her ankles, tucked in at the waist with a blue ribbon. He can see the brightness of it out of the corner of his eye as she leans down to gather a few sprigs of wild rosemary, a beacon amongst the dark browns and greens of the forest.
“Did you, uh—did you do this with your grandma when you were a kid?” he asks, kneeling to examine a leafy green shrub dotted with bright magenta flowers. He rubs his fingers along the leaves, smelling the citrusy fragrance of bee balm. He snaps off the flower, thinking that Calliope might like the dark pink color for a sunset.
“Yeah.” He can hear the smile in her voice. “She raised me to respect the earth and appreciate what it can give us. The earth has all we need, she’d say. If we ask politely.”
They take a few more steps into the forest, Calliope veering off to the left. She is momentarily hidden by a tree trunk. That’s when the smell hits him, the unmistakable stench of decaying flesh with freshly turned soil. It’s been less than a week since he buried Kid, and he curses silently that he had forgotten about it. What good is his guilt if he can’t even remember to feel it?
“Calliope, stop,” he calls out, his voice carrying just a hint of compulsion.
She obeys—has too, of course—her knees locking in place so quickly she holds out her arms to balance. His heart clenches with the accidental command as she tosses a wide-eyed, hurtful look over her shoulder. Yell at me for that later, he thinks—prays, almost—I deserve every bit of it, but please, just listen this time, Calliope.
“We should go back the other way,” he says, as evenly as possible.
She turns, and in just a few short steps, he can feel the heat radiating off her limbs as she looks up at him. Her frown deepens, and he feels the sudden urge to smooth out her brow, to run his thumb against her cheek.
“What’s down there?” she asks. Her emerald green eyes search his face. “Who’s down there?” she amends, when he doesn’t answer right away.
The sun breaks free from a cloud and a shaft of light shines down on them. He takes a step into the shadow, feeling rough bark against his back. She steps forward, too and he clenches his teeth as her gaze sears across his face.
“Why did you kill him?” Her voice is quiet, no louder than the rustle of leaves above their heads .
There’s no need to clarify who she’s talking about. “I don’t know,” he replies. He looks away. “He wasn’t a good person. He hurt more people than just you, and he was just going to keep doing it.”
Now that the words sit between them, he realizes the true meaning hidden in their depths, like unlatching a hidden compartment in a box. It’s all an excuse—a fable he tells himself and if he unravels the paragraphs and dismantles the sentences, it all falls back to his brother. He wasn’t a good person. It’s exactly what he thought about Aodhán. It’s the flimsy excuse he clung to—continues to cling to, like a raft in rough waters, barely keeping him afloat as he drowns in remorse.
It seems he will forever circle back to that one moment, and while individual variables may change, he, himself, remains constant, cast in repeating parodies of his brother’s murder, throwing out meager attempts to right his past mistakes, only to find himself back at the beginning. Two brothers. Headstrong, each fueled by their own sense of righteousness. It will always end with blood.
He stands in front of Calliope, his actions laid bare in front of her. He knows she can’t see into his mind, but he hopes she can read his eyes, see the regret, the shame, the loathing. Will she come to the same conclusion about him and his actions? Does she see that murder has no justification, and he can repeat the excuses until the end of time but they won’t do any good. He can attempt to warm his soul with their reassurances, but death is cold and unyielding.
Her fingers ghost along his cheek, his jaw, then rest on his chest. “Do you regret it? Killing him?”
He covers her hand with his own, marveling at the sense of warmth that spreads through his chest. His answer comes out faint, scraping against his mouth, wobbly with emotion. “Yes.” He lets loose a deep, weary sigh as a cold tear slides down his cheek.
She wipes it away. “Let’s go back the other way, then.” She steps around him, but catches his hand, gently pulling him along in the opposite direction.
* * *
The afternoon wears on and, along with it, the air turns sour with heat. The sun begins to travel, angling through the trees, their bare branches barely able to block the shift in light. Entire sections of the forest are now in full sunlight, and Rory feels the same way.
It’s as if he had been standing in the shadows only to find himself suddenly at the mercy of the light, his entire being unfolded in front of Calliope. He feels raw, vulnerable even, but it doesn’t sit on his frame like the ill-fitting shirt he thought it would be. If anything, it’s more like a small hole has been patched up. Just a few stitches, but it’s enough for now.
The actual sunlight bearing down on them, however, is worrisome. He squints up at the sky .
“We should wait a little bit before walking back.”
Calliope looks up too, one hand holding her hat in place. She agrees and begins to sit at the base of a tree, but Rory holds out a hand to stop her. She looks up expectantly.
He removes his long-sleeve flannel shirt, revealing a cotton raglan underneath. He fans the flannel out on the ground. “Don’t want your dress to get dirty,” he says gruffly.
She smirks. “You know there is a nifty little appliance called a washing machine.”
“Is that what that hunk of metal in the basement is?” He rolls up his sleeves to his elbows as he sits down on the ground.
She laughs and settles down on the shirt, tucking her dress around her legs. Together, they lean against the tree. The coolness of the damp soil rises up and the cry of cicadas ripples around them. Overhead, a blue jay flits from branch to branch. Calliope pulls out her new notebook and a pencil from the basket and begins to sketch. It doesn’t take long for him to realize that the subject of her drawing is him and he shifts awkwardly, hyper aware of his size.
She gives him a stern look for fidgeting and he stops, raising his hand up, palm out in surrender before letting it rest on his bent knee.
“So,” she says, eyes darting between the page and his profile. “I know about the sun thing. And now the eating thing. But the never aging. That’s true? ”
“Yeah. I’ll always look like this.” He runs a hand over his chin, and she tuts at him for moving. “Unfortunately,” he adds quietly to himself.
Calliope lowers her sketchbook, looking at him with her head cocked to the side. “The gray suits you. And you have a very striking profile. You look distinguished.”
He snorts.
She pokes his side with the eraser end of her pencil. “It’s true. I would never lie about that.” She returns to her sketch. “Do you think I’ll live forever?”
“Your body healed after the Bite. I think it’s a reasonable assumption that you will. Let’s not test it though, okay?”
She smiles. “Deal.”
The blue jay has moved on and a mockingbird has replaced it, letting out a sharp trill above them. A squirrel scurries down the branch of a nearby tree, rustling the leaves.
She uses the side of her pinky finger to smudge something on the page. “I was trying to remember what my grandma told me about vampires. She used to try to teach me about different magical communities, which is silly looking back. She never went any farther than our own little town.”
“Where’s that?”
“Broom Hollow. When I was growing up, I hated it there. I felt suffocated. When I got married, we moved to the city, and I hated it there even more. Never thought I would long for the smallness of the Broom. I even missed going to church on Sundays, though I didn’t see the point then, grandma with her pink cotton dress and hat, always with a flower tucked into the brim. Even in winter, when the only flower in bloom was cyclamen, which she absolutely hated. She never went without a flower.”
“You could go back,” he says hesitantly. He wishes he could see her face.
“Grandma died a few years back. I went to her funeral. I don’t think there’s anything left for me in the Broom.”
“There’s always Lyon’s Cross, over on the coast.”
“Maybe.” She continues drawing, turning her head to the side, and biting her lower lip in concentration. She’s removed her sun hat and the smooth column of her neck and bare shoulders look luminescent in the sunlight.
A breeze filters through the forest, bringing the delicate scent of their surroundings: dry leaves, the heavy promise of rain, and a hint of peach-soft hyacinth petals from Calliope.
“I cut ties with a lot of the vampire community after the Second Blood War,” he finds himself saying after a few moments of silence. “Some people thought I was a hero, for finally ending it. But some never saw past the betrayal, even with the two sides coexisting. I wasn’t welcome in most places.”
She looks down at her notebook, hair falling loose from her hair clip. It flows over her shoulder and hides her face. “My grandma told me that the First Blood War never really ended. And what we call the Second Blood War is just a continuation of the first.”
“That’s mostly true. When the first one ended, no one had noticed that I was passing along information to the Unaligned. I had every opportunity to come clean with my brother. Even after the First War ended. But somehow, I knew it would start again. I just…I couldn’t let another war happen. Only I was too late.”
“I think it was very brave,” she says. She reaches over to squeeze his hand reassuringly before turning back to her drawing.
Rory smiles at the smudge of graphite that she leaves on his hand.
“Besides,” she adds, “and I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but your brother sounded like a real jerk.”
He laughs, startled by her honesty. “He was, very much so.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Calliope drop her notebook and he turns, assuming she’s finished drawing. Her focus, however, is on the plant sprouting up from the ground between them.
“Indigo,” she says, fingering the edge of the nondescript leafy plant. “How odd. I didn’t think it grew out here.”
“That’s good though, right?”
She smiles up at him. “It’s a very good blue.”