Divide (26 page)

Transported to an old house, wooden planks for walls and beams of solid wood above us, I held the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, naked in my arms. Her flaxen hair was brilliant in the early morning sunlight that crept through the slats in the wall. Her cerulean gaze held mine as we made love.

“Michael,” she whispered. “Tell me you love me.”

“My one true love,” I said in response.

The world shifted.

I was in in a meadow, lying under the shade of a willow tree, a horse-drawn carriage parked nearby. A woman lay next to me, her golden hair splayed out beneath her like a blanket of spun gold. She watched me with bright blue eyes, amusement clear on her face as I fumbled with the wine cork. I filled her goblet with wine, then rested my lips on the soft skin of her hand.

“Marry me,” I asked.

“Again?” she questioned, her smile contagious.

“Yes. Again. Always. Forever. Marry me every day for the rest of our lives.”

The earth shook, tilting again.

Another scene…I ran my lips across my wife’s engorged chest, then made my way down to kiss her rapidly swelling belly.

“My one true love,” I whispered to her. “I will love this baby forever…and you even longer than that.”

The scenery changed again.

This time, we stood on a cobbled street, a car’s engine sputtering nearby. I held my wife’s hand, leading her across the street, our young, tow-headed children running playful circles around our feet. A dog yelped as the children played. I pulled her into my arms and whispered into her ear, “My one true love. Spending forever with you wouldn’t be long enough.”

Then I kissed her, dipping her backwards slightly as I did so. Over the top of her tipped head, I opened my eyes and caught a woman hiding in the shadows. On a windless day, a breeze whipped her fiery red hair around her head, making it dance along her porcelain shoulders.

She glared at me, eyes wild.

I closed my eyes to focus on kissing the woman in my arms. My one true love.

I struggled to remain standing as the weight of centuries of past lives flooded my mind. The witch removed her hands from my face, pitching me back to the present with the absence of her spell. I blinked rapidly, trying to gain my bearings.

“Do you see?” Her voice was calm, steadier than I’d heard from her yet.

I shook my head, trying to make sense of what I’d seen, and what the witch implied. Had she meant to show me something else? Had she intended to whisk me away to memories of her in my arms? All I’d seen in my memories were shared moments with Holland’s various forms. Centuries of lifetimes with the woman I loved.

Oddly, I wondered how horrible it could possibly be to be united forever with Holland, over and over again, and once more, I realized that regardless of the curse, the universe would have brought the two of us together some way, somehow. I was blessed, not cursed. So many men had only one lifetime with the woman they loved…I’d been given countless opportunities to love Holland.

The witch placed her hands back onto my cheeks, cupping my face. “We were meant to be, Michael.”

“No.” I struggled to free myself of her grip. “No, we weren’t. Don’t you see?”

Her fingers tightened on my face, her nails digging into the skin of my temples. Her eyes blazed green, then faded back to a brown more dull than it had been just seconds ago. “Remember!” she screeched.

The world fell away, transporting me back in time again.

Surrounded by massive trees, I knelt on a floor scattered with fallen leaves and pine needles. I held my wife in my hands as she slowly turned to stone before my eyes. I kissed her hardening lips. Tears rained down onto her cement cheeks. I cried out in agony as her life was ripped away from us just as it always was.

The scene shifted.

I held a woman in my arms. She kissed me, hard, and with fervor. Her lips assaulted mine, trying to force my mouth open, demanding a response from me.

After receiving nothing, she pulled back, and I recognized the blazing emerald eyes that scrutinized me. They sparked with anger and lust, bursting of the life she’d just stolen from my wife.

“Michael! Do you see? It is me you are meant to love!”

She kissed me again, frantically pulling at my face with her hands, forcing me to her mouth.

I pushed the fire-haired woman away. “You killed her!” I shouted. “Witch!”

“No!” she cried. “She lives inside of me! She will always live inside of me!”

I pushed her again, every ounce of rage in me solidifying my strength. As the woman fell to the ground, she spoke in a language I did not know. The words flowed quickly, morphing into chants as I watched her straighten herself and square her shoulders. Her green eyes burned with unkempt rage. Her hands clenched and unclenched to the rhythm of her words.

Then her chanting slowed, and words I understood replaced the foreign sounds. Her red hair burned yellow, golden, her fair skin darkened to a pale shade of olive I’d recognize as though it were my own. As she morphed into the woman I vowed myself to, her words hung heavy in the air.

“I curse you, Son of Stephen, to walk the earth a broken man. Because you have withheld your love, denied your feelings before me this day, I will keep your love forever from your grasp. You will love a million times, only to lose love a million more, never finding happiness.”

“No,” I whispered, stealing a glance at the very first statue of my wife, surrounded by her beloved garden of blood red roses. “Don’t. Please.” I shook my head, but my implorations fell on deaf ears. It was too late for me. Too late for my wife.

“You are cursed, this day, to walk this life a million times, and she—” the hag who now resembled the wife I mourned gestured to my wife’s now-solid form, “—she is cursed to relive this end a million times as well.”

“No,” I said again, this time with more strength in my voice. “Not her. Don’t do this to her.” I searched my mind for the proper plea, the words that would convince this woman to change her mind. “Don’t punish her for my mistakes.”

She grabbed me by the face, gripping my cheeks.

“Not her,” she mocked. “Not your precious beauty. It’s too late for her.”

I leaned down, bringing my lips to hers, then whispered against them, “Punish me, only me.”

I plunged my knife into her chest. She stumbled backwards, her hands now moving frantically at her throat, then sliding down to her breasts and the hilt of the blade protruding from her abdomen. Blood, dark crimson in the soft light, flowed from the wound. She gripped the hilt and stared up at me with shock in her green, now brown, eyes. I didn’t remember unsheathing a knife, but there it was, lodged into her diaphragm.

As she fell to the ground—

The earth tilted.

“Fire,” Holland whispered. “It has to be fire.”

I turned at the sound of her soft voice, but she was nowhere to be found. I searched for her, desperate to see her alive one last time. My fingers itched to touch her.

Before me, the witch lay in a heap on the dusty ground. I focused on her as fire lapped at the woman’s dress, burning as orange as her untamed hair, incinerating the fine velvet fabric of her gown as it crawled up to her torso. Her shrieks filled the air.

“Fire,” Holland’s voice whispered through my mind once more.

Another shift.

Gray cavern walls surrounded me.

A fire blazed in the center of the cave.

The woman with the fiery red hair from my memories lay below me in a pool of her own blood. The witch. Realization flooded me as I stood firmly in the present, my life’s purpose inundating my mind as the forced visions drifted away.

It ends with me.
With this moment, right now.

The knife I’d held just moments ago—her knife—protruded from her chest. Her smile grew even as the crimson liquid flowed from her. She did not pale, did not weaken.

“My knife can’t kill me, silly boy.”
Her words floated through my mind.

“You,” I whispered. I waved my hand toward Holland’s statue, then Cam and Ro’s still-frozen forms. “This ends now. Fix them.”

“I was always there. I loved you so much, Miklaus. I always loved you.”

“You didn’t even know me!” I snapped, anger slowly replacing the shock of memories long forgotten. “You watched me from afar. Always from afar!”

“No, Miklaus. I did know you. I’ve known all of your many forms.”

She reached her hand toward me, but I backed up a step so she couldn’t connect. I shook my head as I tried to make sense of the sudden knowledge of all those past lives. My family had been cursed for centuries—
centuries!
—because of this woman’s one-sided love. Obsession.
I’d
been cursed to come back for Holland…determined to save her and destined to fail every time.
She’d
been cursed to repeat this horrible fate over and over again, never beating the curse no matter how much she was loved. Our children…what had become of them? They’d never been mentioned in any of the documentation—

“What of my children?”

She smiled. “Dead.”

My heart clenched for children I didn’t remember, would never know.

“The story about my family’s involvement in the curse…the gambling debt…that was all a lie?” The question was rhetorical, but as my mind raced, muddled with new—
old
—information, I couldn’t remain quiet. “There never was another family. Just me. Just me and Holland, destined to come back for each other countless times.” I shook my head, trying to make sense of everything. Questions raged through my mind, but none that I could pinpoint. None that I really cared to ask. All that mattered was the here and now. The curse had to end with me. With this version of me.

“She didn’t deserve you, Miklaus. I did.”

“Stop calling me that.”

“Don’t you see? You were my one true love.”

My one true love.

“No,” I said, her words—my words—ringing through my mind. Images of Holland’s face—versions from back then and now—clouded my vision, then almost instantly cleared my head.

“No,” I said again, my voice firm with resolve. “I was
her
one true love. Not yours. Never yours. You have to fix this. It’s time. It’s been too long.”

The witch sighed, then stood. The puddle of blood around her had grown in these last few minutes. I couldn’t believe she wasn’t dead. As she stepped toward me, I realized I already knew the answer. I stepped backwards toward the fire.

“How do I break the spell?”

She laughed, a soft, bitter laugh. “You can’t find happiness with her. I won’t allow it.”

“But that’s where you’re wrong. I already have. I’ve found happiness with her in every lifetime you’ve given us together. You thought you cursed us to live this fate over and over, but all you really did was give us more time together than any two people should have. And you’ve cursed yourself to have to watch us fall in love all over again. Every time.”

The witch’s eyes widened as the truth of my words sunk in.

“Mother.”

Donovan’s voice was faint, pained. We turned to face him in unison, and I couldn’t have been the only one shocked by what had become of him. His body, crumpled in a heap at the base of the cavern wall, unnaturally bent in places and mangled far worse than it had been just a short time ago. His hair, gray and bald in places, clumps of it littering the earth beside him—

“End this, Mother. Let him go. Let me go.”

I took another step backward. She stared longingly at her son, or, what was left of him, then snapped her gaze forward as she matched my movement. All I needed was an arm’s length of distance between us.

“You belong to me.”

“Look at your son,” I stalled as I took another step toward the fire. “What have you done to him? How old is he? Have you—?” I paused as the words I’d been about to say actually registered in my mind. I swallowed. “You’ve kept him alive.” I shook my head in disbelief. “You’ve kept him alive for so long, for what? To do your bidding?”

“Stop it.”

I grabbed her by the shoulders. “He’s dying. Why?” The witch clamped her mouth shut, so I shook her. “Why?” I demanded again.

“She’s dying,” Donovan whispered. “The dagger. I used her grimoire to—”

Her hand flew out to the side again, and Donovan’s head slammed into the wall behind him, silencing his retort.

I released her as his words sank in. A phrase I’d once read somewhere drifted through my mind:
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
I’d loathed Donovan since the second he appeared in our lives, but the possibility that he’d just helped me end this cursed fate—even if accidentally—was too tempting to ignore.

“When I die.” I looked back at the woman before me, the knowledge of her coming death adding a newfound confidence to my words. “I will die knowing that I will see Holland again. We will meet again. We will love again. It’s only a matter of time. You’ve given me back my memories today, and I will grow old knowing that Holland and I will be reunited.”

“No,” she snapped. “You are mine.”

“I am
hers
. I will forever be hers, and you will forever be cursed.” I glanced to the side, confirming what I already knew: Donovan was gone. “And now you will be alone.”

“No!” she cried. “You’re wrong!”

She lunged for me, and I grabbed her by the arms again, gripping her tightly, then whipped us both around. Her eyes widened as the first flame lapped at her dress.

“Miklaus! No!” Her screams filled the room, shrill and agonizing.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

Sorry for all the years I’d been through this, repeating the same path over and over. Sorry for the pain Holland had endured through reincarnation after reincarnation, time and time again. And I was sorry for this wicked, evil being. Sorry for the heartache she must have lived with for centuries.