Midnight's Song (59 page)

“Don’t say that,” I
exclaimed. “You’ve fought off the Curse this long – what other King
has done that?” I put my hand on his shoulder, but he turned
away.

“It doesn’t matter,
Elissa. It will take me at some point, and I don’t want you here
when it does. Who’s to say that it won’t overwhelm me to the point
that I’m no longer this man? That it won’t devour me and cause me
to do something terrible to you?”

“But that won’t happen! I
know you, Aurelian. You simply wouldn’t…”

“I wouldn’t, but the
Curse would
.
Once
the Curse takes you, it devours your soul until it
is
your soul. Then, it
becomes everything you are. The man I am will be lost in its
power,” he chillingly explained. “That’s why there can be
no
marriage. I’m not
going to let you watch this curse devour me before you die just as
my mother and all of the queens before her!” He glanced over his
shoulder for a minute, but the pain in my eyes caused him to turn
away. “You can’t stay.”

That moment was one
of the most painful in my life up to that point. It was an intense,
devouring sadness and disbelief that came into me all at once. Over
and over again I asked myself:
how can
this be
? After all we’d seen and done
together…after all the miracles we’d seen…that he’d just send me
away? It didn’t even seem logical!

“So this is it,” I
lamented. “There was never really any love to start. Everything was
in vain, and whatever brought me back is always going to be a
mystery. I thought that it was your gift – your healing. But, then
I knew in my heart it was something even stronger.”

The look on his face was utterly void.
I knew he didn’t understand what I meant, and that hurt more than
anything else. Tears began falling.

“I thought it
was
true love’s kiss.
But maybe that’s just a lie!”

“No, Elissa.
That
was
real.”
Aurelian choked, suddenly able to understand. “Don’t believe
anything less –”

“Then why can’t you accept
it?!” I gritted my teeth. The ruler carried a heavy heart, knowing
I’d just penetrated its most hardened and walled-off of
places.

“Because I’ve already seen
you devoured by the monsters of this place!” He grasped my hands
tightly, pulled them to his lips and kissed them as though he was
telling me his last goodbye. “And soon I’ll become all of those
monsters in full. I’ll become too terrible a creature to love.
There would be no worse fate for you…”

I could sense an
anger that simply wouldn’t go away. It was more than anger – it was
the bitterest self-loathing. This wasn’t the work of the Curse on
Aurelian. This was his cowardice. What would I have to do in order
for him to understand that I’d
always
love him?

“Why do you always
fear that I’ll unlove you? You know that I
can’t.
And where will I even
go?”

“You’ll go home,” Aurelian responded.
“Home to your family.”

“That’s gone, Aurelian!
Even if it wasn’t, you know I wouldn’t stop fighting for
you.”

I tossed the lily aside,
forgetting it just as the little boy had. Aurelian had seen me
discard the thing and reached out to save it from being trampled in
my fury.

“You might be angry now,”
the King argued without defense. “But soon you’ll see that this is
the best way! I won’t have it any other way.”

I had nearly reached
the palace gate now, looking back only to sneer at him. How could
he be so arrogant as to think that he could decide this
for
me? I wondered how I
could still love someone so much and yet feel so much anger toward
them. I didn’t respond to Aurelian when I looked back at him – but
before I pushed through the palace gate the young royal made sure
to affirm one last thing:

“I’m sending you away from here as
soon as I can, even if you fight me!”

His words caused such a fury in me
that I didn’t even contemplate giving him the time of day. I shoved
open the gate and let in close in just enough proximity for it to
slam inches from his face. I didn’t care anymore – maybe a small
part of me wanted it to shut on him. I wound my way through the
gardens until I found a door to the castle, but something caused me
to make a brief stop along the way.

In the center of the
garden, there was a small bucket of water that hadn’t been there
before. The moon hung overhead just brightly enough for me to see
something that I hadn’t been able to see much before – my
reflection.
I paid it a
quick glance before nearly moving on, but then I froze. The sight
on the surface of the water was something that I needed to take
another look at. I took five steps backward and slowly turned my
head to look back into the bowl.

Then, I saw it. There were lots of
miniscule things that had changed about my appearance, like the
vibrancy of my skin or perhaps the length of my hair. But, those
were just a few things of many that I didn’t quite notice at first.
Something else about me had changed that wasn’t so miniscule. I
could see it in my eyes just as clearly as I could see the steady,
new and unchanging nature of Aurelian’s own eyes. Now, my eyes had
also taken on a new kind of reality. They weren’t the same shade of
murky brown anymore.

Today, they were
Aurelian’s same
purple.

Every day that passed from
then on was one that Aurelian became exceedingly more convinced
that he needed to send me away. As I recovered, strange things
continued happening in my body. For about two days after my ordeal,
my bones felt weak and brittle. But, after that they felt
completely recharged. Every time I passed by my reflection, I saw
that my eyes were still my fiancé’s same purple over my old
chocolatey color.

A myriad of other unexplainable things
changed as well. For one thing, my hair and nails grew as if I’d
been injected with keratin. My hair was already long, but now it
grew at an uncontrollable rate. It grew until it reached my thighs.
Then my knees. Eventually it became so long that the palace
groomers decided to chop it all off, whereas to prevent it from
becoming a liability. It was of little use. The next day it came
back again – this time stopping just short of my bottom. These
kinds of things continued happening, confusing and alarming me all
over the place.

Aurelian was clearly in denial that I
was like him. He refused to say anything about what might have been
happening. It actually confused me – causing me to wonder whether
he was uncomfortable talking about it as a gentleman, or because he
simply didn’t want to deal with it.

Though, I wasn’t
stupid. It didn’t take me long to figure out that I had changed. I
was different now, more like Aurelian in my present form than I’d
ever realized I
wasn’t
before. There was a feeling of newfound power, a rebirth of
sorts in my soul. Nothing had been the same in my life since I had
come here and taken my greatest fall.

I’d known the truth ever since I saw
the new eyes I’d been given. My fiancé wouldn’t say so, but we both
knew that this was where I truly belonged. My resurrection had
brought me more than just a second chance at life.

It seemed that it
had given me an entirely
new
one.

“Why would you send me back?” I argued
with him a few days after our argument on the beach, stubborn as
the brick walls of his fortress.

“Because you don’t belong here!”
Aurelian echoed in return as he always did. “You’re not like us!
You’re too fragile for a life in a place like this!”

The tears streamed down my face as I
passionately echoed the same protest again and again. As much as I
tried, Aurelian never seemed to understand. This time, I was
frustrated beyond compare. I was sick and tired of his denial and
all of these games!

“You know the truth, Aurelian! Don’t
deny it. I’m like you now. Isn’t that reason to let me
stay?”

“I don’t care if
you’ve become like me or if you’ve turned into a
fairy queen
!” The King
fumed. “You know that you can’t stay. I have no choice in the
matter, and neither do you.”

“I don’t have a
choice?” I quizzed him, “I didn’t have a choice to become like
this, but now I am! What if it’s true, Ari? What if I am like
you…what if I’m
immortal?”

“Then you’ll have lots of
time to sort out how you feel about me,” I heard Aurelian mutter
under his breath. It infuriated me.

“You’re so stubborn!” I cried out in
anger. I paused for a few seconds before speaking up in the softest
of tones. “I want to be here with you – to be where I belong! If
this is who I am, it’s where I should be! Don’t you love me enough
to see that? Do you still love me at all?”

As he often did during our arguments,
Aurelian turned away from me. I knew that my words pained him. I
could sense it from the pit of my soul all of the way to the
shallowest and most readable portions of my mind. For a moment or
two, he remained as silent as the near-deserted castle itself.
Then, he turned to me and softly met my violet eyes.

“Elissa, I still
love you. I love you more than I can bear,” his eyes bled torment.
“I love you more than you’ll ever understand. I
want
you more than you’ll ever
understand! But, I can’t let my desire to keep you become
selfishness. If I keep you here – you’ll have no
choice!”

“That’s your fault,
Aurelian! You think that I don’t
want you!
That I wouldn’t want to be here if there was another way. I’ve made
my choice, and
I choose
you!
” I sobbed, shivering. Aurelian picked
up my face ever-so-tenderly.

“Even so, I cannot allow you to be
harmed again. If my selfishness keeps you here, that’s not love.
That’s why I must do this.”

“Why can’t there be another way?” I
continued screaming at him. “Where in the universe could you send
me anyway?! There are only two portals left and my home is gone!
You’ll be sending me back to a life of ashes!”

“No, Elissa. It won’t be like that. I
have a way –” Aurelian attempted to tell me, but by then I’d
already stormed off.

As often as he tried to explain it, I
always refused to hear him. Our arguments often ended this way,
causing a rift to form between us. It was a rift that kept us from
speaking each other until the day that I left. I felt a concoction
of rejections, while Aurelian felt all that came with the knowledge
that he was soon going to have to tell me goodbye.

Soon, the day would come that we would
regret the silence even in our disagreements. It had been nearly a
month since I’d come to this place. Aurelian and I hadn’t spoken in
days, our hearts aching the same desperate tune. Hardened about it
as I was, at this point I realized that I would just have to accept
this. There was no way he’d change his mind now. Unless he had a
miraculous change in heart, I knew that Aurelian wasn’t going back
on his promise. When it all came down to it, I was preparing to let
go. That’s why I stayed away.

That day, I first opened
my eyes to see a pair of tiny ones staring at me from the side of
the bed. I rose from my spot in a daze, recognizing them almost as
soon as I stretched my arms and let out a rich yawn. It was Orion.
I immediately sat up and smiled, patting down a spot of the bed and
motioning for him to take a seat.

“Hello Orion,” I smiled at
him pleasantly. “What are you doing in here today? You can come
take a seat up here with me if you like.”

“Oh no, Princess!” The little boy
smiled. “I can’t sit with you today. The King sent me in here to
fetch you for him!”

“Oh…why did he do that?” I
asked, but Orion took my hand and pulled me out of bed before I
could rightly finish. By the time that the little boy opened his
mouth to speak again, I was already half way down the hallway with
him. He didn’t even leave me time to put on a robe! When he next
began to speak, Orion looked up with a playful kind of slyness in
his eyes.

“Because he knows that you
love me. The King said that unless I did it, you probably weren’t
going to come. I guess that means I’m something special!” Orion
remarked with a clever grin on his face. In any grown boy, the
words would have sounded nothing short of pompous and arrogant.
But, in this wide-eyed six-year-old the words were as cute as a
button.

“You are quite the catch…” I told him
lightly, flashing the little boy a wink and watching him display a
bright smile. The entire time, I still never lost sight of the
possible heartache that I knew might have been waiting for me on
the other end of the castle.

After we walked for a little ways, we
stopped in front of a door in the castle that I’d never been
through before. It was almost as massive as the one to the throne
room, though its appearance was strikingly similar to another door
I’d see before. This one looked nearly identical to the door that
once led into the ballroom of the Devereaux Estate.