Airel: The Discovering (Airel Saga Book Two)

Epilogue

AIREL'S BODY WAS COLD and wet in his arms. The shiver that he waited for, that should have come from her chilled body, never came. She was completely still, eyes closed. She looked like an angel. Her skin pale, smooth, fair; her lips full, the faintest red flushed within. What have I done? Why was he so confused and mixed up over this girl? She was just another job. He couldn’t count how many times he had had to do something just like it in the past. He was even good at it; had been doing it longer than he could remember. He could make instant friends, could find out if the target was one of the Sons or Daughters of El in a week or less.

But Airel had been different. He had wanted that, though. He had wanted her to be different. He had hoped it was just a mistake, a wrongful mark. They had to have botched things somehow; it had to have been a case of mistaken identity. He had fallen for her. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

If you love her so much, why did you betray her? His mind flickered backward to his mother—how his father had murdered her in cold blood while cursing her to a slow and painful eternity in hell. The next thought was inevitable, and it hurt more than he could express: Like father, like son…

He had known that trying to negotiate with his father was pointless, but he tried anyway. After a horribly long night, he had barely escaped with his life, leaving his mother to die. James had sealed it up, had demanded and extracted his complete and utter obedience.

Michael walked into the open meadow and began to climb the long, winding stone stairway that led up to the back of the house. He didn’t know he was sobbing, that his tears were falling onto Airel’s face, until he walked up to the big windows and saw his reflection in the glass.

He abhorred his reflection, felt guilty that he didn’t hate it enough. He pushed the door open and walked into the large ballroom. He then carried his love up to her room and laid her gently on the bed.

Michael was not expecting the fury of the storm of his own grief as it overtook him. He collapsed over the body of his beloved, whom he had murdered, and he buried his head in her wet hair, sobbing, “I’m so sorry. My love, I’m so sorry.”

He tried to breathe in the sweet smell of her hair and skin, but only caught the scent of death. All he desired was to join her, and he cursed Kreios for bringing him back to a life he no longer wanted to live.

Some things cannot be undone. Some stories cannot be rewritten. Some wounds will never heal.

Michael raised his head, blinking. He looked at her face, still beautiful in death. A thought, both rash and bold, was blooming upon the face of his consciousness. Would it be possible? He rose to his feet, half turned from her, as if pulled in some new direction, yet not willing to depart. No. He reached down to her figure, lying motionless before him on the bed. “No.”

He moved toward the door, slowly at first, walking backward, then turning, increasing his pace and reaching the door. When he passed through it, he turned and ran down the hallway to the stairs, racing down them, half falling with the speed he carried.

When he reached the bottom, he turned toward the library. “No.” He was racing. He crash-landed in the room before the great fire, which was always lit. Frantically, he searched. “No, No.”

Running wildly throughout the room, dodging from shelf to shelf, he looked. He searched high and low. It is here somewhere; it must be; I feel it to be true. And yet the lines from Shakespeare echoed back to him:

Truth may seem, but cannot be;

Beauty brag, but ‘tis not she;

Truth and beauty buried be.

“I do not believe it.” He hurled the words against reality, dashing them against the rotten powers of his mind. He searched frantically on for a moment, then stopped—still.

Slowly turning, he fixed his gaze on the great roaring fire. Above its steadfast flame there stood a mantelpiece. On its ledge were a few books, an old-fashioned inkwell and quill pen; a few other things. He walked toward them.

Each step produced in the air a shock wave of foreboding, each step radiating outward momentous importance. His hand reached up and out; he closed his eyes, sensing. Farther and farther it reached, fingertips extended. Closer it came, the reach of his hand cutting against time and possibility. At last, the tip of his forefinger brushed the surface of a book, and he heard, ringing out into the wilds of his mind a single word: AIREL.

Michael understood in an instant what was to be done. Taking the book down, he opened it. Taking the quill pen from the inkwell, he wrote three simple words:

“But she lived.”