Mike? Maybe. But, he produced a more taciturn, kind of robust sound.
There were plenty of people living at the manor that played the piano, but not many with that degree of skill and accuracy and … sorrow.
My heart burned then as it beat harder in my chest for the hope that it might be David—all that hope exploding into delight as the sound of his deep, milky voice followed the chords out of the Great Hall and struck my soul.
An almost shameful guilt riddled my moral core to be catching David in a private moment of self-expression—to see him stripped bare down to his soul, no longer shielded by the steel wall he put up to keep others from seeing him feel things. I kinda felt like a naughty child sneaking out of bed, lingering in the halls to hear her parents talking—like I’d be scolded if anyone caught me. And it was the most delicious feeling I’d had in a long time.
The shadows of early dawn darkened the corridors and all the corners, but the rooms were so filled with life by the sound of David singing that it felt as though everyone was awake and the day was new with promise. But my heart ached a little for the song he chose—for the meaning I took from it that David probably didn't even realise. Then again, he would absolutely deny that the song was about finally breaking apart when you’ve tried to hold it together for so long, but his voice told a thousand truths his own words would refuse: the small waver, the tiny breaks here and there. I could
hear
the pain in his soul. And I could hear that he chose this song for exactly that meaning.
But it ended then and the morning went quiet again. Too quiet.
The crickets outside sung the dawn a merry tune as the wind played percussion, sweeping tiny pebbles off the driveway into the bricks at the base of the walls, and I held my breath, frozen in the middle of the entranceway, my feet flat and cold on the marble floor, my nostrils flaring around that crisp rosewater scent the autumn had left in the air. He’d come out any second now. He’d catch my scent, know I was listening, and be so embarrassed by his vulnerability that he’d have to say something cruel to appear heartless again.
I was about to make a mad dash back up to bed when the bewitching ring of a lullaby eased my nerves and unfolded my toes, guiding me to the Great Hall on the very tips of them. He wasn’t done pouring out his heart yet, and I sure as hell wasn’t done witnessing it. Not for all the gold in the world.
As I reached the doors and glided like a ghost into the corner beside the frame, my eyes found him in the perfect darkness by the piano: the stool sat slightly further out than it usually did, almost as if he'd just stopped on a whim and decided to play, but the way he owned the notes and the keys, his hands scaling across them like ripples along water, made it seem like he'd been sitting there all night and was now fused to the piano. His feet were bare, the cuffs of his jeans sitting just over them, moving as he pressed the pedals, sustaining the chords.
It wasn't until he stopped playing for a second and drew a long breath before playing again that I recognised the song. I knew it only as a pop song on the radio, surrounded by controversy about a girl on a steel ball. I’d never heard it done acoustically and never on a piano. He made beauty of the melody, humming to it softly for a while, letting the gravity of the words I knew should be there saturate the room.
His lips parted then and the first words echoed as he began the song a cappella.
I let out the breath I didn't know I was holding and leaned into the doorway, steadying my jelly legs to hold me up. Just the way he sung it, with his heart well and truly on his sleeve, his voice illustrating his soul’s anguish in colours all around the room, made me want to cry. Hearing the song in David’s voice connected me to it in ways that I never had before. It was like he owned the words, certainly owned all the pain, as if it had been written by him—in a letter personally addressed to me. Which made me think about the reason he’d chosen
this
song. Was his inner heart crying out for someone to save him from the anguish of being forced not to love me? He knew about the prophecy of Lilith—that Jason and I were meant to be. Maybe his distance from me, the reason he
had
to make me hate him, was because of that, because he’d been told that I could die if I refused to be with Jason. Maybe all this time he was doing what he thought was best—pushing me away. If anyone knew how to push me away, it was him. He knew exactly what to say. He knew exactly what to do.
This song, this performance, was it the turmoil escaping from inside him for an instant—just a breath where he could ease the pain of being torn from someone he loved? Or was it just a phenomenal performance by an inspiringly talented musician that left its audience thinking wishfully, believing he could see them—that they were the only people in the crowd?
But if he has been influenced by a hex this whole time, then how much must it kill him to say those nasty things to me, knowing I actually believed them? And how helpless must he feel knowing he has to give me up, hand me over to someone else, for the greater good?
I just wanted to walk in there and hold him, tell him it was okay. Tell him again and again that I never stopped loving him and that I’d rather die—rather accept this fate Lilith foresaw than live another day without him. He’d probably just tell me again how much he hates me, but I bet if I looked deep into those eyes, I’d see the truth. It was always there. Maybe I just hadn't
wanted
to see it until now. Maybe accepting that he still loved me meant that I had to face the truth of how deeply I hurt him and face the truth that Jason really did need to leave. I wasn't ready to let him go before, but hearing the pain bare itself in David’s voice was enough to make me never want to see Jason again.
I focused my attention on David again as he leaned down, placing his ear to the keys, singing his agony into the slower more soulful notes. I’d seen him do that a thousand times, heard him sing a thousand times, but tonight it felt like the first time. I felt myself falling in love with him all over again, like that first day I ever heard him sing, so long ago, by a lake that seemed more like a dream now than a real place. All those memories of a childhood passed wavered around me on an invisible current: the music room, Big Bertha, Ryan and Alana. The storage closet and the day David squeezed his cola all over his jeans. All of it filled me up with a rush of agony and a cool wash of hope. Where there was once love there would always be hope. Always. I wouldn't give up on him. Ever. And tonight, speaking with him, hearing him sing again, gave me the strength to know that, no matter what came, I
couldn't
give up. I had to stay strong. I had to get him back.
As the last note rang into the emptiness around us, David slid his foot from the pedal and sat back, his hands in his lap. I gently wiped a cool line of tears from my face, sobbing all the tension and heartache out in a long breath, my eyes going wide with horror when the breath reached his ears.
He looked up quickly from the piano, his eyes falling on an ultimately empty space as I ducked masterfully into the shadows in the nick of time, turning on my heel then to dart up the stairs.
“Please don’t follow me,” I whispered. “Please don't follow me.”
I shoved my bedroom door open, slammed it shut and set myself up on the settee by the fire with a book in my hand just as the door swung back open.
He didn’t knock. Didn’t announce himself. Just stood there in the doorway, probably staring at me.
“Ara.”
“Mm?” I said casually, not looking up from my book.
He appeared on the table beside the settee, his eyes cold and dark. “Were you in the Great Hall just now?”
“Me?” I shrugged dismissively. “No. I was reading. Why?”
He angled his head horizontally. “So you read upside-down now?”
I cringed when I looked at the book. “Um, yeah. It exercises the brain.”
He groaned, lowering his brow to his fingertips.
I put the book and the façade down. “I’m sorry. I just couldn’t help it. It’s been so long since I’ve heard you sing.”
He jumped up quickly and stormed away, but didn't leave the room. Instead, he just stood by the fireplace, his hand splayed out on the mantle, looking down into the golden flames as they turned half of him orange.
“I am really sorry, David,” I added, sliding my feet onto the floor.
“Don’t be.”
“Okay.” I sat back, hugging a pillow. “I’m not then.”
He turned his head slightly and smiled, laughing a little.
“Can I just say one thing about it?” I asked delicately.
“What?”
“You are an amazing performer.”
His shoulders dropped then and he relaxed, moving back a step from the fireplace. “I thought I was alone.”
And all
I
could think was that I’d at least finally managed to get him up to the bedroom. Maybe I could keep him here overnight—make sure he got some sleep.
“I can’t, Ara.”
“Can’t what?”
“Can’t sleep in the same room as you.”
“Why? I know you're not still
that
mad at me, David. You—”
“It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
He sighed and came to sit on the coffee table in front of me. “It’s the nightmares.”
“You’re having nightmares?” I asked, but I already knew that. I just didn't know what they were about.
“I haven't slept for more than an hour at a time in…” He balanced his elbows on his knees and cradled his face in his hands. “Weeks.”
“And … are the nightmares because of the lack of sleep, or is the lack of sleep because of the nightmares?”
“Both. I think.” He gave a timid smirk, looking up from his hands. “They're so vivid, Ara. The dreams. Sometimes, when I wake, I’m not sure what’s real.”
“What are they about?”
“You,” he said without hesitation.
“Me? What, being with me, leaving me—?”
“Killing you.”
My throat made an overdramatised gulping noise for comedic effect. “And you think, if we sleep together, you might actually kill me?” As if!
“Yes,” he said in short. “But that’s not why I’m afraid to go to sleep.”
I was taken slightly aback by that. I shifted in my seat awkwardly before asking, “Then why are you?”
“Honestly? It’s what I feel when I open my eyes and realise you're not actually dead that bothers me.”
“Relief?”
He shook his head. “I feel like I failed. Like I can't go another day if you exist in this world.”
“So you're afraid I’ll still be
alive
?”
He hesitated. “Yes.”
The word hit me like an arrow through the heart. I stood, my eyes brimming with tears.
“Ara, please—” He reached for my hand, but I backed away. “Ara.”
“This is so wrong, David,” I said, my voice shaky.
“In theory, yes.” He lowered his head. “But a bigger part of me, one I’m struggling to control, finds more injustice in every breath you take than the thought of your cold, dead corpse.”
A shiver ran up my spine when he looked at me with a kind of hatred behind his icy gaze that shattered everything solid in my world—as if the vampire within had consumed the human remains of his soul and left him raw and open to pure instinct. The instinct to kill me.
I ran so fast then that all I saw was the shock register in David’s eyes as I turned away and bolted down the corridors, taking the stairs at what felt like light speed, the drapes following the breeze of my momentum.
David took off at a run a heartbeat later, falling only milliseconds behind. The urgency inside him, the very energy surrounding him, had me both fearful and hopeful that he’d follow me as far as I ran—follow me until I stopped in a space where we’d both be safe. He couldn't have meant what he said. Those dreams, everything, it had to be because of the spell. It had to. If not, how would I ever find a way to go on? How would I ever be able to breathe again? I knew he was cruel. I knew from those early days after we first met that he had a darkness inside him, but I prayed to God as I ran through the corridors that it hadn’t taken away the sliver of good I knew he had inside as well.
“Ara, please,” he cried, his fingertips nearly brushing my elbow. And from the tone of his voice, all the fear in me melted into a liquid kind of wanting—the wanting to stop and turn around and look into the kind eyes I knew were attached to that voice. “Please don’t run from me.”
A guard looked up from his post with concern and I smiled at him to say everything was okay. The last thing I needed right now was interference. David had to think I was afraid of him, but anyone watching on had to think it was just a kinky game of cat-and-mouse between husband and wife.
It took twenty seconds at this speed to reach the Throne Room, and the absence of guards in here made the room feel empty. It also gave me the space to add some drama to my act.
“Just stay away from me,” I called.
“No!” he snarled, but his tone had changed and the kindness he’d displayed around the guards was completely dried up. My limbs wanted to freeze with the dread that sunk through me. He’d clearly been playing Nice David back there in the halls. But he wasn’t in a nice mood at all.