There’s a river, or maybe a waterfall nearby. The sound of rushing water resonates through the forest.
Isaac takes my hand and as we approach the front of the cabin, a werewolf in human form almost as enormous as Raul, steps in front of us. Only this guy, by the ominous, hard look on his face, I can’t help but be intimidated by.
“And who is this?” he drills Isaac through a deep, rough voice as he looks down at me.
“My girlfriend,” Isaac says sternly, which between it and the intolerant look in his eyes seems enough for the brute to bow his head and step aside to let us pass.
I’m surprised that he referred to me as his girlfriend, instead of his mate this time. When it came to the older werewolves, ‘mate’ seemed more appropriate, as if Isaac was speaking to them in their language by simply not using human terms.
When we step inside the warmly lit cabin, it isn’t a surprise to see several servants all dressed alike in black ankle-length gowns, tending to various duties. One steadily dusts the empty shelves and abandoned rustic furniture. Three are coming and going from an area under the staircase that probably leads into a kitchen, each carrying different types of food; fruit mostly, which is carried up the stairs toward a wide-open section overlooking the downstairs floor and where I’m certain Aramei is being kept. Two more servants approach Isaac and me, bow low at the waist and raise their backs again slowly without ever saying a word. Isaac makes a slight motion with his hand, dismissing them and they bow again and move to stand against the wall.
The cabin looks only recently lived in; by Aramei and those inside of it now. There isn’t anything else that I can see which might suggest any humans have been here in several years. Besides the perfumed oils and burning incense that is standard around Aramei, I can easily detect the smell of old air, weathered wood and something mildewed. And even though every inch of anything in reach had been recently dusted by the servants, the mounds of dust and cobwebs on the tall log-like walls and rafters above make this old cabin look as vacant and worn as I had expected it to.
Isaac pulls me along by my fingertips and we walk up the wooden stairs and onto the second floor, which is one enormous area with no hidden rooms or hallways to duck into. The space is vast, encompassing the entire area from halfway overlooking the downstairs floor and spreading out into an oval, flanked by a log balcony separating both floors.
Aramei stands in the soft orange light from a nearby lantern, one servant girl with velvety auburn hair devotedly at her side.
My chest feels empty, dominated by nothing but cold air which whirls up into my throat and down into the pit of my stomach. How just being in Aramei’s presence can make me feel so overly emotional and afraid and wounded still defies any rationalization. Aramei stands with her back to us, her dainty arms lying softly at her sides. The white gown that she wears does little to hide her perfect nak*d form underneath it. Her silken hair lies neatly against her back, down the center between her shoulder blades, so shiny and soft you just know one of her attending servants had recently brushed it more than one hundred strokes. But Aramei hardly moves. I watch her, swallowing my pain, as she appears to stare downward at the hardwood floor. Her little white feet are bare and the gown she wears barely hovers an inch from the tops of her small ankles.
I see nothing but her in this moment. I don’t remember that Isaac is standing next to me somewhere, or that the auburn-haired servant stands feet from Aramei with her hands folded carefully against her pelvis.
What is Aramei looking at? Nothing, of course, I make myself believe. Maybe she doesn’t see anything at all. Maybe as she stands there staring off into oblivion, all that she sees is oblivion.
This will be me one day….
Isaac rests his hand on my shoulder from behind and it feels like an attempt to console me. But why would he need to console me? He doesn’t know why I’m standing here like this, why my heart feels like an empty, dead thing rotting inside my chest, threatening to bring me to my knees while I wither away and die.
I hold back the tears hiding just behind my eyes.
“Milord has ordered she only be accompanied by you anymore,” the auburn-haired servant says to Isaac and finally I tear my eyes away from the cruel mirror I had been staring into.
“When did he say this?” Isaac says and I feel his body step away from mine.
The servant bows her head as he approaches. “He informed us yesterday—no longer can Aramei be personally guarded by anyone but you, Milord.” Her voice is gentle and subservient.
Isaac lets out a long, deep breath. I turn at the waist to see him. That look in his eyes is him trying not to appear devastated, while at the same time, apologizing to me for the new order thrust onto him. He already knows how I feel about it. This news, after the conversation he and I had on the way here, is cruelly ironic.
“Do you know what his reasons are for this decision?” Isaac says and I hear the anger seething quietly in his words.
I look back at Aramei, who hasn’t moved an inch and I hear Isaac pull out a chair situated under a small table pressed against the balcony.
“Partially, Milord,” the servant says, but she stops. I turn around slightly to see why. She looks toward another servant fluffing up the pillows amid Aramei’s giant bed that sits against the far wall. “All of you leave us,” she demands and every servant bows where they stand and scurries down the stairs.
“Everyone, all of you, go outside,” Isaac says, looking over the balcony, to those lingering in the room below.
Not until Isaac and the servant are confident that only the four of us are left inside the cabin does the servant feel she can speak again.
“Milord,” she says, “may I speak freely?”
“Of course.”
I don’t move. I turn my back on them, letting my gaze fall only on Aramei, but leaving my ears open to everything she and Isaac are saying.
“Your father has become obsessed, paranoid even,” she says and her tone and choice of words feel borderline blasphemous to me, but I guess that’s what being able to speak freely means.
“Go on,” Isaac urges her.
Aramei still hasn’t moved. Her body sways in an almost invisible motion, but she isn’t the one provoking it.
“He was visited by a woman who told him that there might be someone on the inside who is a danger to Aramei.”
“Who was this woman?”
“I do not know, Milord. I have never seen her before.”
“Well, what did she look like?”
“She appeared young,” the servant says, “her hair was dark and long, but she had no distinguishable traits to set her apart from any other young girl. But she was a Black Beast; this I know.”
Black Beast is the old term for werewolf. Only the Elders normally still use it.
“But then why still allow all of these guards and the servants, or even you for that matter, around Aramei now?”
“The girl said that the threat is coming from among those you know, not from those of us who have tended to her and guarded her life for two hundred years.”
I notice Aramei’s chin raise and it’s enough to keep all of my attention. She is still so beautiful and unchanging, still the same angelic figure she has always been.
I walk over closer to her, letting Isaac’s and the servant’s words fade behind me.
In a split second, I could’ve sworn I saw Aramei’s body tense up as I approached her. But that can’t be. She doesn’t know that I’m even here. She doesn’t know that she’s here.
“Your father will be taking her back to Serbia soon. Permanently.”
Those words cause my whole body to jerk around.
My eyes flash on Isaac, full of anger and censure. “No, Isaac. You can’t let him force you to go to Serbia!”
Isaac doesn’t look at me; his penetrating gaze hones in on the wall out ahead, but I read total defiance and resentment in his expression.
Trajan is in Serbia all the time; he’s there more than he is here these days, but if he takes Aramei back there…no, this isn’t going to happen. He’s not taking Isaac away from me or me away from my aunt and uncle.
“Isaac….”
“Don’t worry about it,” he says, finally looking at me. “I won’t let it happen.”
The subject is quickly diverted when I see the servant’s eyes widen as she stares off toward Aramei. And then Isaac is sharing her expression, causing me to turn around to see what has them both so mesmerized.
Aramei has turned fully around and is looking straight at me. Not through me as if I’m not standing here, but at me as though she actually sees me.
My hand flies to my chest.
My eyes dart back and forth between the three of them and I’m waiting for someone to say something because I’m so stunned that I don’t know what I’d say if I had to say anything at all.
But no one murmurs a word.
It’s like we’re afraid to breathe, afraid to move for fear of scaring Aramei back into the static, unconscious state she’s been in for so long.
Tears pour from my eyes, but I’m not sure why. I search my mind and my heart for some explanation, some buried emotion I never knew I had which has reared its ugly head in the most awkward moment, but I find nothing.
It’s almost as if the tears I’m crying aren’t mine.
Isaac carefully moves in behind me.
“Why is she looking at me like that,” I whisper to him in a shuddering voice, but I don’t move my eyes from Aramei’s.
“I don’t know,” he says against my ear and I can sense that he hasn’t taken his eyes off her, either.
Aramei walks across the hardwood floor toward me and my body just becomes stiffer and stiffer, my eyes widening beyond their limits, my lips parted. I see in her eyes something I’ve never seen before: life, though it’s so vague and so frail that the slightest wrong move might scare it completely away.
I do stop breathing when Aramei stands directly in front of me and reaches out her pale, delicate hand and touches my face. My legs melt with weakness, but I manage to stay on my feet, feeling Isaac’s grip tighten just a little around my waist.
“You see me….” She says in a voice almost too soft to hear and more tears roll down my cheeks.
Her hand falls away, and just like that, Aramei slips back inside that void that used to be her mind. I fall into Isaac’s chest, trying to shake off…I don’t know…what the hell just happened? I didn’t faint. I know, because I remember everything; I just don’t understand any of it.
As the servant rushes over to help Aramei to the bed, Isaac helps me into the chair by the balcony overlooking the downstairs floor.
“She’s only ever acknowledged my father in that way,” he says bewilderingly, but then his worries shift only to me. “Adria, are you alright?” He pulls the empty chair over next to me, sitting directly in front of me, laying his arms across my thighs.
“Yeah, I just…,” I raise my eyes to look up at him. “Isaac….”
He’s gazing at me with anticipation but I can’t go any further. I can’t tell him that I think I just felt Aramei’s emotions. There’s no other way to explain it even to myself, but that’s exactly what it felt like. I wasn’t crying my tears. I think I was crying hers.