Chapter Twenty: Louisa Endless
1341 Words
CHAPTER TWENTY
LOUISA ENDLESS
Ben passed three days in a feverish haze. The curse was not kind to him. The absinthe combined with the curse had only made everything worse. Though I had managed to get most of the absinthe out the first time, the curse had managed to keep some of it in his body. He stayed in my room, wrapped up in blankets, chilled, yet feverish.
I tried contacting Hecate using the mirror that I had given to me by Oberon, but for whatever reason, she would not answer my calls. The three of us, Bradley, Clark, and I alternated watching him.
“I don’t understand why you haven’t been able to heal him yet,” Clark said, his voice full of worry. He’d been agitated ever since Ben had shown up and had grown worse since the curse. “Please tell me you aren’t doing this as some weird thing to get back at your sister.”
He leaned up against the wall of the door, watching over Ben like an anxious, mother hen.
“Honesty, Clark, you’re being ridiculous.” I wiped Ben’s sweaty forehead with a rag. Any of the intense, attraction I’d had was gone. Now, I was more annoyed with him than anything, and his raspy breathing had me worried. “Do you think I want to let him die? If I let him die, I will never hear the end of it. From you, from Bradley, from Emma. What’s more, Emma’s the new faerie Queen. I can’t afford to piss her off, or Oberon. Do you know what happens to gatekeepers who piss them off?”
He stared at me. “Actually, no. I don’t think that was ever discussed. I don’t…I’ve never asked you anything about gatekeeping, have I?”
I scowled. “No. But you’ve always been too involved in your obsession with Emma to take notice of anything else.”
He hung his head. “I am sorry, Lou. I should have been a more attentive---”
“Friend,” I finished, wiping Ben’s head again, “I know you don’t like using the word brother.”
“I can’t help it. I never felt like I was supposed to be Emma’s brother. I felt like I was supposed to be with her, but not her family. When she came into the world, it was like….it was like part of me was missing, and when I saw her, I was whole. Lot to put on a tiny infant, isn’t it?”
I stared at him. I had often wondered about the strange pull between my sister and Clark. He had an uncanny ability for knowing when there was something wrong with her, had always seemed to be able to know what was on her mind before the rest of us did. Once, I had asked my Mother about it, but she had insisted that she would explain things when I was older.
He raised an eyebrow. “Would you care to explain why you’re looking at me like I’ve got a second head?”
I blinked. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. It’s only, I often thought that our parents lied about where you came from. You were two years old when you showed up. I was six. A lot of that night is fuzzy, but there are parts that I remember extremely clearly. The most important part was my Mum and Dad fighting.”
He c****d his head to the side, curious. “About?”
“About you. Well, you and Bradley.”
He grinned. “Me and Bradley, eh? What had we done?”
“That was the weird thing. I snuck out from my room, because I heard shouting and wanted to see what was going on. Bradley was standing there, talking to you. He was four and chattered up a storm. They kept on saying that Bradley had stolen you as a ‘gift’ for Emma, because the Queen wanted her to have you. They were talking about whether or not they should tell Oberon.”
Clark raised an eyebrow. “I don’t understand. Why would the Queen want Emma to have me as a gift?”
I shrugged. “A two-year-old seemed like a pretty weird gift for a baby to me too. But with the bargain having gone unanswered, I suspect that my parents were worried about retaliation from Oberon for not following through.”
“Tatiana…Tatiana and Oberon hadn’t been together for centuries, right?”
“Right,” I answered, “they had to exist together because without them there would be no faerie, but they were not married. They were King and Queen in titles only, their marriage had long since dissolved. That was why it was no surprise that Tatiana was cursed when she attempted to have their child killed. Although the strange thing was, no one remembers seeing the child, or even if the child was born. It was as if she had never been pregnant, and stranger still, the year that the child was supposed to be born, Tatiana lived with us.”
“Lived with you? Why?” he asked.
Ben let out a moan. I had a bowl of ice cubes nearby, and I took one to place on his forehead hoping that I could use it to bring his fever down.
“That’s the part I don’t remember,” I admitted, “and every time that I tried to remember it was like someone had put a block on it. But I think…I don’t think that you’re crazy for thinking that.”
“Really?” he beamed, looking happier than I had ever seen him.
“Really,” I said, “and I think if you want answers about who you are, you should look to Tatiana. She knew something about you. I’m certain that she did.”
Ben groaned once more.
I turned my attention back on him. “This is ridiculous. Hecate won’t answer me. I can’t have a human die on my watch. I can’t have Ben die on my watch.”
“I’ll go,” Clark offered, “let me get into faerie, and get her. Maybe I can get some answers from her.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. “Faerie makes you uneasy.”
“Yes,” Clark answered, “if I don’t find out who I am, I’ll never be able to be honest about myself, or with Emma. I want the truth. If I can find the truth, I can be honest about what I want.”
Despite knowing the trouble this would cause, I couldn’t help but smile a bit. “Don’t you mean who you want?”
He grinned. “Yes. Yes, that too.”
“Go to faerie. Find Hecate.” I stood up from my bedside, where I had been for so long, and where I dreaded to leave. Because if I left, I wasn’t so certain it would be for a good reason. I stood in front of Clark, giving him the most serious look I had ever given anybody. “If you can’t find Hecate, whatever you do, don’t let Ben Taylor die, alright?”
“Alright,” Clark said with a nod, and he left, leaving me with my sisters former fiancé who was near death.
The young man who, if he died, would ruin not only Emma’s world but everyone’s.
- Writer
