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“It has been many years since I have been in such a … predicament. Forgive my clumsiness for lack of practice.”
My chest pranged at the thought of Marius with another. I pushed the feeling down to the pits of my belly where I uncovered another I had buried.
He was my enemy. At least that was what I had come to know. Yet here I lay beside him with the phantom touch of his lips across my own.
I rolled onto my back, a rush of anxiety coursing through me as the realisation flooded back through the barrier of reality.
My breath caught as I looked up at the vaulted ceiling. It was painted entirely with dark navy all besides the lines of gold and black that sliced in precise and deliberate shaping’s. Peppered across the ceiling were gold markings of connected lines through star-like figures.
It was a celestial chart. A map of the sky similar to those I had seen in Mother’s many tomes. Except this, this was far more skilled than anything she could have shown me. Albeit, more beautiful than the night itself.
As though the ceiling was made of glass and I looked up at the constellation of night through it.
Noticing my awe, Marius spoke softly. “It is the very same design that has lasted all these years without the need for repair. It is breath-taking, is it not?”
I leaned back on my elbows, still focusing on the chart of stars and constellations. Although they were not labelled, they did not need to be. I recognized many of the shapes from my short lessons with Lamiere.
“What do you see?”
“Aquila, the eagle.” I lifted a finger to point to the shape that had been joined with a line between ten different markings of stars.
Marius too lifted a finger and picked out the very same shape I had seen. “Crowned with the star Altair. You see the onewemade bigger than the rest?”
I could. Only by a small margin, the shape was slightly bigger than the rest it was linked up with.
“Who is we?” I asked him, latching onto something he had just said. Marius kept his stare on the ceiling.
“A long lost… friend.”
The air thickened with sadness as his lashes thickened with moisture. Although I lay mere inches from Marius’s side, I felt his body stiffen. Then, in a blink, he was standing. His movements a blur.
I sat up with a sinking feeling in my gut. “I apologise if I have pried too far.”
Marius had his back to me, arms folded over his chest as he contemplated in silence. “Tonight I have overstepped, Jak, forgive me.”
“What are you talking about?”
Marius faced me with an expression of cold stone. “I should?”
“If you think for a moment that you can just disappear on me again, stop. You cannot keep flouncing in and out, leaving me to ponder my thoughts.” The words came tumbling out of me as a result of my pure desperation for him to stay. Deep down this feeling sickened me, but I kept it buried. For now. “There is something you are not telling me. You have said it, I am going to die anyway. Why not spill your secrets to me? Let me listen to your story for you count yourself to be a storyteller.”
Marius looked back to the floor. Before he could utter a word, I closed the space between us and pressed a hand to his chest. There was no flutter of a heartbeat within it.
“The mural was completed during a time in my life when I was free. Free of this curse. When I was trapped by another, one who held my love.” A single tear slipped down his cheek. “It was that love that resulted in… in this.”
The curse.He did not need to say it aloud for me to understand what he suggested.
“When you lose everything you have loved, sometimes the grief can return to ruin the small moments of good that are left. Grief is a silent assassin, lurking in the dark of one’s soul, ready to cloak any light in shadow.”
I reached up, instinctively, and brushed the cold tear from his equally cold face. It soaked the tip of my thumb where it continued its descent to my wrist. Unlike Marius, I had never lost anything so dear before.
“Thank you for sharing that with me,” I said quietly.
Marius took my forearm in his monstrous hand and lifted my wrist to his mouth. He placed a kiss upon my skin where his tear had left a wet trail. “I should be thanking you. It has been simple to grow such habits of running away from these feelings. In all these years that have passed I have run from room to room, shadow to shadow. There is something about you that makes it easier to… cope.”
I blushed, guilt stabbing its talon-like grip into my stomach. The need to change the course of the subject was intense.
“Care for a drink?”
