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I knew the space it left was huge, however it was hard to comprehend just the size of the tome that sat before me. Its spine was so large that it took both hands to pull it from its burrow. The weight of the novel was dramatic, straining my wrists as I wrestled it free.
I leaned back as I carried the tome to Marius’s desk, trying to balance out the heaviness in my posture. It was near impossible not to dump it on the oak desk just from the relief of not having to carry it.
Taking a seat, I ran my hands down the gold, embossed cover and readied myself.
“What were you hiding, Marius?” I asked aloud, lifting the front cover back to reveal the aged, yellowed paper within.
Where the answer to my question looked back at me.
A single word. A name. Written in beautiful twisting letters that did not negate the word.
Jak.
My brow furrowedand my forehead creased. Narrowing my gaze, I ran my finger over my name as if it would rub away the illusion and reveal what word truly lay beneath it.
But it stayed the same. Unchanged and proud.
My name.
20
The chair creaked painfully as I leaned back in it, hands folding behind the back of my head. The tome discarded before me. And my stare did not falter from the page with that one, unbelievable word scrawled across it. I winced at the heavy pounding of my heart as my mind raced for an explanation.
It made no sense. He told me he wrote the stories long after the Claim’s final day. Yet here sat a story with my name scripted across the first page.
“It is not what you think.” Marius’s voice sounded just out of sight. I turned slowly, mouth agape, as he stood in the doorway. He was shirtless, his hair ruffled from his long sleep. Had evening arrived already? Time was truly slipping away from me. My eyes dusted over the unbuttoned waist of his trousers and how it revealed the hairs that crowned his manhood. He spoke again, bringing my attention back to his placid face. “Would you prefer for me to explain, or to leave you to read and uncover the truth?”
I would have hauled the book from the table and waved it at him if I had the strength. “I will get clarity far sooner if it comes from you.”
He bowed his head, trying to hide the sad glint in his eyes. “When you first arrived and revealed your name to me it was as if that single word had torn down the walls I had built within myself. Your name, his name, had not been spoken in this place for many years. It took me by utter surprise.”
“Which explains your reaction…” I added, watching him walk to the other side of the desk.
“I am well accustomed to ghosts. Yet with your reveal I felt the worst of them being dragged to the surface.”
I looked back to the book for a moment. “He was your first Claim.” The body that was left at the border of his castle. The one both Mother and Victorya had kept so quiet about.
“He was not my Claim. It was those after him that arrived with that label. Jak was…” Marius paused, putting a closed fist to his mouth and clearing the lump from his throat. “Jak was the very reason for why you and I are standing in this room. If it was not for him I would likely be bones beneath the ground. The remains of a withered, old man, who’d died from old age. Instead I fell for him, as he fell for me. And we were punished for it.”
I could not speak. All I could do was stay silent and listen as Marius unveiled his truth. A story I had not heard of before. But one that tugged on the familiar strings that seemed to twang within my chest.
“I thought it was some twisted punishment when you arrived, Jak. Beautiful Jak, come to remind me of my undoing. Come — just when I was beginning to forget — to ensure I would not.”
“Who was he, Marius?” I asked. “Who was he to you?”
“The love of my life.” He looked up slowly, his eyes narrowed and wet. A tear sliced down his cheek, falling carelessly to the ground at his bare feet. “We were young and naïve. Jak was betrothed to another yet we did not care. I was selfish to think he would ever be mine, and he was stupid to believe the same. When we were discovered, we were…”
Marius turned quickly, putting his back to me.
“Were what?” I said, standing from the desk with a scratch of wood against stone. I needed to hear it from him, but I had pieced the story he told to the one I had been taught to believe. “Tell me, Marius.”
I paused my plea and waited for prolonged moments. When he finally turned around he no longer held onto sadness. His eyes had narrowed and darkened in colour, as if the ruby of his irises had expanded across the entirety of his stare. His lips had turned white with tension as they snarled above his exposed fangs.
“We were cursed. There were always rumours his betrothed was a witch, but it was never believed. Idle gossip and warnings that we looked over. That was the first and only time I ever underestimated their kind. She discovered our secret and punished us. At first we simply could not leave the grounds. But I grew colder whilst Jak stayed warm. My hunger changed. His did not. I became the beast and he…” Marius choked once again on his words before clearing his throat with an expression of distressed irritation. “Then I killed him. On the day when the moon was full and bled red, I lost myself to the creature that the witch had moulded me into. And I killed him.”
Slowly I moved around the desk, unsure if the creature buried within Marius was about to finally show itself. With caution I closed the space between us and pressed my hands against his cool, bare chest. “You fell in love and were punished,” I said aloud, more for myself to understand. It was not the version of events I had been taught. Similar in the sense of my ancestor cursing him for stealing someone that belonged to her. Yet I was seeing it from a different light.
“She never cared for Jak,” Marius said, looking down his nose at me. “If she did she would have punished me, and not him. Yet she trapped him with me and knew what would become of him.”
