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I shouldn’t have let her words hurt me, but they did. Because she was right.
“Everything I do is to keep you safe—”
“From what?” She laughed, barking as she interrupted me. “Answer me that, Arlo. Nothing you do is for me. Nothing. It is all for you. Years I have ignored the comments from friends, even from people who I care little for. But I can’t pretend they are wrong anymore. They see what you are, and so do I.”
I felt heat rise from the ground, through my boots and into every vein and bone within my body. It was a discomforting feeling, knowing that other people spoke about us. I had known the people of Tithe looked at us with sorrow after our parents passed. Was I truly blind to how they saw me?
“Listening to what others say is pointless. Auriol, please consider why I do this. We don’t know what happens to those who are Chosen. The risk of the unknown is too great.”
She paced forward, arm raised and finger pointed towards me until her nail found my chest and pressed into it. “I know that whatever waits within their realm would be a far better future than what I would have here. Stuck, poor little orphan Auriol whose parents couldn’t even stay alive to care for her and whose brother keeps her imprisoned for his own need for control. I want a life without the constraints that have been shackled upon me. And my one chance, the chance I was given and deserved, has been taken by the person I should trust the most.”
I lowered my stare to my boots, unworthy of my sister. “I did it because it was what our parents wanted.”
Auriol spun from me, moving so fast I was sure she would raise her hand back and slap it across my face. “So you commune with the dead now?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I snapped, stalking after her as she frantically searched for the next item to throw and break. We passed holes in the walls, dents made by the broken objects that lay forgotten at the floor beneath them. “You could never understand the pressure I have been under since they died. Everything I have done is because they asked it of me. It is their wish...”
“They are dead!Fucking dead, Arlo. It doesn’t matter what they wish or want; if they are not here to say it then it is pointless. When are you going to realise that you act on your own behalf and not that of the dead?”
“That isn’t fair.”
“Fair? What isn’t fair is our dear mother and father gave up on us.”
“Auriol!” I couldn’t believe the words that came out of her mouth. It was a lie, but as she said it I knew she believed it was truth. “They could not help the sickness that infected them. Do you really think they gave up without a fight?”
I knew the fight, the struggle as my lungs filled up with my own blood, drowning me from the inside out. “You… we cannot even begin to imagine what they went through. You are saying that because you are angry.”
“Don’t you dare speak on my behalf. You know nothing about me.”
I had to keep my anger buried. I wished, nothing more, than to lash out and hurt her with the truth. Auriol didn’t understand the very lengths I had gone to ensure our parents final wishes were kept. How I filled my body with the sick gore of the vampires I killed just to ensure she was not left in this world alone.
“What now?” I asked, pacing behind her as she burned marks into our floor which each rushed step. “Are you going to take your anger out on me, on everything we have left? Smash our home into pieces only for us to patch it up together again? You might not understand why I have done what I have, but you will one day. When you are older and realise that you can have a life within Tithe, one you can carve for yourself.”
“One where you can continue being my shadow and keep my happiness from reach, is that what you mean?”
This was getting nowhere and if I continued arguing with her I would soon spread my own destruction alongside hers. “I am going to go. Take the time you need to think this over. Perhaps when this entire place is overturned, we can sit down among the mess and chat like adults.”
“That’s right, Arlo,” she sneered, teeth bared. “Run away from the truth. Do what you do best and disappear. You think you do everything to keep this family together when you cannot even stay in this fucking house for long enough to be a part of it. Run to Tom. At least one of us is granted the freedom to live other lives. And do not worry about me. I will be here when you get back like I always am, waiting like the doting sister who is willing to disregard her wants in life to please you.”
I stopped myself from telling her then and there. My hand reached for the pouch at my belt and the glass vials within. The urge to tear them free from their leather confines and smash them upon the ground at her feet was almost too strong to ignore. I wished to see the dead, cold blood of the vampire drip through the floorboards and wash away.
It took a will power I did not know I possessed to turn my back on her and walk towards our open door. Each step was forced. My heart thundered in my chest, almost leaping into my throat and stopping me from swallowing or gulping a big enough breath to calm down. I felt a bulging vein in my forehead, throbbing as though it was a worm beneath my skin. And with each step towards the boundary of our broken, split home, I still longed to hear Auriol call my name.
She didn’t. And deep down, beneath the anger and embarrassment, I could understand why.
I threw the hood of my jacket up, concealing myself beneath its welcoming shadows, before I reached the last stair beyond the building’s outer door. The streets were still crammed with people, no longer alive with excitement for the festivities but horror for what had happened. What I had done.
The worst part of it was that I still felt Faenir’s presence across my palm. I needed something to scrub away his touch and the memory of it.
Auriol was right. Only Tom had the power to do that for me.
FAENIR
I was all too familiar with the golden hue of life force. How it glowed around a person’s body as though they stood before the mighty sun which burned brilliantly behind them.
All until I touched them and stole it away.
My affliction made me a moth to a flame, always drawn to those who brimmed with life. They teased me, urging me to reach out and touch their warmth, all for me to take it from them and leave them dull and cold.
