Airel - Aaron Patterson [136]
Some things cannot be undone. Some words cannot be rewritten, and some wounds cannot be mended.
Michael raised his head, blinking. He looked at her face, still beautiful in death. A thought, both rash and bold, was blooming upon the face of his consciousness. Would it be possible? He rose to his feet, half-turned from her, as if pulled in some new direction, yet not willing to depart. No. He reached down to her figure, lying motionless before him on the bed. “No!”
He moved toward the door, slowly at first, walking backward, then turning, increasing his pace, then reaching the door. When he passed through it, he turned and ran down the hallway to the stairs, racing down them, half falling with the speed he carried.
When he reached the bottom, he turned toward the library. “No!” He was racing. He crash-landed in the room before the great fire, which was always lit. Frantically, he searched. “No, No!”
Running wildly throughout the room, dodging from shelf to shelf, he looked. He searched high and low. It is here somewhere; it must be; I feel it to be true! And yet the lines from Shakespeare echoed back to him:
Truth may seem, but cannot be;
Beauty brag, but ‘tis not she;
Truth and beauty buried be.
“I do not believe it!” he hurled the words against the real, dashing them against the rotten powers of his mind. He searched frantically on for a moment, then stopped—still.
Slowly turning, he fixed his gaze on the great roaring fire. Above its licking flame there stood a mantelpiece. On its ledge were a few books, an old-fashioned inkwell and quill pen. He walked toward them.
Each step produced in the air a shockwave of foreboding, each step radiating outward momentous importance. His hand reached up and out; he closed his eyes, sensing. Farther and farther it reached, fingertips extended. Closer it came, the reach of his hand cutting against time and possibility. At last the tip of his forefinger brushed the surface of a book, and he heard, ringing out into the wilds of his mind a single word: AIREL.
Michael understood in an instant what was to be done. Taking the book down, he opened it. Taking the quill pen from the inkwell, he wrote three simple words:
“But she lived.”
COMING SOON
BOOK TWO IN THE AIREL SAGA
There is never an end,
Life breaks in with gentle force and the old is made new.
Death is the beginning of life,
Before we can truly live we must all die.
Chapter I
Michael could physically feel his heart rip inside his chest as he was crushed under the weight of his decisions. But what choice did he have? Writing in the book had to be wrong, but he could not lose Airel this way. Not like this; not after he betrayed her to his demonic father, not after all that had passed between them. He had trampled his love for her, had trampled her—and for what?
His pen scrawled the words:
“But she lived.”
Michael watched the page crinkle under his tears as they dropped to the parchment, smudging the ink. This was not what he had wanted, not what he would have ever believed could happen.
Airel was just another mission, just another cursed threat that needed to be cleansed from the dominion. She was a job, like so many others. But Airel somehow got in, broke past all his defenses and took hold of his heart.
He had never known love, never really cared about it—not with his demon partner. Airel broke the rules like they’d never even existed. He now was certain: he would kill and die for her.
He turned and set the book down, closing it. The name on the cover glistened like stars in the coldest sky:
AIREL.
It was her book, The Book of her life. Every thought, dream and nightmare.
He left it there in the library and walked the lonely trek down massive halls of splendor toward her room. It was the most tortured he had ever felt in his life, and he felt the heat of self-hatred grow with each step.
Michael