Initium (The Nocte Trilogy 2.50)

That’s how long I have before I’m condemned to a lifetime with Richard.

It gives me a permanent lump in my throat that I can’t swallow, and as soon as I can, I excuse myself and flee to my mother.

As soon as I arrive, she opens her arms and I collapse into them, and she holds me as I cry.

“There, there.” She pats my back and strokes my hair. “It will be fine, Liv. It will be fine.”

But it won’t be. It won’t ever be. I know that.

She lets me cry and holds me tight.

“I wish I could take this from you,” she says finally, and her voice is so sad. I look at her and she looks frail in the moonlight. “You don’t have to do this for me, girl.”

But she knows that I do.

If I marry Richard, they’ll take care of my mother for the rest of her life. She’ll never want for food, she’ll never go without medical care, she’ll always be okay. Since she’s alone now that my father is gone, I have to do this for her.

I have to.

I pull myself together and I swallow the persistent lump.

“I’ll be okay,” I tell her resolutely, and I mean it. I’ll be okay. I have to be.

“You mourn for the dark haired boy,” she tells me knowingly and her eyes are troubled. “You mourn for what cannot be, my love.”

I look away because I won’t give Phillip up. They can make me marry Richard, but they can’t make me give Phillip up.

“I love him,” I tell her flatly, unable to meet her eyes. “I’ll be discreet. No one will ever know.”

I hear her sharp intake of breath and I don’t look at her.

“Olivia! That’s not who we are. You cannot be with him. You’re going to give your vow to Richard Savage, and that’s how it has to be. You are only as good as your word, child. Your word is your bond.”

I know that. I do. But the idea of not being with Phillip takes my breath away. I don’t want to breathe without him.

I don’t tell my mother that, though. Instead, I visit with her a little bit longer, and when I leave, I feel her eyes buried between my shoulder blades as she watches me go.

It’s like she knows.

And she probably does.

Chapter Two

His fingers tangle in my hair, and his breath is sweet on my cheek.

“Livvie,” he whispers, and his voice is the moonlight. “How you complete me.”

He strokes my arms, my chest, my belly. He trails his soft lips along my collarbone, then brings them to mine, softly, softly and his words taste like honey. I breathe them in and inhale his kiss, and try to memorize his face with my fingers.

“I love you,” I tell him, and there is pain in my words, a true heartache that I could never communicate with a mere sentence. His eyes are soft and black as he stares into mine, and they shimmer in the moon.

“You are my heart,” he answers simply.

His body is hard and lean and long as he slides over me, and then into me, again and again in the night. I cling to him as if my life depends on it, because in an uncertain way, it does.

Phillip anchors me. He completes me. He fills up my empty places and makes me feel alive. Without him, I am dead, like wood or stone. I tell him that, and he lifts me up, my hips held to his, my neck to his mouth.

“Mon petite lapin,” he murmurs. “You will live, and I will live, and we will always be.”