The Ballad of Aramei (The Darkwoods Trilogy 3)

I move back around and stand in front of Isaac, placing the palm of my hands on his chest. He’s trying to keep his eyes on both of us, but finally he can’t help but look only at me, realizing without having to read my mind what my face reads.

“You’re not going anywhere with him,” Isaac says in a harsh, desperate whisper. Creases form and harden at the corners of his eyes. He reaches out to grab me, but I gently push him away. And then I shut my thoughts off to him so that he won’t know the lies I’m about to tell him, are lies.

“Isaac,” I say softly, “I want to help. I can communicate with her…I…,” I let my breath catch; “…I could feel her emotions as plainly as my own that night we stayed with her in the cabin. They were so strong…I-I didn’t completely understand it then, what had happened, but now I know. She’s reaching out to me. She needs my help and I want to help.”

Everything that I said was true except the part about wanting to help. Make that two things that I still fear: Trajan and being in Aramei’s presence. She nearly brought me to my knees that night. Her two hundred-fifty-year-old imprisoned emotions are too much for me to bear, too potent for my much younger mind to contain.

Isaac’s face is besieged by fury and conflict, his breathing still heavy from the fight just moments ago. He looks back and forth between Trajan and I, a swarm of emotions lay in his eyes.

“I go with her,” Isaac demands.

“You can join her later,” Trajan says. “You are Alpha here and your duty is to your pack.”

“My duty is to her,” Isaac snaps, pushing the words fiercely through his teeth. “You know that more than anyone, Milord,” he adds, putting grave emphasis on a word that would normally be replaced with ‘father’, but he refuses to address him in that way.

I feel something else seething off Isaac’s skin other than anger and defiance. I sense something triggered in him far more dangerous and I look over at him, studying his angry eyes and the change boiling inside of them.

From the corner of my eye, I see Harry step out onto the front porch. He has probably been listening this whole time, too. Being my Guardian, it’s going to take as much convincing to keep him away as it is for Isaac. I glance across the yard to see Harry and I shake my head no. “Stay on the porch,” I say in my mind, hoping he will hear me as easily as Isaac does. “You’ll make it worse if you interfere.”

Harry, apparently hearing my thoughts, stops before descending the porch steps. And he waits.

I turn to Isaac, placing my fingers gently on one side of his face and I soften my expression. His hand comes up to hold my wrist and he leans inward, kissing the base of my palm.

“Isaac please,” I whisper, “let me do this. I feel like I need to do it. I’ll be okay. Your father has no reason hurt me and I’m under his protection so you have to know that no one else would.”

I hope I’m convincing enough. If I don’t do this, this might not end well for Isaac and I can’t let that happen.

“You take care of business here,” Trajan says from behind, “let her and Aramei be alone for a time and then you can join her.”

“For how long?” Isaac says, his voice still heavily laced with disdain.

“That will be for me to decide when I am ready.”

Isaac doesn’t move or speak for several long, tense seconds, but I feel his entire body harden like stone against mine. The air around the three of us is rife with hostility, barely contained by Isaac. I’m surprised that his eyes haven’t shifted black.

He hates his father right now. I know that he loves him, but this is a different sort of hate and I can only tell what it’s fueled by, not what outcome it will inevitably cause.

Somehow, this realization worries me more than where I’m going….

I step carefully away from Isaac and his hand falls away from my wrist, his fingers lingering until they reach the tips of my own. As I make my way to the back passenger’s side door where I had been sitting before with Trajan, I hope that Isaac will contain his anger until we’re gone. Every muscle in my body is stiff with trepidation. And I try not to make eye contact with anyone; not Isaac or Trajan or even Harry who still stands at the top of the porch steps watching me from afar and I know holding back his own dire sense of urgency to accompany me. But Harry knows more about what will happen than Isaac could ever know. Because Harry knows my future. And everything that is happening right now is certainly part of the design, that road my life must follow in order to fulfill my destiny as a Praverian Charge.

If I was in any danger, Harry would know it.

What he’s doing right now is an act. I’m sure of it. Because he still must do everything he can to make those around us believe he is only human, my overprotective human best friend that knows nothing of destinies or futures or wars to be made.

I am destined to start a war. And it’s Harry’s job to make sure that I do it.

When I think of this, I’m sure to close my mind off to Harry because…I don’t want to be the cause of any war.

And I refuse to be.

The first half of the drive is completely suffocating. No one speaks, which means there’s nothing to distract my keen senses from all of the petty sounds and smells around me. The stench of gasoline burns my nostrils and my lungs. I can even smell the blood on the driver’s teeth from whatever animal…or man that he ate during last night’s full moon. I can’t seem to block out the constant grating and humming of the tires burning across the highway or the roar of the engine and the thunder rumbling in some distant thunderstorm. But worst of all, I feel suffocated because I’m trapped in this tin can with Trajan sitting next to me and every now and then I hear Aramei in my mind, struggling with whatever kind of life she is living inside that lost and lonely head of hers.

I don’t know what Trajan expects me to get out of her. More than that though, I’m afraid of what I might see. If I see anything at all.

“You’re hearing her now mostly through me,” Trajan says, facing forward.

I look over carefully. “Aramei?” I know he meant Aramei, but really I’m so nervous sitting here with less than three feet between us that I’m not confident in my own voice around him yet.

Trajan nods subtly.

“You’ll be able to connect with her fully on your own once you get there,” he says.

“Well, how am I doing it now?”

He glances over at me. “Her link is very powerful,” he says. “I believe you’re hearing her through me.”

“But I thought you said I was connected to her?”

“You are,” he says looking back in front of him again, “but so am I and I believe she’s using me as a bridge. I imagine once you are standing face to face with her, her emotions will flood your mind.”

I look away too, recalling how this very thing happened the last time I visited her and how much I didn’t like it. “They will,” I say softly.

I feel his eyes on me from the side. “Explain.”

“When I saw her last,” I begin, “I think she tried to communicate with me then—no, I know she did.”

“Yes,” Trajan says, still looking right at me which makes me all the more nervous, “Evangeline told me of your visit. That was the night in which my beloved began changing.”

I feel his eyes move away from me finally and then I turn my head to see him.

“Evangeline?” I say. “Is that Eva?”

“Yes, Eva has been my most trusted caretaker for Aramei for many years. But she grows weary and I expect she will die soon.”

My eyes widen a little as his strangely casual words catch me off-guard for a moment. But I can’t bring myself to say anything in response. Not sure what to say about something like that anyway.

“Well then,” I say, “What do you expect of me?”

“Whatever you can give me,” he says looking directly into my eyes which sends shivers through my arms. “I expect you to tell me everything you see in her mind, everything no matter how insignificant it may appear to you. Do you understand?”

The diminutive amount of confidence I had acquired over the course of our short conversation fades away in an instant with his demand. And I realize in this crucial moment that Trajan Mayfair, regardless of being Isaac’s father and regardless of needing my help to communicate with the love of his life, will never hold me in high enough regard to spare my life if I do anything to displease him. I know that our ‘conversations’ can never be mistaken for Trajan growing to care for me, or that he will ever see me as anything more than a tool to help give him what he needs more than anything. I can never let my guard down with him because the second I do, the second that I feel comfortable in his presence might be the time in which he turns on me and kills me.

I turn away from him, unlocking our gaze and I stare out ahead through the windshield and watch the landscape fly by.

When we finally arrive at the cabin, I’m as anxious as ever to get out of the vehicle and away from Trajan. The last thirty minutes of the drive he spent scanning the pages of a thick, old notebook, jotting down things that I assume had something to do with business and his leadership. Maybe it was about conquering packs and killing off rogue bloodlines. I don’t know, but seeing as how it’s Trajan Mayfair, I know he wasn’t writing poetry.

I step out of the Escalade and at first I’m afraid my head will be engulfed by Aramei’s emotions, but I sense nothing. The soft wind funneling through the surrounding trees is cool on my face. I hear the sounds of nature all around me and the familiar rushing of water crashing against the rocks in the nearby waterfall. It’s so peaceful here and I want to just stand here forever and bask in the comfort of it, but I know that in just moments there will be nothing comforting or quiet about my visit at all and I dread going inside.

Raul, the big werewolf guard who is a friend of Isaac’s, stands watch at the foot of the steps leading up to the porch. He looks different in the daylight, his smile more radiant and trustworthy, but the second Trajan steps out of the vehicle moments after me, Raul straightens his back, gripping the handle of his sword at his side and his smiling face stiffens into something much more military.

Trajan approaches and Raul and the other four guards standing nearby, all bow low at the waist and hold it for four seconds before rising back up into a straight position. Trajan doesn’t even look at them, but walks by them all without a word and slips inside the cabin. He leaves me standing out here among the guards, but I’m pretty sure he knows I’m not going to try running away or anything.

Raul’s posture loosens and so does his expression. A huge grin spreads across his face. “Finally tossed that pup out did you?” he jokes about Isaac.

I grin right back at him and, of course, play along because it might break his big, scary heart if I don’t.

“Yeah, I did, Raul,” I say stepping right up to his giant form. “I just couldn’t get you off my mind.”