A Heavy Burden
Rainer
A vase comes flying at me as soon as I step into the suite. I quickly step aside, and the vase hits the wooder or, ceramic breaking on impact and leaving shards on the floor. I will have to get a maid to clean that up later. At this point, we are going to run out of breakable objects for Willow to throw at me.
“Your aim is getting better,” I say cheerily, knowing that will annoy her more.
It has been a couple of days since I dragged her kicking and screaming back to Castle Graystone. Willow has been in a bad mood since then, and she likes to take her anger out on anything breakable that can be found in the suite of rooms she is being held in, essentially as a prisoner. Kane wants her close so I can keep an eye on her and prevent her from escaping from the castle again.
The librarian’s quarters are too far away and isolated, so I had to put Willow in the suite of rooms next to mine. With guards constantly standing outside of her door, and even below her window since that time she tried to climb down with a rope made of curtains and bed sheets, she’s not going anywhere.
Willow is the most troublesome prisoner I’ve ever had to deal with, and that’s saying something considering I’m the one who brought Jacob back here.
Kane wants her to practice using her magic again. So far, she’s been levitating objects at me and set some curtains and bedding on fire. This leaves the maids having to keep replacing things in her room. As far as we know, Willow is the only vampire who can
use magic at the moment, and that makes her valuable and a total
pain in my aSS
“Have you thought about practicing your magic in other ways?” suggest Like, how about doing something not so violent? Make the flowers bloom or turn water into blood?”
Willow’s pale blue eyes glare at mein hatred. A pillow starts rising from the bed. It flies toward me, and I catch it with one hand I toss it back at her, and she yelps as it bounces off her and lands on the floor
“Hey!” she exclaims.
I shrug. “You started it.”
“You’re a child.”
“You’re the one that keeps throwing things,” I point out. Im just retaliating after days of not reacting to your behavior.”
“Oh boo–hoo, Rainer,” she spits. “I was mean to you for a few days How can you live with such treatment?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.” I give her a glib smile, and I can see it irritates her even more. She wants me to get angry so we can have a real shouting match. I abandoned such behavior in my youth She’s going to have to make do with frustrating cheeriness
“Aren’t you supposed to be trying to convince me to join Kane’s war and betray all the witches?” she challenges, crossing her arms. “You’re not doing a good job of it.”
“My job is to babysit you and make sure you don’t leave the
castle” I take a seat in the chair near the window. “The convincing you to join the cause thing is Kane and Emory’s department. That’s
above my pay grade.”
Willow looks disgusted at how blasé I am. “I find it so ironic you all want to use me for your own gain when a century ago my kind was being hunted just for having magic Can’t you se the hypocrisy in all of it?”
“We’re at war. Desperate times call for desperate measures,” I reply. “None of us could have predicted you were able to do this, which is something the other side doesn’t have.”
“And yet, I see no reason why I should be part of this.
I cock an eyebrow at her. “You’re a vampire, and your king is esking you to. This is your kingdom and has been your home for a very long time. Whatever happens to Crimson Peak affects you.”
“So I’m to raise the banners and come running?” she scoffs. “I will never do such a thing, especially after how the people of this kingdom have treated me.”
“What happened with the witches was regrettable-”
“It was barbaric!” she argues. “We were never any threat to vampires. We didn’t have the wealth or the organized strength of the shifters. We didn’t even have the numbers of the humans. We were the weakest, and King Michael hunted us for sport.
Familiar guilt burns in my belly and crawls up to my chest. I swallow, unable to find anything to fight back with. Willow is in the right. Her people have been wronged, and I have no way of spinning it to make it sound better.
“The damage done is so bad that you all thought witches were extinct,” she continues. “They hid amongst the humans, and they
stopped practicing their magic to Reep themselves safe. That is
the legacy of your beloved King Michael”
lean forward, and I can see all thepair
sorrow in her pate
blue eyes. I want to soothe it away, but she won’t let me touch her or even get near her
“How do we fix it, Willow?” I ask “What would you have us do with all this bad blood?”
“You can’t fix it, Rainer. None of you have even bothered trying to apologize, because in some way, deep down, you still think it was justified. It wasn’t, and it still isn’t. She looks haunted, hollowed out “You didn’t even remember how you benefited from it. All those nights you went down to the dungeon to feed, not even seeing our faces. Which is the same way you treat the feeders in the dungeons now.”
“That’s not true,” I begin, wanting to tell her things have changed for the feeders, but Willow turns away as if the sight of me makes her want to vomit. She walks to the ensuite bathroom and closes the door behind her, putting the necessary distance between us. I run a hand over my face, thinking about my past sins. Atonement is a hard road to walk.
Kane
I have told Emory all the gory details of the witch hunts, what I can remember of that time. She is horrified and saddened to hear about a war my people tried to erase from the world, not wanting anyone to remember our viciousness. Emory isn’t completely shocked as she spent most of her childhood with her people at war with mine. She has some idea of the atrocities of war.
I haven’t been able to speak to Willow since the interrogation in the throne room. Her unraveling of everything she and the other witches have endured unsettles me. I don’t know what to say to her. All my excuses stay unspoken as do the rest of my apologies since she never accepted the first one.
“Why did your father target the witches specifically?” Emory asks.” They hadn’t done anything to provoke him.”
“He was paranoid in his later years, and he became stricter with the laws he passed,” I explain. “He saw potential problems and acted upon them before they could become a real threat. The witches were scattered and fewer in numbers, but magic was an unpredictable factor. It made them dangerous in my father’s eyes.”
“They could have never been a real threat to him unlike…” her voice trailed off, “Why is it he never started a war with my people?”
“The risk was too great for losses on either side. My mother convinced him to broker peace with your great–grandfather instead. It wasn’t until Bernard forced my hand that I went against this precedent.”
“We could have been wiped out like the witches,” she concludes. “If the war between our species went on, eventually, you could have erased us too.”
I shake my head. “Even I don’t have the capacity for that. I knew Bernard would run out of funds eventually. I waited him out, and he caved as I’d predicted.”
Emory turns to the window of my bedroom, taking in the view. outside. I can only see her profile. “All those people, Kane. They were murdered. They have to be remembered.”
“It’s an ugly part of our history I had hopet to keep buried I don’t know how to make peace with what my father did and my part in not being able to stop it”
“No one tried to stop it.” She sounds distant. It makes me ache to
touch her and be able to connect with her. “. now we expect Willow to fight in a war for the people that have wronged her most**
“None of it is fair. I wish I didn’t have to ask anything of her after what she’s been through,” I agree. “But I’m desperate. I’m running out of options.”
She turns back to me, her green eyes filled with concern. “What is it? What’s going on?”
“My allies have turned against me or are about to. We don’t have enough gold and blood to bribe them all,” I confess, all the weight I have been keeping in for months spilling out like wine. “I need Willow’s magic if I have any chance of winning this war. I know she deserves better, but my options are limited.”
“Why are your allies turning against you?”
I hesitate to answer.
“Kane?”
“They don’t care for the idea of a child born between our species,” I confess. “Intermarriage is unacceptable for most vampires. After they found out about the baby, they wanted nothing to do with me.” Emory steps closer to me, cupping my face in her hands. Her gentle touch calms me, and I close my eyes, letting her comfort me. She asks, “Why didn’t you tell me any of this?”
A heavy burden
“I didn’t want to add to your stress with the baby-”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Kane,” she admonishes. “You are my partner. We’re supposed to lean on each other and work together. We don’t keep secrets and suffer alone.”
I lean my head against her shoulder and… out a ragged breath. “I know, I’m sorry. I’m not used to being able to rely on anyone.
besides Rainer and my mother. And even then, I’ve tried to handle most of it on my own.”
“You’re a king, not a god. You’re allowed to need people. It’s not a weakness.” She lets out a sigh. “Look at me, Kane.”
I open my eyes slowly. Her green gaze makes me feel naked, like she can see to the very core of my being. It should scare me, but there’s a freedom to being seen completely as one is. Everything I am–king, vampire, man–melts away. I am only hers.
“Do you know the first thing shifters are taught? The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. You can’t do it all on your own. Let me be there for you.” She ki*ses the corner of my mouth, softly. “I know we haven’t known each other that long, but you’ve been the most. dependable person in my life. You take care of me so I can be strong for others. I want to be able to do the same for you,”
Long ago, I had hoped for a union like my parents had where they worked together as a team. I had given up that thought when I was betrothed to Opal. Then I met a wolf shifter who was willing to sacrifice herself for her sister and there was only one conclusion to that story. Love had hit me like a lightning bolt and there are times I still wonder how I was able to withstand it.
“You want to take care of me?” I ask. “It’s not going to be an easy
-25-82006
task. I’m known to be stubborn as a mule. And I always think I’m right.”
She smiles. “We’ll work on your massive ego, and I’m quite good at the caring part. Just ask Lola.”
“Okay.”
I give in because there is no point in fighting. I’ve been dealing with the burden of this on my own for too long. The promise of easing even a little bit of it makes me feel like I can breathe again. The war still looms over me and the impossibility of how to win it but for a moment, I am at peace.
