Aria and Will Read online

  When long minutes passed and I still hadn’t said a word, he stood. Truth is, I didn't know what to say. What do you say to someone who tells you the past four years have been based on a lie? What are you even supposed to feel?

  “I understand,” he said. He was smiling, but it was the saddest smile he had ever given me. “I'll let you rest, now.”

  I caught his hand as he walked by. Moving hurt my abdomen, and I gasped. He looked back at me.

  “It hurts.” There were tears in my voice. I always hated crying so much.

  “I'll get the nurse.”

  “No, that's not… What you just said… that hurts. I thought you…” He didn't want to say love, so I wasn't going to either. “…cared about me from the start. I did.”

  “Not from the start, maybe. Not like that. But now I do, more than I should.”

  I squeezed his hand. “So do I.”

  I was in the hospital for three weeks. Lorenzo practically moved in with me. He went to fight at night, of course, but he always came back to me. The nurses complained but in the end they gave up. He slept in my bed during the day, curled up against me, always so very careful not to hurt me. I spent my time stroking his hair and thinking. It took me time but I decided during these three, long weeks, that words only have the value you attach to them, and that I could live without being told I was loved. I knew I was.

  When I got out of the hospital, my first stop was at Will’s office.

  Chapter 7

  The phone rang. Wilhelm started. He had been intently reading through a report about the state of energy supplies in Newhaven, a document so dry that unless he made a deliberate effort to remain focused, his attention drifted every few lines. He glanced at the identification display. It was the hospital. He picked up the receiver before the second ring had ended, fumbling a little in his haste. He had been expecting this call for the past couple of days. He was somewhat surprised Ariadne had remained in the hospital this long, she had to be bored out of her mind by now.

  “Wilhelm.”

  “It’s Laurie, Will.”

  Wilhelm’s anticipation dropped back at once but he tried to put as much warmth in his voice as possible out of respect for one of the strongest women he’d ever known. As Bergsen’s wife, she had needed that strength daily for the past twenty-five years.

  “How is he?”

  “Better.” Relief echoed in that simple word, but it didn’t completely mask the underlying tension. “He woke up this morning. He was disorientated for a while, but I just talked to him and he’s lucid. He wanted to talk to you, but the doctor vetoed it, said he needs more rest.”

  For a brief moment, Wilhelm closed his eyes. In times like this, he sometimes wished he had had a God to pray to, and to thank.

  “I’ll come by later, if that’s okay.”

  “As long as it’s not to throw him back into work.”

  “Just to say hello, I promise.”

  They said their goodbyes. Wilhelm was smiling when he hung up the phone. Forty-nine hours earlier, Bergsen had suffered a heart attack. His wife, his doctor, two nurses and Wilhelm were the only ones who knew. If he recovered completely, there was no reason to tell the public and start a panic in the city. If he didn’t… there would be time to think about it then.

  On the desk in front of him, the energy report still waited, but Wilhelm ignored it a little longer. Since he was going to visit the hospital, maybe he would stop by Ariadne’s room. He had last seen her when she had come out of surgery, and since then whenever she came to his mind, it wasn’t as a young woman full of life, nor as a skilled fighter. Instead, it was a pale face he saw, closed eyes circled by pain and forced sleep, and a too-still body on the bleached white sheets of the hospital bed.

  If he went to see her, however, the reasonable part of his mind pointed out, it might attract the attention of too many people, and the last thing Wilhelm wanted was to cause gossip.

  With a frustrated sigh, he returned his eyes to the papers he ought to be reading. Unlike Bergsen, Wilhelm wasn’t good with these things. He knew fighting, training, strategy. He could see trends in the numbers of wounded or dead and could organize fighters, but taking care of civilians was a whole different matter. And so were women.

  There was a sharp knock, and before he could answer, the door opened. Ariadne entered and closed the door again behind her. Wilhelm sat up, blinking in surprise, and watched her. Her strides were steady when she approached the chair in front of his desk, but he noticed a flash of pain as she sat down. It had been three weeks since she had been hurt, and she was wearing her Guard uniform, but there was no way she was fit to return to combat yet.

  “Shouldn’t you be in bed, still?” he asked, foregoing civilities since she was doing the same.

  She was sitting very straight, almost too much so. Her eyes seemed calm. If he knew her at all, it wouldn’t last. She was fire and quicksilver; anything else she might show was a mask.

  “The doctor said I was fine. Didn’t you get the call yet?”

  Just as she finished talking, the phone rang again. As before, the display identified the hospital, and Wilhelm picked it up. On the other end of the line, a nurse informed him that Ariadne would be discharged in the evening.

  “So maybe I left a bit early,” she answered his raised eyebrow when he hung up. The calm in her eyes was turning into smugness. “Why did you want to know when I left the hospital?”

  He didn’t bother asking how she knew he had requested to be informed, just like he didn’t bother calling her on her attitude. He was getting used to her barging in on him with questions and demands.

  “You were badly hurt,” he pointed out. “I was concerned.”

  She snorted at that, the small sound accompanied by a shake of her head. “Soldiers are hurt every day. Are you concerned about all of them?”

  Wilhelm didn’t like the direction her questions were taking or the rising volume of her voice. Accompanying her to the hospital had been a bad idea, as had been the roses. Who knew what ideas he had put in her head? He should have known better. At least, he hadn’t gone to visit her.

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but I get daily reports about anyone from the Guard who enters or leaves the hospital.”

  “Individual reports?” she challenged. “And do you assign babysitters to all Guard members as well?”

  She leaned forward. A flash of pain coursed over her features, but she didn’t back away. Her gaze was pinning Wilhelm to his seat.

  “I don’t assign babysitters to anyone.”

  “What do you call Lorenzo, then? He told me everything.”

  Wilhelm clenched his teeth and kept quiet. Lorenzo was an idiot, and the next time they met they would have a small discussion about what part of ‘don’t tell her’ Lorenzo hadn’t understood.

  “So? Why aren’t you saying anything?”

  “You just said you know everything, so I don’t know what else you want to hear.”

  There was no trace left of her earlier calm when she stood. A muscle was ticking in her jaw, and the frustration and anger in her scent were too tightly wound to distinguish.

  “How about why you asked him to shadow me? Or whether you suggested to him to get closer to me—”

  “Never.”

  She didn’t even seem to hear him. If anything, she stood even closer to the desk, looming over Wilhelm.

  “I just don’t get it. You go through all this trouble to keep me safe, you bring me to the hospital, and then you don’t even visit me.”

  For a second, Wilhelm had a feeling that this last point was what angered her most—but that couldn’t be. It wouldn’t make any sense. She was waiting for an answer, though, and he struggled to find one.

  “I can hardly visit everyone who gets hurt.”

  “But you send flowers to all of them?”

  Wilhelm had had enough. Nothing he could say now would satisfy her. Standing, he walked around the desk and went to open the door to his off
ice.

  “Night will be on us before long,” he said once she had turned to look at him. “I have things to do. It's time for you to leave.”

  She took slow steps toward him, staring at him the entire way as though she could get the answers she wanted straight from his mind.

  “This is not over.”

  The warning was clear in her tone, but Wilhelm didn’t respond as she left his office. Returning to his desk, he picked up the phone and dialed the number he had taped to the base of the receiver. The eager voice that answered greeted him by name.

  “Yes. The usual. Six. Pick up the note in my office.”

  He pulled out a small envelope and blank note card from a drawer and put the tip of a pen to it. When the florist knocked half an hour later, the card was still as blank as Wilhelm’s mind.

  * * * *

  I still have that piece of paper, like I have every single note Will ever wrote to me. That one just held one word. Sorry. I’m not sure what he was sorry for. I asked him, once, and he said he was sorry for ever thinking he could keep me safe despite my own wishes, and sorry he couldn’t. That didn’t answer anything, but that’s Will in a nutshell for you.

  I guess all his notes tell as much about us as anything he ever said to me. I have quite a few now. I hold them in a wooden box carved with roses I’ve had since I was a child. Even after all this time, I can remember my father bringing the box back from one of his trips out of town, an old, brown thing, with hinges so rusty it was difficult to open. I remember sitting in the kitchen, hands flat on the table and my chin resting on them, and watching him slowly, delicately, almost tenderly sand away the paint until the wood was pale and smooth. He rubbed in wax, made the box shine. Then he screwed in new hinges, gleaming like silver. That’s the most vivid memory I keep of my father. I can still smell the warmth of the wax when he handed the box to me, can still see his smile when I thanked him.

  That day, the flowers were already there when I returned to the two-room apartment I shared with Lorenzo. I had taken a slow walk after talking to Will—if you can even call what we did ‘talk’. The flowers were there, and so was Lorenzo, but the note wasn’t.

  “Nice flowers,” I said. And it was true. They always were beautiful.

  “White roses are bad luck.”

  His tone was my first clue that he was sulking. Then I looked at him, stretched out on the small sofa that took an entire length of wall. His eyes were on the ceiling, looking at nothing in particular, at anything but me. After my argument with Will, the last thing I wanted was to have an argument with Lorenzo as well, so I pretended not to notice his bad mood. Returning my eyes to the small bouquet of flowers, I looked in vain for the white envelope that should have been there.

  “Was there a card?”

  Lorenzo sat up abruptly, startling me. “You went to see him, didn’t you?”

  I didn’t even think of asking whom he meant, nor did I consider refusing to answer.

  “I did. I tried to get an explanation, but he barely talked to me at all. He can be so stubborn.”

  He laughed at that, a harsh laugh I wasn’t used to hearing from him, and that surprised me.

  “He’s stubborn,” he repeated, “and you’re blind. Can’t you see why he’s doing all of it? Why he didn’t want you to join the Cadets, why he didn’t want you fighting in the Guard, why he asked me to have your back? Come on, now, Aria. You can figure it out.”

  I shook my head, because no, honestly, I wasn’t figuring it out. Or maybe I didn’t want to. Maybe it was too scary to think that—

  “He’s in love with you.”

  He stood and came to me, so fast I was a little alarmed and took a step back despite myself. I wasn’t afraid of Lorenzo, I have never been, but he looked angrier at that moment than I had ever seen him. Angry, and I couldn’t understand why.

  “Don’t be silly.” I tried to laugh, but my throat refused to cooperate. “You said it yourself: vampires can’t love.”

  But even as I said it, I remembered what Will had told me on the way to the hospital. According to him, vampires could indeed fall in love. And now that I thought back on the way he had said the words…

  “Leave with me,” Lorenzo said suddenly. “Let’s get out of this town, go to a place where demons—”

  I didn’t let him finish and shook my head. He knew me better than that. I’m not sure why he even asked. I guess he was more jealous—more afraid—of Will than he would have admitted. He didn’t look upset, or surprised. Just resigned.

  “I’ve got to go. I can’t be late on the walls. Don’t wait up.”

  He kissed me, before he left the apartment, hard and long and with the edge of anger still cold on his lips. The entire time, I couldn’t help wondering if it was true. If Will truly loved me. I loved Lorenzo more than I had ever cared about anyone, and still I couldn’t help wondering.

  That night, I stared at the crumpled note I found by the sofa for a long time, smoothing it out between my fingers. In the end, I couldn’t help it. I had to know. I went back to Will.

  Chapter 8

  The night had been long; the fight, fierce. These big fights had been taking place more often in the past few months. It seemed that the demons had decided that skirmishes weren’t worth the effort, and that larger fights were more likely to deliver the city to them. There would come a day when they brought enough troops to the walls to finish the town, and then nothing but the sun would stop them. There were too many cities, all over the world, that had fallen like this. Wilhelm knew that it was only a question of when Newhaven would fall as well, not if.

  He had returned along with the Guard soldiers, riding in the same truck, walking by their sides, taking the same elevator to his apartment. It wouldn’t have been any different if he had been alone. He had noticed the pointed looks at his injured arm, but no one had asked if he was all right, no one had suggested that he go to the hospital. No one had dared. No one ever did.

  Something stopped his hand just as he was about to swipe his card key in the lock. Tired as he was, he needed a few seconds to recognize the scent lingering on his doorstep.

  “Ariadne.”

  He only realized he had spoken the name aloud when it seemed to echo down the deserted hallway. If he listened intently, he could hear a heart beating behind the door and he knew, without the shadow of a doubt, it was Ariadne’s.

  Immobile on the threshold, he hesitated. He had no desire to see her at that moment, not after the way their last encounter had unfolded hours before. She was asking too many questions, questions he didn’t know how to answer, and he was too tired to play this game now. Maybe he would just go back down to his office and… And wait for her to hunt him down. If she had found her way inside his locked apartment, he doubted she would give up so easily. He might as well get it over with.

  Finally swiping the card, he pushed the door open with his good arm and walked in. He found her right away, sitting on the sofa. She was reading one of his books, but she looked up when he entered. Her gaze and slightly raised eyebrows seemed to challenge him to say anything about her breaking into his apartment. He wanted to scold her, but the words vanished before passing his lips. Shaking his head, he walked over to his bedroom and sat down on the mattress with a slight groan. When he looked up again, she was by the bedroom door, arms crossed and looking annoyed.

  “Go home, Ariadne. I have nothing to say to you.”

  “Do you ever?” She snorted. “It doesn’t matter. You can listen.”

  Once again, her eyes held that challenging look that she seemed so fond of. Wilhelm wondered, as she started rambling about Lorenzo, and Guard assignments, and unwanted interferences in her life, if she looked at demons the same way on the battlefield. When he had fought by her side, guarding her back before he had asked someone else to do so for him, he had always been too intent on keeping her safe to pay much attention to the way she looked at their enemies.

  From there, as she kept talking, more animated
now but still just past the threshold, his thoughts drifted toward Bergsen. Wilhelm had gone to see him before heading to the walls, and he had not liked what he had found in that hospital room. People were beginning to wonder where Bergsen was. The excuse that he was taking a few well-earned vacation days was shaky at best, and it would never hold once he reappeared, looking weaker, paler, thinner. Questions would be asked, and asked again until they received satisfying answers. Wilhelm doubted that anything but the truth would do.

  That was what he had been thinking about, during the battle. That was what had been distracting him from the demons in front of him. That, and Ariadne, her words and anger still ringing in his ears. That distraction had cost him. He should have avoided that axe blow; he hadn’t. He couldn’t let himself be caught off guard like this. With Bergsen already weakened, Newhaven needed Wilhelm more than ever—as much as he hated that fact. They needed to train better replacements, build failsafe people into the system so that if either of them was incapacitated—or both—the Guard and Newhaven would keep running and remain safe. The chain of command, as it stood, would never hold. Wilhelm didn’t know why he had never realized as much before.

  He didn’t know either why he had never realized that Ariadne was too much of a distraction.

  He focused his attention on her again, blinking to adjust his vision. She had fallen silent and her lips were pinched into a thin line.

  “Did you even listen to a word of what I said?”

  There was no reason to lie. “No.”

  She shook her head, but strangely enough her features softened, almost to the point of a smile. “Of course you didn’t listen. That’s just like you.”

  Annoyance flashed through Wilhelm. It was the first time in all the years he had known her that he had blocked out her words rather than listened to her, because he was tired and because he didn’t know what she wanted to hear.

  “You know nothing of me. And I know nothing of you. We’ll both be better off if we keep it that way.”