The Castle of Gold [Bk 2]

ch.31 Used to be

Harry sat upright and pulled me gently into his lap. I hid my head against his chest as he rocked back and forth gently.

“I missed you” he kept whispering over and over, almost like a chant.

He softly kissed my lips and cheek and down my neck.

“I needed your armor” I told him and I grasped the collar of his jacket and felt the hard titanium leather in my weak fist.

“I didn’t know how long I could go without my heart, my angel” he shook his head slowly. A dark curl fell over his eye and I tucked it to the side.

I looked up into the green, marbles that resembled tiny globes I thought I had lost, but I found them again. They were my mini worlds, the worlds I wanted only me and Harry to live in peacefully.

Then I took his strong, steady hand and kissed his red knuckles.

He smiled softly and a dimple showed through. I kissed the dimple before it disappeared.

Suddenly, a gasp startled both me and Harry.

We turned to see that Liam’s blood lip quivered slightly and his finger trembled and pointed downward.

He was alive!?

Harry scooped me into his arms as he stood up. Then he lowered me slightly and helped me to stand on my own.

I stared at Liam’s eyes. They were bruised so blue that they looked black, but they trembled slightly.

Harry didn’t need to tell me to stay back. I stood behind him and peaked past his shoulder every so often.

He knelt down and listened to Liam’s chest.

Liam took a hesitant breath.

“I used to be the good guy” he whispered in a broken voice.

I came closer to him and knelt down beside Harry.

“Angie” Harry started to protest, but I ignored him and gave Liam the decency of hearing his last few words.

“Now I’m black and blue” Liam declared shamefully and his eyes closed.

Harry felt Liam’s neck for his pulse, then checked his chest and wrist and every other indicator of him being alive and human, but everything replied back “no.”

Liam was dead and ghostly. His skin pale, but reddened by the spilt blood. His clothes dirtied and tattered.

I just sat there and looked at him a moment. Harry immediately wrapped an arm around me to make me look away, but I refused.

I couldn’t believe it, but a tear slipped from my eye in pity and remorse over Liam’s life-less body. He used to be my friend, a very good friend, but he had become a monster.  Liam had become Louis, the ugly creation that resulted from divisions.

And he was right: he used to be golden, but now he’s blue-black.

“Angie, are you ok?” Harry asked me quietly.

I shook my head “no.”

“What are we supposed to do now?” I asked him almost rhetorically. It doesn’t matter how many lives a person takes; the process of witnessing and causing the death to a living being repeats itself over and over and over until you don’t know how many times you’ll see that whisper of life swim out of their parched lips.

Harry took my wrists in his hands and softly tugged me closer to him.

“This isn’t your fault, Angie” he told me almost immediately.