Loving Rain (Watty Awards 2011)

Chapter 22 - The Channel

Loving Rain - Ch 22

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When I finished reading, my eyes were watery and unable to see Cian’s reaction. The only thing I could tell through the blurriness was that he was turned towards me. My breaths started getting deeper, and in an attempt to keep calm I started breathing through my mouth so I could take bigger gulps of air. I could feel the muscles in my stomach being pushed to their limit as each breath grew stronger and stronger. Finally, I had to slam my eyes shut to keep the tears from falling down like waterfalls.

               It had said he would die. Several times. In more than one way. The boy sitting beside me right now was going to die. Soon.

               My ears started ringing and I cursed the horrible luck that seemed to follow me everywhere I went. First I had fallen into the arms of an enchanted prince, who was doomed to be as ugly as the hatred in his heart. Unless, of course, someone learned to love him, and he equally returned their love. And I had thought I was the person that could do it, but instead Fate just tangled me up into a web of lies and deceit used to bring about Alan’s own happiness, but that was totally oblivious to my own. Now, I was being protected by another prince who was going to perish at the hand of someone who would take over his kingdom, and steal all that was important to him from right under his nose. His cold, dead, lifeless nose.

               It didn’t seem possible. How could I stray from the first person to care about me, right to another person who cared about me, without losing any of the gloom that hung in the air above me, ready to suffocate me the closer I got to them?

               So when the tears finally cascaded from my eyes, they weren’t just for Cian and his prophecy. They weren’t just for Alan and his curse. They were for me, and my selfishness that made me hate both of the princes who seemed to be able to read my heart like an open book. My tears were for everything I’d been through since I first stepped into a castle, and how much I wished I could go back and tell my father that I wouldn’t go, no matter how much he wanted me to. Because if I had done that, none of this regret would be building up inside of me.

               If I had done that, maybe by now I would be the wife of a young farmer, and in my arms would be a baby who I would raise and take care of every single day from now on. Maybe I would be out in the fields, making sure the crop came in on time, so we could make it through another winter together just snuggled by the warm fire that I made: not that some servant had made for me. I might feel loved, and cared for, and not have to worry about curses, or kings, or princes, or castles, or any of the things that had consumed my daily life. I could be free from all of this. Totally, completely, and undeniably free.

               And maybe I could be that now. I could run away from here like I had done so well before, and reach some small village where I could begin my life as a new person. No one would have to know what I had been through, and I could be accepted because I fit in, not because some prince made people be nice to me. My biggest worry would be what crop to plant each year instead of how to break a curse or interpret a prophecy.

               But as I opened my eyes and saw Cian gazing at me with a slight frown of concern on his face, every thought of leaving flew from my body. I couldn’t leave, because I was needed. Somewhere. The only thing I wasn’t sure of was where, exactly, I was needed.

               Alan didn’t need me anymore, I thought, because he surely had another girl strung along, just like I had been, who would break his curse for him. To him, I was as insignificant as a drop of rain in the middle of a storm. I guess that’s another reason why my name is so fitting.