Crimson

16

Cause baby, we've got history

I carried Ajae into her room, her tired body almost limp as her head rested on my bare chest. Soft breaths fanned across my collarbone as she shifted her head into the crook of my neck. I felt her yawn just as we passed the threshold into her room. Carefully, I laid her down and made sure she was comfortable before joining her.

"Tell me about your past, the part that you haven't told me yet."

"You need to rest," I replied as our sweatpants clad legs tangled together.

"I'm not that tired yet. Tell me something," her small voice whispered.

I let out a sigh as I closed my eyes to nuzzle into her hair, the scent so sweetly intoxicating. I made sure my weight wasn't crushing her as I laid halfway on her and the bed. Her loose tank top came up to expose her smooth stomach as I shifted. "When I was younger," I began, "I was almost killed in an attack on our land. Nara and I were playing outside when it had suddenly started, the sounds of war erupting all around us. It sounded like nothing I had ever heard before, so haunting and grim. I wanted to stay outside and watch because I knew that this is what I would have to do one day but our mother had ushered us inside. Our father stood in the front lines at the point, his army fanning out behind him. I admired them all, my father like a sort of idol to me. Everything began at our doorstep, we could see it all from inside," my cold voice filled the room as the memories came flooding back, imprinting themselves on my closed eyelids like a movie.

She nodded and I kept on talking into her hair just loud enough so that she could hear. "The two sides clashed together and the noise was so loud that I had to cover my ears. I stared straight ahead, keeping tabs on my father as blood spread in puddles on the ground. But when the opposing army started to win and advance, Father had his sword ripped from his grasp and it had flown just outside the glass doors to our house. Nara and I watched and waited, refusing our mother's plea to stay away from the glass. Seeing hope of defeating my father, the army advanced and being the foolish child that I was, I had pushed past my mother, out the door, and ran to the sword. I had the idea that I could give it to my father and it would help him win, I thought that I could prove myself to him that I wasn't just a child anymore. I was foolish. Because just as I had picked it up, a soldier from the enemy side had cut me down, the blade slicing across my chest. I was just a child and when my father had seen what had happened, he went into such a rage that he rampaged through the enemy's army, battering the troops and making blood almost rain from the sky. My mother was crying and Nara didn't know what to do."

"How did you get away from the one that almost killed you?" She asked, her hand running mindlessly up and down my arm.

I hesitated before sighing. "I have an older sister. One who was almost considered an adult at the time. I remember her without a weapon but covered in blood as she approached me and the other vampire. He kneeled down to her and I was barely conscious but I remember being confused. She slowly took the sword that he had from his grasp and when he raised his head to look into her eyes, she killed him. Then she looked over her shoulder at Nara and our mother and disappeared."

"What was her name?"

I let out a long breath before I could say her name. "Cleo. Her name was Cleo and that was the last time I had seen her until recently. But I heard the stories, I knew what she had done and why she was there that day."

Ajae stopped rubbing my arm for a second before resuming. I knew that she was itching to ask the question but she held off. I told her anyway.

"She betrayed us. Cleo was the instigator of the rebellion because the one that she had mated with decided he didn't want to live under the rule of someone else, he wanted the throne for his own. So they spread untrue rumors about my father to get people to help them in their want for the throne. Even she, herself knew that she would not rule because I had been born and the tradition was for the first male to be passed the throne. Our people were tricked and much blood was shed because of her. She was too young to have a mate and she chose the wrong one. So she was punished and her mate was executed in front of her. She didn't receive capital punishment because my father still loved his first child. So he banished her and told her if she would ever show her face again, he would not be lenient and he would kill her himself."

"So what happened to you?" She whispered as she shifted her arms to wrap around my torso.

"After Cleo was gone, my mother collapsed into a screaming mess as her and Nara rushed to me. I remember feeling like I was floating, so light that I no longer laid in a heap on the ground with a puddle of blood surrounding me. After I had been cut down, my father ended things quickly and he was the one who lifted me from where I was sure I was going to die. I was so young and I just remember thinking that the pain was going to swallow me whole. The last think I saw was my father's face and I remember thinking that I would be happy if I would die in his arms. But I didn't. I think that I should have died that day, when I was still young and innocent and didn't have to face the reality of the world. I hadn't yet known the dangers of being who I am."

"So you wish that you were dead?"

I pulled back to look into her eyes, placing my hands on her waist as I rolled her on top of me. "Sometimes I do, to tell the truth. This world is a place where I feel I don't belong."

"I don't know what I would do without you though, if you had died back then," she said in a low voice as she stared back at me, a certain innocent light in her eyes.

"Then we would have never met and you would be like any other normal human being walking on the face of this earth," I replied. She frowned, not exactly seeming to like the reply that I had given her.

"But I don't feel normal."

"What do you mean?" I asked, shifting my head.

She shrugged the best that she could. "I don't really know how to explain it, something just seems off about me. It always has."

I chose not to answer because even I didn't know how to respond to the new information. I simply gazed up at her as one of her dainty fingers traced designs on my chest.

She was still young in human years, her life has seemed to go by in a flash to me. She was but a moment caught in time in my immortal life span. But I was willing to let her in, to know me on a deeper level than she already did. I was willing to take that risk for her. Because even though we were of a different race, maybe, just maybe, we were meant to be together.