Seventeen years, ten months, two weeks, three days...
Each moment is agony.
Every second of every day, George Beaumont is reminded of his young wife's untimely death. With every glimpse of that painting up on that mantle, with every glimpse of his...
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Autumn of 1870
For the briefest moment, there is only pain.
Dull, thrumming pain that fades into Anne's veins as she opens her eyes, the blissful forgetfulness of sleep overcoming her. She does not know why it hurts, nor why she should cherish the moment, but she does.
In those few seconds, she takes in the boy on her bed, lashes long and mouth slightly open, and the stiff, ticklish feeling of bandages on her neck and on both her wrists.
And then she is Arianne Liddell again, the sick girl who had tried to take her own life.
Sleepily, she falls back into bed. She cannot bring her legs to move. Not when the guilt of seeing Raymond right beside her crushes her heart. What would he feel when he woke up? Glad that he didn't recognize the pale girl with the bruise-like rings under her eyes?
But no. He is not yet awake when she hears him. She looks over to him, all tousled curls and soft male beauty. His voice is as lovely as his face as he hums in his sleep. She recognizes the tune as the one from the music box he made for her. The melody they made for an old, tuneless Saxon song they had found many years ago.
Silently, she moves towards him, trying to recall a time besides the present in which she woke up with him so far from her. It should have made her scream, that feeling of being so far from safety, but the song dulled her mind.
For reasons she does not understand, she begins to cry as she presses a kiss to his lips. She wants him to hold her, but he deserves the calm moments of sleep. Moments of silence and contentment like that were the kind she no longer had the strength to give him.
Weakly, she stands up. Her knees are shaking, almost buckling with the effort. She cannot remember the last time she ate as the room spins. There had only been pieces of bread besides the water and herbal tonics she was forced to sip from cloths that tasted like dust.
There is only one thought on her mind as she puts as much distance as she can between them. Leave Raymond alone. Forever. Her addled mind makes her try and open the window he had sealed behind him the previous night so that she could jump out of it.
Still, she only makes it halfway through before she collapses in another fit of shudders and held-back screams.
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