“You okay?” Ciáran asked as he came into the room. He leaned into the doorframe, his brow knit with concern. “You seemed… spooked earlier,” he finished when Clarissa turned to face him.
“I’m fine,” she mumbled, pulling a tunic over her head. She sighed as she pushed her arms through the sleeves. “I just… you reminded me of someone. Someone I’ve lost.” She frowned. “Why are we doing this? Why? Why are you pretending to care? Why am I pretending this is what I want? It’s not what you want either… not really. Why are we forcing it?” Clarissa huffed, defeated.
She knew exactly why, but she wanted to hear him say it. They’d been left in this war torn world utterly alone. And loneliness was a near unbearable thing. It was easy. Pretending. To want him. To be happy. It was easy. Until it wasn’t.
But would it be easier to face the truth?
“I think we both know why,” he finally said after he pushed himself up off the door to stand straight. To face her with a level eye, a seriousness he pretended to be above.
“Because it’s supposed to be easier. Everyone got their happy endings and it is supposed to be easier to pretend that we’ve also found ours. But I see it in your eyes when you look at me. When you pretend to love me… that blank… nothing. A darkness that haunts you. You’ve lost the same as me, Ciáran,” she said, that same pain she spoke of showed in her eyes. A glimmer of unshed tears. The emptiness of a soul without hope. “It’s supposed to be easier. But it’s not. Why must we pretend that we’re okay? We’ve lost everything.”
“Ciáran, we owe them nothing.”
He sighed after he toyed with the hem of his sleeve for a moment. And it was like a glamour had fallen. Gone was the pompous prince. The confident arse always at the ready with a sharp retort. An in his place was a man, worn and wizened from loss and pain. A stranger under the mask.
And it felt like Clarissa was looking into a mirror. For she saw the same in herself.
“Will you tell me of what you’ve lost?” He asked.
“Will you tell me of yours?”
He nodded and they sat together on her bed. Clarissa pulled her knees up to her chest, as Ciáran crossed his arms.
Looking skyward to the ceiling he cleared his throat. “Her name was Everyn… she was--she was the love of my life,” he said, his voice broke through the words. “I met her when I was visiting Dreyn with my father. He didn’t approve of our relationship, but he didn’t do anything to stop it. We met in secret for months before she moved to Mirrior. And she was a spark of light that chased away some of my father's cruelty. She was a beacon of life in his kingdom’s darkness. And we fell for each other.
“I remember how she would pull me out of the cold to go see Seelie’s flowers, to bask in the sunlight. She gave me a reason to look forward to life. It wasn’t long and we were married. I had chosen her to be my queen for when I would take the throne. And she had chosen me. And still my father did not approve. But he did nothing. Nothing until she became with child. We were to have a child…”
He released a shuddered breath, his voice wasn’t more than a whisper. But Clarissa listened to every word. Her heart weighed down with the burden of knowing exactly where this story would find its end.
“We lived outside of the palace. In a small cottage on the outskirts of the city, surrounded by nothing but woods. Seclusion all around,” he continued. “It wasn’t much. But it was enough for us. It was enough with her in my life. We would live their until I was forced to take the crown. But that small cottage, with my wife and the blessing of a child was more than I could’ve ever dreamed of. It wasn’t long before my father learned of Everyn’s pregnancy. And he came with a small company of soldiers. And I fought…
“We fought. But they had magic, something I had never been strong in. And it was just the two of us against so many… I--I tried. But I wasn’t enough. I was never enough,” he sobbed, his words and the memories choked him. “I begged for him to take my life too. So that maybe I could be with them in whatever life comes next. I still remember the way he laughed. The look on his face as Everyn died in my arms. Slaughtered in our own home. And instead of taking my life as well he had his sorcerer curse me with an eternity on this earth. I will never leave Olira. I can never die and be reunited with Everyn.”
“You believe in an afterlife?” Clarissa asked after a moment.
“I don’t know. Believing gives me some hope to hold on to. And after everything... You’re the daughter of Gods, Clarissa,” he said. “That of itself means there has to be something more.”
They sat together in silence for a while. The candles sputtered from atop the cabinet across the room. Shadows danced across their faces as Clarissa tried to find the words.
She grunted, an attempt to clear her throat of the lump that had chosen to reside there. “Deirdre,” she started, “came into my life during a time where I was most, not myself. My identity. My memories. Even my name had been stolen. I was a shell with only one mission to keep me going. Protect the Priestess. I was a tool. A weapon. But she saw past that. And helped bring me back to myself. With her I wasn’t a monster. I wasn’t a weapon of the darkness they had forged me with. I was a person. I was allowed to feel. To wonder. To question. And she helped bring everything back. Everything they had taken from me. We fought together. And we rebelled. And she gave her life to protect mine.”
“What happened?” Ciáran prompted when she fell silent.
Clarissa didn’t cry, her voice never faltered. Though he expected it to. Instead her words came out cold, precise. Like Clarissa had mastered the art of feeling nothing a long time ago. And she had. He knew she had. He knew how cold… how heartless she could appear to be. But beneath it all he knew her to be a storm. A whirlwind of darkness and pain, and beneath that all love.
The pair of them made a good show of caring for nothing. But it was perhaps Clarissa, he thought, that cared the most out of all of them. Her love for her friends… her passion for her family… she let it consume her. And he feared it would one day lead to her destruction.
“Once I regained my memories, we both realized we’d become pawns in the king’s plot. Though we didn’t know what exactly he was planning. Or why he needed us. But determined we were to figure it out. And I got caught. Captured. I-- Deirdre turned herself in for my freedom. She reasoned that her power for prophecy would be more useful to him than my darkness. So she gave herself over. He agreed to grant my freedom in exchange for her.
“I tried to stop her. To tell her not to, but his mage had full control. I couldn’t even speak. I watched as he took control of her. I watched as he drained her life from her, stealing her gifts into a crystal… The last thing I saw was her lifeless eyes as she dropped to the floor dead. And then I woke up in the meadows. And that image haunts my dreams… when I close my eyes… I’m never free of it.”
“How did you fall in love?” he asked, wanting to give her something else to focus on. Instead of the memory.
It was a moment before she spoke. And when she did her eyes had closed, and some emotion finally showed on her face. Clarissa pushed her nose in between her knees, her hair covered her eyes, from where it’d fallen from its plait. “I remember… It was the first time we had ever really spoken. We were away from the other acolytes, and she had wanted to get to know me. Though I knew nothing to tell. The way her hair shone in the sunlight… like a flame. It was the first time I had ever seen her as anything less than perfectly kept and polished. In that moment she seemed free, and wild. So alive. I--She had so much spirit to her, so much life… I didn’t think anything could ever snuff out her fire…”
Ciáran wrapped an arm around her shoulders. An attempt at comfort. “That spirit lives on in you. Her fire. Her passion. You keep it alive.”
“The world would be better with her in it, instead of me.”
“I don’t think so.”
She looked over at him then. “Why?”
“You think you’re some sort of monster. That your pain… your darkness, define you. They don’t. You bring something good to this world even if you don’t see it. And besides, it’s good to have a friend who understands.”
“Is that what this is?” she questioned. “Being friends? I think Ciáran, that it’s much easier to be your friend than to be your lover.”
He laughed, weakly. “I think you’re right… We don’t have to force it.”
“Do you think we’ll find love again? Or is that it for us, Deirdre and Everyn? Do we even want to?” She asked after a long silence, hopeless for the future. “Or will we find them again? What’s the point of it all?”
