Page 11 of Iron Cross

“Any plan we make for Kira will not work.” That was my cynicism coming to the surface. A mood I had sharpened to razor sharpness in my lonely state. “She is not a woman to be controlled.”

She was a queen to be revered. A goddess to be worshipped. One word from her, and I would obey.

“Then we’ll try something else until something works.” Shiny leaned forward and grabbed my hand. “We’ll figure it out.”

I felt the dizziness of alcohol on my mind as I swallowed away despair.

I forced my eyes to focus as I looked at Shiny. I blinked until the double I was seeing turned into one, and I could scrutinize her expression.

“Why are you helping me?” I asked, suspiciously.

She hadn’t liked me since coming back into the life. She didn’t want to be here most days, if it weren’t for her husband. Dick-whipped was what she was.

“You don’t know?” she said, tilting her head, her arrogance clear as day. “Let me remind you that you’ve sworn to let her go, if that’s what she wants.”

I groaned, irritated that she was right. I had told her that I would do anything to get Kira back. I had whipped my own skin to tell her that I would tear my flesh off the bone if that was what it took. She had gotten a blank check, and all she asked was that I would do my wife no harm. And even then, she waited until now to tell me.

I shook my head. Or at least I thought I had. My hand was still bleeding when I finally grabbed another glass and filled it.

“Because we were friends,” she said, coming to her feet. “I haven’t forgotten.”

Chapter three

Monsters

Kira

Somewhere in Massachusetts

Itell my son the same story, night after night, as he lays beside me in bed.

“Once upon a time, there was a handsome prince who fell in love with a common girl…”

It’s amazing the stories we tell ourselves to speak of a past that didn’t go as planned.

“He married her and brought her to his castle. What the girl didn’t know was that the castle was full of monsters, and scary things.”

My son cooed, his long lashes fluttering closed as the familiar story hypnotized him to sleep.

“One day, the girl realized that she had a handsome boy growing in her belly. And that was when she learned that the prince she had married, wasn’t just surrounded by evil monsters. But he was one of them as well.”

My son tried to grab at my shirt, to unleash a breast. He had been weaned for over a year, but he still found solace in placing his hand in my shirt - a habit that was harder to break than one might think. I grabbed his hand, as he gave an irritated whine. I placed his palm beneath my cheek, pressing it against the pillow, which seemed to console him enough to settle on the pillow beside my head.

“Scared for the safety of the boy in her belly, she sought the help of a red-haired witch, and a short-haired woman, who was a knight. Together, they helped her escape, so she could go far away, and live in the forest, deep in the cold mountains. She could become someone else. Common, and unseen by the big, scary monsters.”

My son had never slept in his own bed. Not because he wouldn’t sleep on his own. It was because I couldn’t bear to have him out of arm’s reach. In case the monsters came to rip him from my arms, and make him into a monster just like them.

There was no happy ending in my tale.

It simply faded away into the night like evening mist, dampened by the cold.

Like the smoke from a lover’s cigarette, that swirled higher and higher, then simply disappeared.

A very…specificlover.

My son’s eyes started to flutter closed. Right on time.

I ran my fingers over my own skin, grazing them along my forearm the wayhisbrushes stroked the surface of his canvas. The wayhisbreath would ease over my skin as the story, and the memories, dimmed.

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