Page 12 of Iron Cross

“The girl hid away, deep in the mountains, where no one could find her. She stopped wearing nice clothes, and tried to stay away from the world.”

My skin had changed. The delicate, soft skin that smelled like rich perfume had been replaced by the coarse, dry skin of a single mom who showered with a toddler at my feet, laughing and splashing under the spray, until shampoo got in his eyes.

Now I used baby shampoo, if I had time to wash my hair at all.

Then, I had to cut my hair. That wasn’tjustabout the fact that I didn’t have time to maintain it. My hair fell out in clumps after Cillian was born. It was horrible. So I lopped it all off. In a fit of madness, I dyed it purple, hoping to get some semblance of color back into a life that had been de-saturated. It didn’t work. I hated it. I hated seeing it in the mirror every day.

Blink approved, of course. He said that it made me look unrecognizable, which was useful for hiding in plain sight. My husband wouldn’t recognize me now. I wasn’t “fresh-faced” without makeup. I was sallow, my pores were twice the size asthey had been, and the bags under my eyes would earn me extra fees at the airport.

I wasn’t the woman walking through the gallery, holding the attention of millionaires and billionaires, as I explained about art. I was just a sloppy mom, barely holding it together, carrying a pain in my heart that robbed me of any vivaciousness that could attract a man like…

Like the prince in my tale.

The prince who was now a king.

How have you been, since your father died?I had wanted to ask, three years ago, after I heard the news. It had pained me, to think he was going through that alone. I understood the loss of a father, even if their relationship has been strained, to say the least.

I suppose he was the king of the Mafia now. Alastair Green’s funeral hit the local news, lauded as a philanthropist and businessman. His somber-faced son had led the procession as pallbearer, as he and his oh-so-familiar guards walked out of the Catholic church to bury him in the cemetery.

I recognized them all, and even seeing them through a screen made me shudder.

The things that they had done to Aoibheann…

I was sick at the memory. Though… Alastair’s death had meant Aoibheann was free of him. So surely that was a good thing.

“The prince forgot all about the girl.”

Would Eoghan remarry?Again, I snorted. Because even if he didn’t remarry, he would certainly haveMalindain his bed.

Pretty red-head. Now she had him all to herself.

Bitterness tasted like bile in my throat.

Cillian never stayed awake to get to the end of the story, which meant I had never invented an ending. I never had to fill his head with the sad fate that the girl would have - alone, for all eternity, longing for the monster she had fled.

The girl stayed hidden, and was simply forgotten.

The prince stayed in his castle, surrounded by his soldiers and servants, as he was before. Many girls paraded in front of him wanting his attention because he was handsome and rich, with eyes that could make you feel like you were the most ravishing creature the world had ever seen.

I stayed up, because I couldn’t sleep after those thoughts swirled in my head.

The only solution was for me to let myself feel. The love for a monster, the loneliness, the loss of myself to this identity of ‘mother’. To feel my own failures.

I had to unleash my desires on paper. Three years ago, I was compelled to draw images of a handsome man with cruel eyes. A dark devil, with a smile that could consume our soul. But then, those feelings changed, slowly, until my hands molded images on the paper of a dark-eyed painter, naked, with a brush against the canvas and a cigarette dangling from his lips. I drew a man with golden hair smiling over a crib, with a different sort of lovein his eyes. Domestic scenes that I turned into paintings and sold at my kiosk, under a covered bridge.

Chapter four

Don Juan Triumphant

Eoghan

“It seems, young king,” Morelli said, pacing back and forth, the shackle on his right foot clanging with the movements. “You need to make her fall in love with you.”

I should take that damn shackle off. Between the cell, the outer door, and the guards that roamed my property, he had no means of escape. Especially not in his state.

How simple he made it all sound.Just make her fall in love with you…

“She’s already in love,” I protested, quietly, stating the fact that I knew in the marrow of my bones. “She loves me.”

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