Page 70 of A Ballad of Phantoms and Hope
“I wish for that too.” My voice is low. Melancholic.
But another part of me is content, overwhelmed with the feeling that we were meant to meet this way.
“Can I tell you something?”
I blink down at her and smile to encourage her.
She swallows. “Your light is contagious. Bright. I could find you in the depths of the underworld. Through mist and darkness. Through it all.”
The blood in my veins warms as I grin. “That bright, huh?” She winces with vulnerability. I take a shallow breath, leaning close and pressing my forehead to hers as I whisper, “I would wait for you if it meant walking the cold castle walls of a cathedral until I lost my own identity. Until all I knew was you.” I press my lips to hers.
I kiss her like she’s the only person in the entire world. The only soul that walks on the same soil as I do.
A broken soul. A wandering spirit. A sad, lost thing. Now found.
Ophelia lets her head relax, kissing me as fervently as I do her. As if each stroke of our tongues and lips could be the last. She sighs with desire, bringing her hand down my chest.
We go down together. The blanket and sand swallow us whole as our worlds collide.
“Ophelia,” I say her name like one would whisper prayers to a goddess.
She straddles me, long hair outlining her lithe features. Her eyes are hooded beneath dark lashes, mouth parting to say something in return before she freezes. Ophelia snaps her eyes up to look at something toward the entrance of the beach. Horror befalls her expression and I watch her entire body tense with fear.
Terror slips inside me, stirring my blood. I twist to look where she does and find darkness moving down the lip of the parking lot toward us.
No. How did they already find us?
“Ophelia, get to the ocean!” I hastily reach for her wrist, but she looks up at me with an anguished frown. I know then that she’s planning on doing something foolish. “Ophelia!”
She gives me a caressing look. One that someone only does if they’re memorizing the features of your face or the way you would gaze at them with adoration one last time.
“I love you, my darling.”
Her words are sorrowful—an unspoken goodbye.
Then she darts across the beach so fast that I don’t have even a moment to think before the dark cloud of whispering mist is chasing after her. What looks like an arm shrouded in shadows juts out and strikes me. It hits me so hard that the world falls around me like petals and rain.
Slowly, terribly—my eyes close and everything stops.
My rose. Please,please, don’t go.
Not without me.
31
Lanston
“Lanston,dear. It’s time for school.” My mother called from the living room of our small, shitty house. It’s the first day of my junior year in high school.
I grabbed my secret stash of art brushes, charcoal pencils, and drawing notebooks that I secretly bought over the summer. It was dangerous to take this risk, knowing how much my father despised my attraction to artistic things. But he should be asleep already. The night shift always wears him out well before dawn.
My mom knocked gently on my door and peeked in. “Are you almost ready?” she asked kindly. I nodded. Relieved that I could finally go back to school after a long summer stuck at home. School was the only place I could escape this life of constant fear and uncertainty.
My smile was short-lived, as my father loomed ominously behind my mom. Her smile was weak and feigned happiness. Iwould feel betrayed, but this wasn’t the first time she’d smiled while he cornered me.
“Good morning, sir,” I said as I kept my eyes low and out of his cold sight.
“Lanston, what’s the last class on your schedule?” He held up a folded piece of paper with a list of my classes. My heart sank. I knew he was talking about the art class. It must’ve been mailed. “Well?” he pried.
