Page 12 of Falling
“You won’t argue for your life?” he asked, smiling.
She grinned at him. “Is that an official question?”
“Yes. It’s my second one. If you really thought that was my plan, you wouldn’t try to convince me to let you live?”
Catalina tilted her head. “No. Because I don’t believe you’d kill me.”
“Why not?”
“I just don’t.” She shrugged. “My turn.” Brigan nodded, and he felt the way her heart gave a heavy, anxious thump before she said, “You already know what my fourth question is.”
“I do,” he said, “but I want to hear you ask it anyway.”
She pulled her lips between her teeth, drawing in a deep, steadying breath. “What exactly are you? I mean, what do you call your kind?” Brigan laughed. “I can’t believe I’m actually saying all of this aloud.” Catalina lifted her hands, dragging them down her face.
What am I?
He’d never been given a name, although some aspects of his form were obvious—at least to him. Naturally, in the course of this unending existence, he’d stumbled upon others. Only a few. He didn’t know where the term had come from, whether another one of his kind had made it up or whether it had been proclaimed by some celestial being he hoped to someday meet.
“I am a Fallen,” he said, and lifted the scotch to his lips, letting the heat of the liquid coat them. “I am one of a handful like this.”
“Fallen like an angel?” she asked very, very quietly.
“I suppose.” Brigan nodded slowly, carefully, waiting for the curse to tighten around his vocal cords, keep him from veering too close to describing himself, asking her what she saw to make her guess that word so specifically. “I was very naughty, a very long time ago, and a very mean lady put a curse on me.”
Catalina huffed out a shocked breath. “A curse?” He nodded and she said, “Tell me about the curse?”
“I’m doomed to walk the earth, alone and immortal, until my beloved finds me and rescues me.” He said it very dramatically because it was, in fact, very dramatic. But the entire story only made him tired anymore. He no longer held much hope that there was an end in sight for him, a return to the ability to love and breathe and sleep and exist inside this shell of a body that hadn’t felt like his in so long.
Her voice was soft, teasing but not mocking: “And how will your beloved rescue you?”
“Apparently, she will simplyseeme,” he said, staring into his glass.
“Isee you.”
He laughed sadly at this, not able to correct her that it meant something very specific.
“What did you do to make her curse you?”
“I slaughtered a corrupt king’s family.” It had been so long since he’d said this aloud; the words felt stiff and sharp, cutting his tongue as he spoke them.
Her dark eyes went wide. “Oh. That’s ... that’s deep.”
“Oh, darling, that is only the very tip.” He winked.
Because she hadn’t asked, and because he knew, ultimately, he wouldn’t be able to say the words even if he wanted to, he’d left out the most important details.
Details like how he’d paid for these crimes first by having to watch the murder of his wife, his soul, his beloved. How he’d watched Annora tied to the stake and burned to death. And then he’d been killed too—at least, in a way he had. A sword had been decisively slashed through his heart, his blood had spilled in great pools, staining the palace courtyard. His heart had stopped beating.
But as he’d felt the life drain out of him, the king’s sorceress had hovered nearby, those long, crooked fingers with twisted black fingernails pointing at his bleeding corpse as she spoke the curse that kept him alive but alone to this day.
In shadows draped with feathers night,
A fallen soul awaits the light.
Eternal dusk, your heart’s refrain,
Break this spell, remove your pain.
